Last week, the media lavished attention on Josh Fattal, the 29-year-old American who spent 26 months in an Iranian prison before being reunited with his family in Oman and arriving back on U.S. soil on Sept. 25.
But one aspect of the story that has largely gone unreported is the fact that Fattal is Jewish.
Josh’s father, Jacob Fattal, was born in Iraq and moved to Israel before settling in the United States. Josh Fattal became a bar mitzvah in suburban Philadelphia and grew up in Elkins Park, Pa. He traveled to Israel several times, the last time just before meeting up with friends Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd in Syria and going on with them to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they crossed the border to Iran and were arrested.
The three are U.C. Berkeley alumni.
It’s no accident that the Jewish side of the story has largely been kept under wraps, according to family friend Brian Gralnick and others familiar with the situation.
And it doesn’t take much imagination to guess why: The Iranian government is virulently anti-Israel and has a history of charging Jews with spying for Israel.
While it stands to reason that Fattal’s captors knew his religion or learned it during interrogations, his family did not want to take any chances and risk having information get out into the public sphere that could endanger their son even further.
And, since the families of the three captives worked so closely together, forming a united front, the idea was to keep the focus on three American citizens who were wrongly imprisoned, rather than single out one because of his Jewishness.
So, despite the fact that Laura Fattal appeared frequently in the media as she and the other families waged a public campaign for their children’s release, she declined to be interviewed for this story. The family also rejected offers of several Jewish organizations to intervene.
The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent refrained from reporting on the story altogether, let alone detail Fattal’s Jewish connection, until the hikers were freed.
Many of the details of the story are well known. Fattal, Bauer and Shourd were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan when they were arrested in July 2009 by Iranian guards after apparently inadvertently straying into Iranian territory. It is still far from clear exactly what transpired that day, whether they actually entered Iranian territory, whether they were coaxed over by border guards or some other scenario. The three were charged with spying for the United States and sent to Iran’s notorious Evin prison.
Shourd, who was engaged to Bauer in prison, became ill and was released last year on $500,000. She lives in Oakland. Last month, the two remaining hikers were convicted and given an eight-year prison sentence.
The families “knew that they [were going] to get sentenced,” said Gralnick, 32. “The tougher part was the end of Ramadan,” when the Fattal family had been led to believe, or at least was hoping, that Josh would be pardoned.
Finally, on Sept. 21, nearly two weeks after a promise from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that they would be released on humanitarian grounds, the two were freed together on $1 million bail, flown to the capital of Oman and reunited with their families in a jubilant scene captured by cameras.
Shortly after their arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Fattal and Bauer spoke about their ordeal. They described how they spent most of their time together in a cell about the size of a small moving van, denied a chance to exercise or receive letters from family.
“Many times — too many times — we heard the screams of other prisoners being beaten, and there was nothing we could do to help them,” Fattal said during the news conference.
The two described themselves as hostages who were held only because they were from the United States. Bauer, a journalist and the more overtly political of the two, said he and Fattal actually opposed U.S. policies that are the source of antagonism between the two nations. They said they were unsure if they had ever crossed the border — and may never know.
“We applaud the Iranian authorities for finally making the right decision regarding our case. But we want to be clear that they do not deserve undue credit for ending what they had no right and no justification to start in the first place,” said Fattal.
There is still much to learn about what happened during the past few years, some of it likely to come out as the families, and the hikers themselves, share more of their harrowing ordeal.
One significant piece of the story was how both Josh’s mother, Laura, a teacher, and his brother, Alex, a doctoral student in anthropology at Harvard University, put their lives on hold and threw all their efforts into Josh’s release while Jacob Fattal continued to work to support the family.
Gralnick, a lifelong friend who has known Alex Fattal since preschool, witnessed the physical and emotional toll that the uncertainty had on the family and heard the details of interactions with the State Department, the White House, the office of Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Swiss diplomats and the attorney in Iran.
“There was a lot of frustration. They had no real leverage. Absolutely no leverage. They could only hope and pray that Iran would make a humanitarian gesture,” said Gralnick.
Another part of the story was just how many were touched indirectly and directly by the plight of the Fattal family.
While no Jewish organizations became directly involved, plenty of Jews took it upon themselves to express support in a number of ways.
Fattal’s former high school classmates helped to organize candlelight vigils, publicized the hiker’s plight on Facebook and Twitter and organized fundraisers to help pay the families’ legal and travel expenses.
Rabbi Eliot Holin of Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park reached out to the Fattal family, though he didn’t know them very well. In the end, he decided to make a prayer for Fattal’s release a part of every Friday night service.
While being Jewish was part of who Fattal is, he thinks of himself as a citizen of the world, said longtime friend Joe Boxman, noting that Fattal is an environmental activist who has traveled around the globe to countries such as India, South Africa, New Zealand, China and the Philippines.
“I can say that today has been one of the happier days in a long, long time,” Boxman, 29, said shortly after Fattal and Bauer landed in Oman and were reunited with their families. “The footage of him getting off the plane — that was one of the things I was waiting to see.”