I was a hostage in 1970 at age 13, caught in global events that were beyond my capacity to comprehend. I was held, together with my younger sister, for a week under difficult conditions. It began when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine commandeered our aircraft not long after we left Frankfurt, a stopover on our trip from Israel to New York City, where we lived. I had visited close relatives in Tel Aviv six times in my short life, usually during summer vacations from school. This trip home began like all the others, but soon turned into a traumatic odyssey, beginning with the screams of passengers as a man ran toward the cockpit brandishing a gun.

Many frightening hours later, we landed in the Jordan desert as captives. Outside the window of the plane in which we were trapped, I could see trucks mounted with machine guns, tents and supplies, and people dressed in fatigues and keffiyehs. Two other hijacked planes landed alongside us. The next day, I saw dynamite being wired through the plane’s cabin; a serious man questioned me as to why I had been in Israel, and required me to relinquish my American passport. I was hot and dirty and hungry and scared. I concentrated on watching over my younger sister who seemed numb and pale with shock. Over the days I spent in the desert, Jewish passengers were separated and a select group of non-Jews were released. Babies wailed, passengers prayed, including those who donned Tefillin in the aisles, swaying and davening. The Palestinian commandos in charge of the planes brought medications for sick hostages, played jump rope with children, fed hundreds of people, and told us their stories (termed propaganda by news outlets).

My sister and I were released six days after our ordeal began. Along with most of the other hostages (some though, remained captive), we were driven in small trucks through the desert, through the city of Amman, then flown to Cyprus for processing, and finally returned home to family, school and friends. In spite of nightmares and disruptions, it never occurred to me that anyone should pay for what had happened to us. Instead, I wondered why it had happened.

I had been raised in a secular Jewish family, no Bat Mitzvah, no planting trees in Israel, and only celebrating Passover when invited to others’ Seders. But like most every New York Jew with roots in Ashkenazi Europe, I absorbed the notion of a Jewish State as naturally as drinking water or breathing air. My childhood visits to Israeli relatives involved beaches, adventure, food, a new language, and children to run around and play with. I was also aware of relatives in army fatigues carrying weapons, the placement of tape over windows, and bomb shelter directions; things a young child might not think about too deeply. But of course, I grew up and began to recall those images and ponder them.

I vividly remember an argument I had in my twenties with a close friend, also Jewish, who stated that the Holocaust demanded the establishment of the State of Israel. Although at the time I could not have discussed the alternative concept of Jewish diasporism, I remember saying, “Why does establishing a safe place for Jews mean herding us all into one small area, as if other places should not be safe for us? And why must the people in that area, who had nothing to do with the Holocaust, be eradicated? How does safety for Jews lead to the destruction of a whole other people?”

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