Author: Alfredo Casuso

Hostage Father Dr. Jonathan Dekel-Chen on Today’s Events

I am sharing this heartfelt and honest commentary, as its author — Dr. Jonathan Dekel-Chen

— is someone whose integrity, compassion and commentary I have come to greatly respect. 

Last year, reading Dekel-Chen’s painfully frank chronicle of his family’s personal experience of October 7, I reached out to him for advice vis-a-vis a US / Israeli client of ours. His generous response continues to touch me. Throughout today’s seminal events in Israel and Gaza, and listening live to Donald Trump’s speech at the Knesset, my mind went back to my interaction with Dr. Dekel-Chen. It does not surprise me that his commentary offered below is both profound and timely.

— David Eugene Perry

My Son Was a Hostage in Gaza. Israelis Are Grateful to Trump – But Unsure About Peace.

Deep wounds and distrust on both sides will make for a long and difficult path to two states and lasting peace.

By Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Contributor 

13 October 2025

As I write these lines this morning, 20 living hostages have emerged from the valley of death and are reuniting with their families two years after they were abducted during a Hamas attack on southern Israel. So much has been lost since Oct. 7, 2023, both for Israelis and for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. There was jubilation across Israel today, notably in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, the plaza occupied by loved ones that became the gathering place for protests and vigils calling for the hostages’ release. But the reality for most Israeli families is more complex. As the father of a former hostage released last February, I understand both the joy and the worries.

For the families of the remaining 28 hostages who are understood to be deceased – and for the whole country – fear and apprehension abound, with more questions than certainties whirling around us. What condition are the living hostages in? How many bodies of murdered hostages will Hamas return to Israel in the coming days – or at all? Will all of this really lead to the end of the war? Perhaps not, given the statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Likud party about restarting the war once all of the hostages are home. Further down the road, what will U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan mean for the future of Israel’s security and the future for millions of Gazans? If Israel or Hamas violate the agreements outlined in Trump’s wider plan, this hostage-prisoner exchange may turn out to be just another lonely moment in the Israeli-Arab conflict.

We Israelis are certain about some things. First, our society is in crisis as a result of this war, which has fomented widespread disdain and distrust for Netanyahu’s government. The prime minister has steadfastly refused to take accountability for the Israeli intelligence and policy failures that led to the catastrophe of Oct. 7. The cynical behavior of his government since the massacre – including his offensive statements suggesting hostages’ families were hurting the war effort and his continued efforts to undermine the judiciary and erode our checks and balances – disgusts most Israelis.

No one could miss the public gratitude in recent days from the Israeli public to Trump and his team. On Oct. 8, 2023, I knew that only forceful, sustained pressure from the Oval Office on the Israeli government and Hamas leadership would bring hostages home alive, if at all. Why? Because Israeli and Hamas leaders had intrinsic reasons to continue fighting.

Tragically, for the hostages and for civilians in Gaza, my early fears were borne out. The Israeli public felt trapped by the cynical actions of the Netanyahu government until Trump changed the equation by creating a situation in which Israel’s prime minister could not say “no” to the president’s plan to end the war. Seen in this light, the outpouring of public gratitude to Trump makes sense. Netanyahu has ignored our demands to end the war, which were loudly expressed in every public opinion poll and countless mass demonstrations across the country.

Millions of Israelis recognize that the Netanyahu government has not acted in the hostages’ best interests or indeed in the nation’s best interests. Only blunt American intervention forced Netanyahu to abide by what our own citizens have overwhelmingly demanded for two years.

We know that Netanyahu torpedoed previous rounds of negotiation in order to keep his government intact. But we do not know if he or Hamas leaders intend to abide by the rest of Trump’s plan. Fulfilling the U.S. president’s vision of a post-Hamas Gaza will require the United States, the mediators, Persian Gulf states and other concerned countries to keep maximum pressure on both the Israeli government and Hamas leadership. Otherwise, either player may very well resume the cycle of war.

What will happen following the ceasefire? Trump’s plan outlines a multinational effort to rebuild Gaza and it offers a promise for Palestinian statehood. For decades before Oct. 7, liberal Israelis – along with much of the world – backed a two-state solution, but this support has eroded in Israel over the last two years, with half of Israelis saying it’s not possible.

Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, I was active in the Israeli peace movement that promoted that model of coexistence from my kibbutz home on the border of Gaza. But as a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz and the parent of a hostage who was held for nearly 500 days in terrible conditions, Oct. 7 forced me to reassess my position. I believed until then that Palestinians deserved a state of their own alongside Israel. The destruction of Nir Oz by armed terrorists and civilian looters from Gaza, who were fed hate and propaganda, has now sadly given me pause about the future of coexistencebetween Israelis and Palestinians.

What’s to be done now? The first order of business – aside from feeding the people of Gaza and rebuilding the destruction – must be a focus on de-escalating hatred on both sides of the border. We must break this spiraling hatred that has worsened in the last two years.

Israelis must reckon with the destruction in Gaza. And the Palestinian people must understand the depth of the wounds of Oct. 7. Until we find a way to defuse those old hatreds, I cannot see a pathway towards a two-state solution. Perhaps finally forging that path from the ground-up, outside the realm of conventional politics, could be what emerges from these horrific last two years of war.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is a professor of Jewish history and the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & Eastern European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, and his son Sagui Dekel-Chen spent nearly 500 days as a hostage in Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023.

From Cantabria to the Cross: A Coastal Detour

— by David Eugene Perry, photos by Alfredo Casuso

Part of a continuing exploration of Off-the-beaten-path Spain by Alfredo and David, including research for the forthcoming novel, Thorns of the 15 Roses, sequel to Upon This Rock

.11 October 2025: Leaving Santander, Alfredo and I took the slower, scenic road back to Llanes — the one that hugs the Cantabrian coastline and slips inland through forests and cliffs. Near Pechón, we pulled off the road at a vista point overlooking the sea. There, at the Mirador de Tina Menor, sits “El Pescador de Caña,” a bronze fisherman seated on a rocky perch, rod in hand, his gaze fixed toward the surf.

Installed in September 2010, the sculpture is the work of Antonio Coello de Portugal Narváez, a Madrid-born architect and sculptor who made Pechón his home. Standing nearly three meters tall and weighing 800 kilograms, it honors generations of Cantabrian fishermen who have eked out a life and a living in the waters of this rugged region.

It was a perfect prelude. From sea to mountain, from salt to stone — our route that day would trace a “pilgrim’s progress” in northern Spain.

Our inland goal was the Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, hidden deep in the valleys at the foot of the Picos de Europa in the Medievally-charming but very touristy town of Potes. 

Founded in the 6th century, it is one of Christianity’s five perpetual Jubilee sites, alongside Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago, and Caravaca de la Cruz. Here is preserved the Lignum Crucis — the largest surviving fragment of “The True Cross” brought from Jerusalem by Saint Toribio, Bishop of Astorga — allegedly a piece of wood from the cross on which Jesus was reputedly crucified.

It’s hard to believe, but it was almost 25 years ago that we visited here for the first time, with our dear friend — family — the late Bishop Otis Charles. As Alfredo observed: “one doesn’t have to ‘believe’ to nonetheless feel the significance that people have been coming here for 1200 years in pilgrimage.”

The monastery is austere and ancient, its stone walls steeped in centuries of prayer. Inside, the Chapel of the Lignum Crucis gleams with baroque gold — the reliquary cross catching the flicker of candlelight.

Outside, plaques recall the work of those who restored the monastery, including Fray Desiderio Gómez Señas (1925–2007), whose dedication revived both the buildings and the ancient cult of the Holy Cross.

In the cloister, an exhibit tells the story of Beatus of Liébana, the 8th-century monk who wrote his visionary Commentary on the Apocalypse here — a text that shaped medieval art and theology. His illuminated Beatos became not just religious manuscripts but priceless and irreplaceable pieces of Spanish and world patrimony. To me, literally, they are Revelation.

Beatus’ voice serves my current writing, Thorns of the 15 Roses, where Spain’s layered past — sacred and violent, mystical and political — rises to the surface.

Outside the monastery gates, the Camino Lebaniego beckons — a pilgrimage route that diverges from the Camino del Norte, leading travelers inland toward Santo Toribio and the relic of the True Cross. It’s an ancient path of redemption, once believed to heal both soul and body. Today, hikers and cyclists follow it much as their medieval forebears did — for faith, for beauty, or simply for silence.

Our drive continued through the valley — past Castro Cillorigo and Tama, small towns tucked between chestnut groves and the rising flanks of the Picos. We passed roadside shrines, stone bridges, and the faint scent of burning wood — the sensory palette of autumn in Cantabria. 

By the time the sun began to dip behind the peaks, the sea — “La Mar” as I always insist on calling it, never “El Mer” — once again pops into view. How I love looking out onto that vast, salty horizon. In a few weeks, Alfredo and I will return home via ship. This entire trip, and my writing and research, has been ocean framed. I can’t help but note that all three of Columbus’ vessels could easily have fit in the dining room of Holland America’s “Oosterdam”, our homeward “ride.” In my onboard maritime history lectures, I always recount stories from that “Age of Exploration.” This next set will be richer because of our time in Spain.

From Pechón’s fisherman to Santo Toribio’s reliquary, the journey had traced a single invisible thread: the Cantabrian people’s enduring dialogues between Earth and Sea; Heaven and Human.

From Llanes to Tazones: Following in the Wake of an Emperor
— By David Eugene Perry; photos by Alfredo Casuso

Last night in Llanes, we stopped before a bronze plaque set into a sunlit yellow wall — its inscription recalling a moment five centuries ago when King Carlos I of Spain, soon to become Emperor Charles V, spent the nights of September 26 and 27, 1517, in this very town. Only seventeen, he had just arrived from Flanders to claim his inheritance as Spain’s first Habsburg monarch.

That small plaque — a replica of an earlier wooden one — set our imagination in motion. It reminded us that Charles’s arrival had not been a triumphant parade but rather a journey born of chance and weather. His fleet, bound for Santander, was blown off course by storms and forced to land in the small Asturian fishing village of Tazones, not far from Llanes.

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Ruta Mañanga, Porrúa

This morning, tracing his route, we drove west from Llanes to Porrúa, where we hiked the Ruta Mañanga — a two-hour trail through meadows, chestnut groves, and sea-view ridges. At every turn, Asturias offered up a gasp-worthy tableau of green, sea, and mountain air. Veterans of hundreds of hikes over 27 years, Alfredo and I easily listed this among our “top five” for scenic beauty, alongside favorites in Grazalema and Orvieto.

Afterward, we stopped at the Museum of Asturian Rural Life, an intimate and thoughtful collection that captures the region’s centuries-old farming and fishing traditions.

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Tazones: Where History Met the Sea

A short drive brought us to Tazones, where on September 19, 1517, Charles I first stepped onto Spanish soil.

Today the town remains a pocket-sized harbor of whitewashed and color-trimmed houses, fishing boats bobbing in the tide, and gulls circling over the Plaza del Riveru, once the center of the whaling and fishing trade.

Walking uphill through narrow cobbled streets, we paused at the Mirador de Les Muyeres, dedicated to the women who once watched from above for the fishing boats’ return. Nearby stands a touching wooden statue of a woman mending nets — a tribute to their endurance and central role in village life.

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The Shellfish House and the Church of San Miguel

The Casa de las Conchas, the famous “shellfish house,” remains one of the most photographed buildings in Asturias — its entire façade covered in seashells, decorated with bright red balconies, lifebuoys, and a pirate flag fluttering above.

Just beyond stands the small Church of San Miguel de Tazones, whose interior holds two poignant treasures: a beautifully preserved statue of Saint Michael and a plaque telling the story of El Niño Manolín, a small sacred image saved from the flames when the church was burned in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War.

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Lunch by the Sea

We ended our visit at Mar-Bella, a seaside café near the harbor. Lunch was simple and perfect: navajas (razor clams), cabracho (a delicious pâté made of scorpionfish) and a chipirone (a small grilled squid) all paired with Asturian cider poured in the traditional way.

In Asturias, cider isn’t just poured; it’s escanciada — a quick, precise motion that transforms the drink with a bit of air, a bit of theater, and a lot of local pride. Here it was done in an on-table device: adorable.

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Following the Emperor’s Path — and the Dinosaurs’:

Charles’s 1517 route took him from Tazones inland to Villaviciosa, and then to Avilés, Gijón, Ribadesella, and Llanes, before continuing toward Valladolid. Along these same rugged coastlines, he first met the land he would rule.

We also discovered that Tazones hides another layer of history — or prehistory — beneath its cliffs: the Yacimiento del Puerto de Tazones, part of the Monumento Natural de los Yacimientos de Icnitas de Asturias, preserves fossilized dinosaur tracks from the Jurassic period, some 150 million years ago. 

Today, ours was a smaller voyage — just a drive, a hike, and a meal — but in the steps of emperors and dinosaurs.