\u201cI am Shirley Sotloff. My son, Steven, is in your hands.\u201d So began Shirley\u00a0Sotloff\u2019s emotional appeal to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the terror group ISIS (or IS, Islamic State), on Aug. 27. The terror group had just released a video of a British-accented fighter sawing off the head of American journalist James Foley. At the end of the video, Steven Sotloff, a 31-year-old freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria last August, was dragged into view and threatened with beheading, too.<\/p>\n
Shirley Sotloff continued, explaining that she has been studying Islam since her son\u2019s capture, and tried to reason with the IS terror leader. She even addressed him with the honorific \u201cCaliph,\u201d as if he\u2019d already created the Islamic caliphate across the Middle East that is his goal. \u201cSteven is a journalist who traveled to the Middle East to cover the suffering of Muslims at the hands of tyrants,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
This assessment was shared by Steven Sotloff\u2019s professional colleagues, too. He \u201clived in Yemen for years, spoke good Arabic\u201d and \u201cdeeply loved\u201d the Arab world, said one colleague. Another recalled how he insisted on going to Syria \u2013 where more than 70 journalists have been killed and more than 80 kidnapped in recent years \u2013 despite security concerns. Committed to recording the plight of ordinary Syrians, he slipped over the border.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been here over a week and no one wants freelance because of the kidnappings. It\u2019s pretty bad here,\u201d he e-mailed to a colleague. \u201cI\u2019ve been sleeping at a front, hiding from tanks the past few nights, drinking rain water.\u201d Soon afterwards, in August 2013, he was kidnapped by IS rebels.<\/p>\n
What almost none of his colleagues realized was that Sotloff was a Jew who made aliyah to Israel. He\u2019d grown up in Miami, the grandson of Holocaust survivors; his mother has taught in a Miami synagogue\u2019s preschool for years. In 2005, at age 22, he moved to Israel, becoming a citizen of the Jewish state, and studied at the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya.<\/p>\n
He worked for Israeli publications, filing articles with Jerusalem Report<\/em> and the Jerusalem Post<\/em>, and helping colleagues in Israel with his perspective from Arab capitals. Once, an Israeli colleague asked him what a journalist like him \u2013 with an obviously Jewish name and connections to Israel \u2013 was doing in volatile countries like Libya, Yemen or Bahrain. \u201cI don\u2019t really share my values and opinions,\u201d Sotloff replied. \u201cI try to stay alive.\u201d When the Israeli colleague pointed out that his Jewish background could be discovered in a simple internet search, he was unfazed: \u201cYeah, Google definitely isn\u2019t my friend,\u201d he acknowledged.<\/p>\n