Starting in late 2012 Westerners working in Syria journalists and aid workers began disappearing without a trace. A year later the world learned they had been taken hostage by the Islamic State. Throughout 2014 all the Europeans came home first the Spanish then the French then an Italian a German and a Dane. In August 2014 the Islamic State began executing the Americans including journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff followed by the British hostages. Joel Simon who in nearly two de