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In 1985, the Peres government freed over 1,000 terrorists in exchange for three prisoners being held by the PFLP. The terrorists included Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin and key figures in the First Intifada.
In 2011, Netanyahu freed another over 1,000 terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit. The freed terrorists included some of the worst monsters in custody and a number of them played roles in the Oct 7 atrocities.
There is a straightforward ‘why’ here. Actually a number of them.
Israel has no empathy immune system against the demands of the family members of the hostages. Suggestions from the right that the government should not be listening to the families of the hostages were denounced as horrifying and evil. And yet you can’t win a war if you allow yourself to be taken hostage. When Islamic terrorists take individuals hostage and by doing so take an entire country hostage, wars are lost.
Every intelligent person understands this, but few Israelis and pro-Israel figures can bring themselves to say it. There are a lot of analyses that talk about how the hostage deal was “inevitable”. I’ve used that word myself. It’s not inevitable because it had to happen, but because the same choices are being made that were also made before.
Modern civilized nations have gotten into the horrid habit of paying ransoms for hostages to enemy nations and terror groups. We do it. The Euros do it. Israel does it.
Sure, the Biden administration was pressuring the Israeli government. So were the media and parts of the country. But the Jibril Deal in ’85 and the Shalit deal were not made in response to outside pressure, but to internal pressure.
To win, you have to make tough choices. We, America, Israel, used to be able to make those tough choices. We’re unable to make those choices when it comes to fighting the enemy. And we certainly aren’t making them when it comes to hostages.
But when you don’t make tough decisions, you’re faced with carnage and worse choices.
Israel failed to strike first before the Yom Kippur War. The resulting surprise attack nearly destroyed the country. During efforts to defend the Suez Canal, a disabled tank with its crew had to be pushed into the war, killing everyone inside to avoid the entire line of tanks behind it being taken out. When you aren’t aggressive enough with the enemy, you end up having to make tough choices. But when you can’t make those tough choices, you lose.
You can’t always save everyone and destroy the enemy. You have to choose. And when you make the wrong choice, you don’t save lives, you cost lives.
Gilad Shalit’s cost over 1,000 Israeli lives already. How many lives will this one cost?
But we’re told it’s not the same as the Peres exchange because they’re only releasing terrorists who were unsuccessful in their attempts to murder people. If it’s all so predictable how did the government manoeuvre itself into this situation?
I previously argued, in Mr. Greenfield’s blog post titled “7 Reasons Why the Hostage Deal is a Mistake”, that Israel should not negotiate with Hamas over the hostages if it means capitulating to Hamas in any way, that you cannot compromise with Muslim nihilism, and you replied with this:
“Again, it’s an easy argument to make in the abstract. If you were a hostage would you sacrifice yourself to it? Not in your own self-interest I would have thought.
There is nothing purely in the realm of the abstract for human beings. Research has shown that even purely abstract concepts have emotional underpinnings. You should know that THX.
The right course of action might haunt a person for the rest of his life and the wrong one the same. It’s easy if you aren’t involved.”
Which side are you on? How did the Israeli government put itself in this corner? ALTRUISM!
“The Morality of War”
I have the feeling given some wonderful statements from the Ehud Olmert “cell ” I might have some idea.
So lets get this straight …
Israel releases Islamic terrorists while saying they are going to destroy all Islamic terrorists/Hamas.
That is a bit too much.
When did logic also become a casualty of Islamic depravity ?
Unfortunately, difficult decisions and tough choices are deemed political suicide by leaders who are much more concerned with maintaining positions of authority and power than doing the right thing. I’ve always been a big Netanyahu fan, but bowing to internal and external forces (which will ALWAYS be present, btw) and conducting national polling so as to say, “OK…but it’s YOUR choice” is not what a true leader does…at least not for long, they don’t.
It ‘s the very thing that I love about Trump; the less than perfect king who would be man. Not a politician. Plenty of authority and power already. Never aspired to be President, but rather called to it by the needs of America. The only President in recent history to LOSE personal wealth while in office rather than gain it. A person willing to do that is there for the right reason and is able to make the hard choices that lesser men are not because it’s not about acquisition for them, but rather, service.
Whoever down voted that blows Biden.
Probably a Nikki Haley fan. Lol
Morning Jeff
WWII lasted only 3.5 very horrible years because of choices that were made that killed thousands in collateral bombings or full frontal attacks. General Eisenhower’s DDay invasion Essen Germany,Truman’s Nagasaki and Hiroshima …choices. Win it or lose it. God Bless the innocents but those that caused the death should pay the ultimate for the death. If they don’t they will simply repeat the carnage as the latest example in Israel has just proven.
I am hoping the answer is not 6 million but I am really not sure.
If you can’t sympathize with the hostages, you are a monster. If a hostage family isn’t out there doing everything to get their family member out of this Hell, they are monsters. The problem is not the hostages or the families, the problem is the idiots negotiating the deal to get them out. They should have hired Donald Trump to do the negotiations. Melanie Phillips said it perfectly when she said that Israel turned control of the war over to Yaya Sinwar. Let’s pray that at least 50 hostages can be safely saved, and that Israel can completely destroy Hamas.
I sympathize with the future hostages which will be taken hostage because taking hostages pays.
You can save more than 50 hostages in the future if you carpet bomb all the Gazans and Hamas and send them all to Muslim Paradise but that takes some abstract thinking and rational selfishness not the destructive mercy and pity of altruism.
It’s peculiar, isn’t it? The Muslims say they love death more than life, they say they truly believe in eternal life after death in some fantasy Muslim Paradise — but not right now please, we want to go on living on earth.
The same goes for Christians and their fantasy eternal utopia in the afterlife. We believe in Heaven, they say, we really do, but Heaven can wait. Life on earth isn’t so bad no matter what Original Sin and the Fall of Man may claim.
You do know that Phillips is a member of the TDS club.
Not so. She has a balanced view.
Balanced between TDS and full blown insanity.
Burton often described his negotiations with members of Honor Cultures. Basically it came down to overpaying them (which means they humiliated you, which was their real object) or using force of threats of force. Or walking away from the deal. He was a tough negotiator (the toughest) and sometimes got his way, but we don’t have any negotiators like that.
And they always want more, even after negotiations are concluded they constantly try to finagle more out of you. They are maximal opportunists. focusing on the immediate chance in the short run.
Have you noticed what an ass backwards sense of honor the moslems have? Lying, swindling, stealing and the murder of female family members is an “honor killing.” That’s their honor culture. It’s contemptible.
Hey did you get a chance to watch “Mountains of the Moon” yet?
Thanks Jeff! I haven’t seen the full movie, just some scenes on you tube. They did a good job, though no actor could match Burton 🙂
You should watch the whole thing. t even aces the scene where Speke accidentally? shot himself. It didn’t portray it as a suicide or accident, it left it up to the viewer. After all, nobody knows which it was. I haven’t seen it since it came out and plan to watch it again when I get the chance.
Burton was unique, that’s for sure. Bergin was chosen because he can act and he’s Irish. As you know, Burton was from Ireland even though he was English (if I remember correctly.)
Burton was a lot meaner looking than Bergin, though. That probably helped him with those honor cultures. 🙂
Burton is also the main protagonist in a series of speculative fiction stories by Philip Jose Farmer starting with the novel “Riverworld.” They’re very good. The River world itself is a bit lame but every human in history up until the year is written is in it so it has scores of historical characters and even fictional ones like Cyrano De Bergerac. You’d probably like the series.
What Israel needs to do is to capture the Hamas leadership in Qatar. They need to capture the people making the decisions. Then the deal has to be your life for the release of hostages.
Capture seems impossible but a missile strike doesn’t.
Qatar is guarded by an American fleet, an air force and troops. Israel wouldn’t dare attack. If it had the faith and strength, which the Jewish left sapped from us, it would finish off Hamas. Instead, it has de facto agreed to end the war. I know my people, in general, and lived in Israel for too long to not how this will turn out. We’re broken.
If Trump overcomes the coming Dirtbagocrat vote fraud and cheating, I wonder if he would demand that Qatar’s leaders hand over the Hamas leadership to the USA, if not Israel? If they say no, withdraw the fleet and signal to all their enemies that they’re fair game.
Easier said than done. For now, Israel should deal with reality and not allow the tail to wag the dog. Something they cannot master.
Now that the US has succeeded in forcing Israel to accept the first concession to the enemy, extracting other concessions will be far easier. That has been the Western and Arab model of operation since 1967 and they has succeeded in weakening Israel’s determination to oppose the pressure and allowed the insinuation and funding within Israel a myriad of anti-Israel’ and ‘peace’ organizations and to fund leftist pliant politicians and military leaders with political aspirations.
At this point, with the help of opposition members in his ‘war cabinet’. Netanyahu was broken, yet again.
Maybe not. He still has the option to carry out the extermination of Hamas, which he has vowed to do.
Exactly and 100% death penalty for all future terrorists. There should never be another prisoner to exchange in one of these situations. Sadly, Israel is ladened with leftist guilt-ridden pacifists who will trade 15 minutes of peace now for eternal hell.
The choice facing the Israeli authorities is known in philosophy as the dirty hands problem. Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince”:
“Since my intention is to write something useful for anyone who understands it, it seemed more suitable for me to search after the effectual truth of the matter rather than its imagined one. Many writers have imagined republics and principalities that hae never been seen nor known to exist in reality. For there is such a distance between how one lives and how one ought to live, that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done achieves his downfall rather than his preservation. A man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge or not to use it according to necessity.”
When considering the situation confronting Netanyahu just now, it may be useful to look at how political leaders in the past have acted when they were confronted with the dirty hands problem. During a time of war, for example. (I have provided a Machiavellian analysis of some of the decisions faced by Winston Churchill during WW2 in my book “The Road to Gomorrah”. )
What Machiavelli wrote still matters today because, people being what they are, political leaders will still be faced with the age-old “dirty hands problem” – where they are in a position where no matter what they do, there will be no morally “good” outcomes. In this situation a leader must adopt a consequentialist attitude and, when it is necessary, do that which is “not good” in order to avoid an even worse outcome in the long run.
Not every leader has that ability – as Machiavelli would say, not every leader possesses virtu.
Does Netanyahu? I certainly hope so.
(The Road to Gomorrah: Britain’s War 1939 – 43) is available on Amazon.)
A man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge or not to use it according to necessity.”
Forget applying this to Bibi; it’s applicable to Jewry and we didn’t measure up when it came to do so. We couldn’t, not with overwhelming obsequious of our left wing.
The last line of the column is the crux of the issue. We know who the current victims of the kidnappings are. We have seen their pictures and those of their family members desperate for their safe release. But a cease fire and asymmetrical trade of terrorists for the release of innocent people will only lead to further kidnappings of other innocent people. However, they aren’t yet identifiable, their names and faces are unknown, and they don’t have family members desperate for their release appearing on TV. But they will be known after Hamas’, or PIJ’s, or Lions’ Den, or whoever’s next crime against humanity. Surely there must be a better way although I’m not sure what it is. Maybe the Israelis should take a page from the USER’s playbook when a Russian official was kidnapped by some Islamist group in Beirut in the 1980s.
That was a good threat by the USSR because it worked.
Until Bibi and his war cabinet, or the opposition government in waiting, stand up to America on matters of principle, they are not “a free people in our land,” but puppets pushed around to amuse Iran.
Israel is at a very dangerous inflection point. Israel identified at the outset the 2 goals of bringing back hostages and defeating Hamas. It needs to stick with both of them and not allow victory over Hamas to be lost.
To avoid defeat due to the hostage focus, Israel HAS to stop the truce after 4 days and recommence fighting, or use a Hamas break of the ceasefire to recommence.
Until then it has to hold the line at Northern Gaza being under their control, and not allowing any Gazans to return,
Daniel,
Why does nobody talk about how so many hostages were able to be taken in the first place. How could any Israeli that close to the Gaza border not have been armed?
Do you think you’re being sensible or asking questions that haven’t been asked? You’re walking into the middle of a conversation without realizing that you’re doing so.
The war is over, no matter what the Israeli government says. Biden already come out and made clear that additional aid will be conditional. Those conditions will not include destroying Hamas but further negotiations and a bona fide cease fire and Israeli will be forced to accept Irans terms.
Israel has been defeated and Jewry’s power broken. There’s zero chance of Jewish morale withstanding this, no matter what any politicians or Rabbis preach.
Mark this: within a few shorts years Jewry will be reduced to Williamsburg and few other Ghetto-like areas, plus rapidly withering secular jewish communities that were already on the ropes. The question is how does end for Israel: in a flash or an orderly withdrawal of Israelis to various countries around the world where Israelis will assimilate and disappear? No one is sticking around to be humiliated and spit on and to see their daughters raped and carried off as booty and slaves–all whilst having a “two-state solution” imposed, which is what the global left is planning.
The weakness of the Israeli right and treason and mendacity of the Jewish left caused this.
Moreover, any small cracks in the Woke, Marxist left will be healed and the incipient counter-revolution, which seemed like it might have had a chance will be quashed.
You miss one important point. The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, who is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ has already determined the events and end of the present age. Present Israel will go through the “time of Jacobs trouble” as the prophet Jeremiah spoke of it. ” Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. Jeremiah 30:7. Notice the salvation spoken of as well as the great pressure that will come upon the people of Jacob. Jesus Christ speaks of the great tribulation that comes at the end of the present age; it is in relation to Israel. See Matthew 24. The apostle Paul in Romans 11 assures us that God is not finished with Israel as some would think. All should read that passage, both Jew and Gentile. In the end “all Israel shall be saved”. Then comes the long promised millennial Kingdom of God. All the promises of God to Israel will yet be fulfilled. The living God of the bible keeps His word.
Yes, Romans 11:25. I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.
As it written: “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”
As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.
Oy. You really sound bitterly resigned.
It’s not over ‘til it’s over. And it is not over. Don’t run ahead of yourself. Find a zone of hope. I can tell you that we are not demoralized.
We’re not broken. We’re not like the stinking, lying world. Thank God. Today was Shabbat. We read Torah. We prayed doubly hard. Together.
For our heroes. For our captives.
There are more courageous heroes per square kilometer in Israel than anywhere else in the world.
Heroes, not politicians.
Please hang in there. It’s even written on grocery receipts:
Together, with the help of God, we will win.
That “we” includes you.
Our enemies will fall.