Hostages and the Lessons Not Learned
One of the lessons we are taught over and over again in school is “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” One of the lessons we learn from experience is that if you give in to a bully or allow yourself to be blackmailed, the other side will keep coming back for more because they know that they can get more.
These two lessons should be obvious at this point, but when it comes to the events of October 7th somehow both lessons are completely lost.
The first lesson, about repeating history, is best illustrated by the hostage for prisoner exchange that took place on October 18, 2011, when Gilad Shalit was exchanged for 1,027 prisoners. He was kidnapped in 2006, just 9 months after Israel had completely withdrawn from Gaza. That withdrawal gave Gazans full autonomy, which they immediately used to elect Hamas terrorists as their new leaders. In an eerie demonstration of history repeating itself, he was kidnapped not in Gaza, but in Israel, by Hamas, who had crossed over into Israel specifically to kidnap Israelis, and just like on October 7th the terrorists entered Israel through terror tunnels.
What was the result of the exchange? Israel released 1,027 prisoners including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of October 7th, as well as prisoners previously responsible for murdering at least 569 Israelis.
Unfortunately, Israel has a long history of these types of lopsided and dangerous exchanges. It is not within the scope of this article to detail all of them, but I want to highlight a few of these.
One of the earliest was in 1956 during the Suez crisis when Israel exchanged 5,500 Egyptian prisoners for one Israeli pilot and four Israeli soldiers.
In 1983, in exchange for six soldiers being held by the PLO, Israel released 4,700 Arab prisoners.
In 1985 Israel agreed to release 1,150 prisoners in exchange for three IDF soldiers. One of those, Japanese-born Muslim convert Kozo Okamoto, was one of the gunmen who murdered 26 Israelis in 1972 during the Lod Airport massacre. Also, among the released was Ahmed Yassin, a senior leader of Hamas (at the time).
In 2004 Israel released over 430 Arab prisoners, including members of Hezbollah’s leadership, in exchange for a single Israeli civilian, Elhanan Tannenbaum, and the bodies of three IDF soldiers: Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad.
In 2008 Israel released Samir al-Quntar. He was an Arab terrorist who murdered an entire family in 1979. Quntar had been seen bashing in the head of four-year-old Einat Haran with rocks. He was released in exchange for the bodies of two Israelis: Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Both had been captured during a July 12, 2006, cross-border raid. Quntar was released along with four other Hezbollah terrorists.
The numbers are stunning. Since 1956, and before October 7th, Israel had completed at least 11 hostage for prisoner exchanges. In these 11 exchanges Israel exchanged a total of 13,625 prisoners for 82 Israelis, many of which were not living hostages, but the remains of Israelis.
Clearly this strategy DOES NOT work!
As we all know, on October 7, 2024, Hamas and several waves of Gazan “civilians” entered Israel, murdered over 1,200 Israelis, brutally raped and tortured others, and took 251 hostages back to Gaza. Since then, they have released 105 hostages in exchange for 240 prisoners, including many serving sentences for the murder of Israelis. The current proposal on the table, and promoted by President Biden, is for Hamas to release the 33 remaining Israeli women (a mix of civilians and IDF soldiers) in exchange for 30 prisoners for each civilian released and 50 prisoners for each female soldier. Israel has no ability to veto which prisoners are released. So, for 33 innocent hostages Israel is supposed to release up to 1,000 – 1,500 prisoners, including murderers and even some who participated in the October 7th massacre.
Will those murderers go on to be peaceful, innocent civilians? Obviously not.
Among Hamas’ hostages are eight Americans. It is hard for us to fully understand the hostage for prisoner exchanges since it doesn’t happen in the US and because our population is magnitudes greater. So, to put the October 7thhostage numbers in perspective, it is as if 8,283 American hostages were taken and then exchanged for 250,000-415,000 prisoners!
Those astounding numbers are only half the picture. The other half is the concern of what types of prisoners will be rejoining the population. Currently there are 443 convicted terrorists in prisons in the US, including:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
Zacarias Moussaoui - an Al Qaeda member who was directly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Richard Reid, known as the shoe bomber.
Americans would be furious if all 443 of these terrorists were released into the U.S. population. How do think Israelis feel about releasing 1,500 of these same type of prisoners into their much smaller population? That is what Biden is proposing.
Would any sane American support a single one of these killers being released for our eight American hostages? I don’t think so. I would assert that Americans wouldn’t support the release of anyone convicted of murder in exchange for a hostage. This is part of the reason the US has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
It is interesting to note that Biden has not proposed any deal specifically for our 8 hostages. I am not sure why he has not done everything he can for our hostages, but that is not the point here.
So then, why should Israel take the proposed deal; a deal no American would take if we were in Israel’s position? And why would anyone think we wouldn’t see a repeat of the Gilad Shalit deal which produced October 7th with its release of Yahya Sinwar and other participants in the massacre? How many Israelis must die before it becomes apparent that releasing any prisoners, especially murderers, is a bad idea?
On to the second lesson: giving in to bullying or blackmail. This one is much easier to learn, since it only requires common sense. When Israel agreed to the Gilad Shalit deal, that didn’t stop Hamas from taking hundreds of additional hostages. When Israel exchanged 240 prisoners for 105 hostages in late 2023, that set the bar for the ratio of prisoners to hostages, resulting in Hamas demanding an increasingly higher ratio for future exchanges. If Israel agrees to a deal for 33 hostages for 1,000-1,500 prisoners, Hamas will then demand an even higher price for the remaining hostages (resulting in higher human costs for Israelis in lives lost and suffering). Finally, given what terrorists have gotten in the past, and present, for hostages, they will inevitably take hostages in the future, since they are rewarded every time.
Israel shouldn’t trade for hostages. They should continue rescuing hostages, when possible, but Hamas and the world need to know that Israel will not negotiate for hostages or release the murderers of Jews. This is the only way to stop Jews from becoming hostages in the future.