Hamas' Hostage Strategy Has Failed

Israeli captives remained on the front pages as daily reminders of Hamas's barbarity. The children's faces became the symbols of Israel's just cause. And this time, no 1,000-1 exchanges.

The release of some of the Israeli hostages has brought about a brief respite from the horrors of the past seven weeks, a chance to relieve some of the stress of daily life as well as to welcome home children and women who have become almost extended family to much of the world.

While in Israel there is near unanimity in prioritizing the hostages' release over military goals, the inevitable conversation has begun as to the wisdom of paying ransom at all. In an essay in The Atlantic, Graeme Wood asserts that rewarding hostage-taking is how Israel got into this mess in the first place. While redeeming captives (Pidyon Shevuyim) is a prime Jewish value, there are limits, which were severely tested when IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged for 1,000 imprisoned Palestinians in 2011.

Maimonides states that there is no mitzvah greater than the redeeming of captives. (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Matanot Aniyim 8:10-11). The Shulchan Aruch adds: “Every moment that one delays in freeing captives, in cases where it is possible to expedite their freedom, is considered to be tantamount to murder.” (Yoreh De'ah 252:3)

Medieval Jewish communities often were called upon to pony up big bucks to redeem kidnapped kin. In contemporary Israel, it has become standard practice to swap busloads of prisoners for one captive soldier, or even for their remains.

But medieval Jewish communities never had as high a stake in this as modern Israelis do. In a  detailed responsum on the subject that predates Shalit’s capture. Rabbi David Golinkin concludes:

We do not pay excessive ransom… In other words, the public takes precedence over the individual, even if this endangers the individual. Exchanging hundreds or thousands of terrorists for one Israeli encourages kidnapping of Israelis, and frees hundreds or thousands of terrorists who will pick up their weapons and attack Israel. It endangers the public and should not be done.

Graeme Wood adds this interesting historical footnote from American history, quoting a 19th century document that made the case against paying for the freedom of hostages, in this case, enslaved people. To pay for freedom would be “a surrender of the great fundamental principle” that hostages are not the property of hostage-takers, and that “if compensation is to be given at all, it should be given to the outraged and guiltless” victims of the crime, rather than to the criminals themselves. 

These lines appear in the 1834 Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In it, Wood explains, William Lloyd Garrison rejected the notion that slaveholders should be compensated for the freedom of the roughly 2 million men, women, and children in American bondage. “Even at the time, it was clear that paying off slaveholders might avert a civil war and hasten the freedom of many slaves. But to make a deal with slaveholders would, Garrison reasoned, amount to a cease-fire with an enemy whose total, unconditional surrender was the only acceptable outcome.”

In Gaza today as well, the unconditional surrender of Hamas is the only acceptable outcome.

However, ultimately Garrison relented, writing in 1847:

To save a fellow-being, it is no crime sometimes to comply with even unjust demands.

The key question in this case is not about whether paying ransom will encourage future hostage-taking or even whether it devalues the dignity of a human life. It really comes down to whether this pause will increase the chances of Hamas ever having the capacity to do these things again. And will the cost of this ransom be more innocent lives, both Gazan and Israeli?

That is not a theoretical brain teaser. These questions have life and death implications. But given our lack of omniscience, we need to base our decisions on sound moral values and common sense. The price for freedom may be high, but, within limits, it is worth paying.

We now can ascertain that a thousand prisoners for Gilad Shalit was probably too many. It set a bad precedent, allowed real killers to go free to kill again, and it led to this debacle. The current three for one exchange feels like a bargain in comparison to what was paid for Shalit. It is a price that even William Lloyd Garrison would have considered.

All these calculations cheapen the value of human life. A British news anchor insinuated that Israel was deliberately diminishing the value of Palestinian prisoners' lives (many of whom, incidentally, had tried to take the lives of Israelis) with this "three for one" deal. The clueless newscaster wondered why not one for one? Are their lives not worth the same as Israelis? That line of questioning is abhorrent, given that every life has infinite value, but these calculations take place all the time. It brings back the absurdity of Bette Midler in the film Ruthless People, who, when husband Danny De Vito changes the terms of the exchange, bemoans, “I’ve been marked down!” But given that this filthy business is beginning to look more like Black Friday than Israel’s “Black Sabbath,” the exchange rate for Palestinian prisoners to Israeli hostages has indeed declined markedly since 2011.

Let's hope there is never a next time, and certainly not a next opportunity for Hamas, but the next time someone else is considering taking hostages, they might be given pause by how this has all worked out thus far. At a time when Israel was being portrayed - wrongly - as a heartless aggressor with no regard for innocent life, these Israeli captives remained on the front pages of the world press as daily reminders of Hamas'strategy of barbarity. At the same time, these children, these innocent children, became the symbols of Israel's just cause, enabling the ferocity of its response to October 7 to have a justified objective, a face. As for Hamas, October 7 is being praised in the Arab world, but with more equivocation than one would expect, even as people rush to condemn Israel.

Another ironic twist to this situation is that, had Hamas known on Oct. 7 that taking captive 240 men, women and especially children would be a blunder, the odds are that they these 240 would have been murdered instead, on the spot, along with 1,200 others. So - with many chapters yet to be written in this story - Hamas’ delusions of another Gilad Shalit bonanza may have inadvertently contributed to saving many lives, even if for all the wrong reasons.

It's not over yet, and small consolation to the current victims, but the tide on hostage taking as a strategic tool appears to be turning.