The Stupid and Repulsive Hostage Deal Drags On and On

By agreeing to "suspend" the war for a daily trickle of hostages, Israel placed sentiment over national strength and honor -- and any chance at victory.

Alex Berenson gets to the heart of it quickly. He first shows that the hostage deal is a major symbolic, tactical and strategic blunder. But the worst part is the moral perversity:

Israel has squandered what is left of the world’s sympathy for it. It should have told Hamas that the taking of hostages was a war crime and it would never agree to a ceasefire as long as Hamas held them. It should have drawn that line and stuck to it. It should have repeated over and over: As long as Hamas holds hostages, Israel views all of Gaza as a legitimate military target.

Now Israel has lost that moral clarity.

Israel cannot simultaneously claim Hamas is ISIS and be willing to swap prisoners with it. Once the ceasefire ends (again, on Hamas’s timetable), Israel will be stuck in the worst of all possible places. When it announced the ceasefire, the Israeli government talked tough, promising when it ended Israel’s “security forces will continue the war to return all the abductees, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that Gaza does not present any further threat to the State of Israel.”

In reality, though, Israel will face an impossible choice: to push deeper into Gaza - and face even more civilian casualties and worldwide outrage - or to pull back, without coming close to achieving its goal of destroying Hamas.

Actually, Berenson is being too optimistic. The choice has already been made. Israel has lost the war (actually “forfeited” is a more accurate word than “lost”). By making return of the hostages the paramount objective — whether Netanyahu admits it or not — even the chance at victory has been thrown away.

Why?

Because, under those hostage-dangling circumstances, Israel cannot and is not going to resume a full-scale, sustained offensive (or more likely, any offensive) to wipe out Hamas. Hamas will therefore correctly claim victory, and will do what most victors, even the non-barbaric ones, do, namely, continue with renewed gusto what brought them their prize.

What lies at the heart of this awful outcome is the West’s inability to come to grips with the realities of war, which I discussed in part here. Hostage-taking is now an established mechanism of Jihad. This began when, 44 years ago, Jimmy Carter allowed the font of Islamic terror, Iran, to seize 52 American diplomats and citizens, keep them as long as it saw fit, and never pay a price for its behavior. To the exact contrary, under Carter, the United States made a deal to “unfreeze” Iranian assets, effectively paying a huge ransom. So rather than Iran’s paying a price, Carter’s government paid off Iran. And even that groveling wasn’t enough; recall that it was only Iran’s uncertainty about what a newly inaugurated Ronald Reagan would do that actually triggered the release (which took place as Reagan was being sworn in as Carter’s replacement).

Israel, with the Biden Administration’s blackjack just behind its head, has rewarded, and is continuing at this hour to reward, an action that every sane, civilized person on the planet understands is a war crime. But all our press can do is run breathless, non-stop family reunion stories about how wonderful it all is — never mentioning the price in justice, probity and honor that’s being paid for it. This makes me pine for the days when “journalism” was happy to show us mere bread and circuses.

When hostages are taken, civilized people can offer only one thing: The lives of the hostage takers in exchange for the hostages’ immediate and unconditional release. Then, lest this demand be laughed at (which under present circumstances would be the barbarians’ justified response), there must ensue the unhesitating killing of the hostage takers, their leaders, financiers, operatives and collaborators. The killing would occur by any means expedient and wherever the guilty parties are hiding. No exceptions, no excuses, no sanctuary, no apologies.

They wanted a war and on October 7 began one. Let’s give it to them, rather than reward them with an improved strategic position to win the war they started — which is, of course, exactly what Israel, pushed by Biden and the dozens of giddy anti-Semites in his party, is in the process of doing.

I’ll say just two more things. First, some have objected that if Israel goes hard after the Jihadists who did this, the embryonic chance for an agreement between Israel and “moderate” Arab governments will come to a crashing end.

Nonsense. The “moderate” Arab governments are not looking to line up with Mr. Nicey. They are looking to line up with, as they say, the strong horse. Israel needs to prove that it, and not Iran, is the strong horse, and it will do that by inflicting a brutal and bloody defeat on Iran’s stooge, Hamas. Unlike America’s academia and Joe Biden’s State Department, Arab governments do not consist primarily of fools.

Second, I want to explain why, in the title of this post, I said that the current posture of surrender to the “oh-we-need-to-save-the-hostages” sentiment is stupid. That’s easy and obvious. Even if the West’s current craven stance results in the release of the present tranche of hostages (which is certainly open to doubt), it all but guarantees the future taking — with even more grotesque brutality if that is possible — of the next and even larger batch of hostages.

Why not? Just as moderate Arabs aren’t stupid, neither are the Jihadists. When the taking of hostages is always rewarded and never punished, what would any non-stupid person think?

The current day-by-day “pause” is actually a cease-fire on the installment plan, and the cease-fire is actually a surrender. With every passing hour, the already ascendant forces against a resumption of Israel’s right and need to defend itself grow stronger.

Defeat by the enemy is always bitter. A self-inflicted defeat because of delusional thinking or a refusal to think is worse. And a defeat when the enemy is a barbarism that would make the Nazis blush is an abomination beyond any words I can command.