Hostage-for-terrorist trades make no sense
When the news of the killing of the three Israeli teenagers came out, I was very puzzled as to why their abductors would have killed them right away. It made no sense at all.
I had figured they would be used for negotiations to free more terrorists, and perhaps even tortured in some way to obtain extra leverage by making their plight especially horrific—not that it wasn’t already horrific enough. And if this report is right, the plan was indeed to hold them hostage and then negotiate with the aim of getting the Israeli government to release more terrorists.
One of the teenagers even managed to call the police, but tragically and negligently the dispatcher thought it was a prank call and did not notify authorities. I find that failure astounding and disturbing, although it might not have ended up mattering because the three were apparently murdered almost immediately afterward by the panicked kidnappers, who realized a call had been made and thought Israeli security had a bead on them and could find them. So even had the dispatcher been more on the ball, it would probably have been too late.
The only comfort is that perhaps this saved the boys even greater suffering. But that comfort is scant.
I continue to think what I’ve thought for as far back as I can remember, which is that governments should never exchange terrorists for hostages. To refuse to make such deals would mean a government would need to be extremely tough and allow its kidnapped citizens (even children or teenagers) to be murdered. But that hard choice appears to be the only way to discourage further kidnappings. As it is, a government such as Israel’s, which follows a policy of such exchanges, only sets itself up for a different sort of “cycle of violence” than the usual way the term is used—that is, its citizens become the victims of kidnapping after kidnapping by enemies with the aim of coercing the government to free more and more terrorists, who go on to commit more and more kidnappings, as well as other acts of terrorism. Thus, heartfelt compassion enables greater carnage and the empowerment of evil.
Instead of trading hundred for each hostage, Israel needs to kill thousands for each hostage.
Toughness in government depends on how said toughness is directed. In the case of the US, it’s against its own people, more and more. The Border Patrol needs more diapers, that’s tough, no?
NEO: I was very puzzled as to why their abductors would have killed them right away. It made no sense at all.
makes perfect sense…
its the difference between professionals, and amateurs.
amateurs think they can get away with such a thing. but it almost always fails because there is no way to make the exchange…
so pros kill the people right away… it changes nothing as to the negotiations, thats if you want to bother. but that would also require some linkage in which you wont get caught.
the same with mob hits. they wrap the gun in special tape (its used in factories to improve grip and protect fingers)… once its wrapped, there is no way to get prints from it… then, when you do the hit, you shoot, then drop the gun…
amateurs run with the gun and take it and try to dispose of it… pros, tape up the gun, and leave it behind.
this is why its very rare to solve a hit, because you have all the stuff you woudl want, the scene, the witnesses, the weapon… but its all useless. the scene remains… but has nothing in it as the person spent no time there.. the witnesses are useless as they pay attention to the victim and the emotional thing makes it worse, and the gun has nothing on it or with it to identify
so pros will kill the person right away, dump the body, and they are safe. nobody will accidently see them, their victim cant cry out, they can still negotiate, etc
to keep them and all that is resource intensive, and unsafe… to kill them saves resources and is much safer.
remember… osama bin laden had to stop using modern stuff in total because they will scan communications for the person who is trying to negotiate… with a lock on that, uyou can lock down the cell area that they are calling from and so on.
most people have little interest to learn about this stuff at all, unless something happens, then they tend to listen to the ether, or the zitgeist and learn from that… in fact thats what they mostly do about most… this way they dont actually have to know much, as they can learn what they need when something happens and forget afterwards…
after all, its only important for the koffee klatch as they pretend to be backroom revolutionaries discussing social melieu till the next distraction comes…
The future is certain; it’s the past that keeps changing.
There’s a saying in some Jewish text to the effect of: “He who is kind to the cruel, will be cruel to the kind.” T
his seems particularly apposite to the huge prisoner exchanges for hostages (and even smaller ones) and the results—more hostage taking of innocent people.
“heartfelt compassion enables greater carnage and the empowerment of evil.”
This perhaps more than anything else is what liberals fail to grasp.
Sounds as though you are describing ‘liberalism as a political program’, itself.
By the way, Neo, I’ve continued reading – actually closely rereading – the Allan Bloom “Closing of the American Mind” text you so highly recommended.
And upon reconsideration I find that it is even more impressive than I first said.
His archeological treatment of the emergence of the fact/value dichotomy stance, its unintended consequences, and the left’s re-configuring of moral principles in the way of free-form creative expression and sheer acts of will, are all that could be asked and more, from a book of this size and purpose.
Nothing that I thought I had figured out for myself or have sometimes said, was not well formulated and incisively analyzed in Bloom’s book a decade before I even began seriously reflecting on how what had seemed to be matters of academic speculation or dispute within second tier national or first tier regional universities during the late 1970’s and early 80’s, had become default positions throughout large swaths of political society by the late 1990’s.
In 1978 you are reading Lon Fuller’s “the Morality of Law” and his debates with positivist Herbert Hart; and 20 years later you wake up and find that values nihilism and law as fiat has entered the political mainstream and the American population’s bloodstream.
No wonder at all that we have Obama. Large numbers of Americans apparently believe that they are unfit for freedom, and determined to politically act on that belief.
And knowing themselves better than I know them, perhaps they are.
Neo,
I am in no way defending the dispatcher. Especially since I do not know all the particulars. But having over 2 decades as a dispatcher in an area with an extremely large middle eastern Muslim population I would like to make an observation.
When dealing with that group the penchant for gross exaggeration of most circumstances is rampant. In other words calls regarding kidnappings, robberies and shooting rarely turn our to be anything of the sort. It is part of their culture but can make taking anything said at face value exceedingly difficult.
Unfortunately as time seeps in the first tendency is to NOT believe them until you have taken some time to question them regarding what exactly the circumstances are. So while it may seem inconceivable that a dispatcher would think this is a prank. I easily see how this is possible. Middle eastern cultural norms are not very compatible with accurately allocating emergency resources.
Compassion is fine as policy, if and only if it’s practiced from a position of established, unchallenged dominance. As a competitive method, it doesn’t work.
“I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses:
Therefore use none: let Romeo hence in haste,
Else, when he’s found, that hour is his last.
Bear hence this body and attend our will:
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.”
Regarding hostage for terrorist exchanges, Rachel Fraenkel, the mom of one of the Israeli teenagers, said this while she still believed her son might be alive and held as a hostage (from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/world/middleeast/in-israeli-palestinian-conflict-mothers-cope-with-loss-of-sons.html?_r=0):
First off- I’m an arm-chair general pontificating. I have no wisdom in the practical sense on these matters other than to pray for the victims and their families.
I wonder what would change if when the kidnappers demanded prisoners A,B and C for the kidnapped innocents, the government would immediately take prisoners A, B and C and send them to meet their maker. No Muss, No Fuss, just quick rough action.
Yes the innocents would be killed and that is tragic. But would that type of action, insure that the next group of kidnapped kids may not be taken? I simply don’t know. I do know the current method is not working.
I remember watching a WWII film where it talked about how the Japanese pretended to be wounded and when the US medic came to help, they set off a grenade. It didn’t take too long before the standard mode of operation was to simply shoot all the bodies laying around to insure no more medics were killed.
As Orwell said a long time ago:
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell
Mythx,
Islamic cultures “penchant for gross exaggeration” and boasting and hyperbole comports with my impression (from afar) of them as well.
But this was an Israeli teenager reporting their kidnapping, presumably to an Israeli dispatcher. If so, does the same cultural dynamic of gross exaggeration apply to Israeli culture as well?
Geoffrey,
No it does not. But unless something differentiating them is said on the phone discerning and Israeli teen from and Arabic teen on the phone would not be easy. They live i close enough that similar culture cues and language do apply. Even with very dissimilar value systems.
For instance I can usually determine if a caller is white,black arabic or latino on the phone. But I cannot determine if someone is from Yemen or Iraq. Or for that matter Mexico or Honduras.
When training personal I try to have them double check facts and do their best to accurately determine what is going on at a scene you cannot see. Not understanding the differences is literally a life or death situation.
When I first started this job it was pretty common for me to start giving CPR instructions to family members for a subject who wasn’t breathing. Only for EMS personal to arrive and find the same family members holding down a struggling father to administer CPR. To them they were saving his life. In reality their actions do far more harm than good.
I am not saying in any way that the dispatcher handled this call properly at all. But what I have learned is that the basic cultural difference do make a vast difference in how you need to gather information.
The best article on the subject I have read is by anthropologist turned blogger Stephen Browne
http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/09/observations-on-arabs.html
“’I think parents should not be taken into account,’ she added. ‘The state of Israel cherishes life, but it has to cherish the next kidnapped kids, too.’”
Yet Israeli politicians still make exchange calls and has done so for the past 60 years, with ever increasing Pali to Israeli body limb exchange ratios.
Why? Because there’s a political benefit in Israel if you get a person back…. just like with Berg.
They live i close enough that similar culture cues and language do apply.
It’s also why countries like Spain, when they pushed out the Islamic slave raiders occupying their nation, started getting rid of Jews as well. There was no difference between a Jewish dhimmi paying tax to the Islamic horde, and the Islamic horde itself, in their eyes. Same region. Same customs. Religiously, they were all heathens or Islamic heathens anyways.
It’s also why the worst Islamic Jihad does in atrocities, the more the Jews get blamed. Blaming Jihadists might get you killed, like those people in Europe. Blaming Jews, safer. Jews are normally richer, and you can extort more money via boycotts out of them too.
It makes perfect sense if the intention is to harm your own side.
That is the Left’s intention.
Period.
It all makes sense.
What makes no sense at all is the incredulity; the forever “proving” that “it makes no sense!”.
It makes perfect sense. As I said. It’s too horrible to accept. That’s the real issue. Well we have to get over that hurt and speak the truth.
Ymarsakr,
There are vast differences between the basic value systems between most of the Arabic/Muslim world and Jewish/Israeli world. And lumping them together is foolish.
What I am saying is that in an emergency with only a voice on the phone to differentiate between groups it is extremely difficult to make those distinctions. I am forced to live by the idea of “trust but verify”. I have to take the first thing that is said seriously and treat it as such. But I will double (and triple ) check if I need to the information I am given.
Mike:
The people running Israel in recent years are not leftists, however. In fact, they are pretty much on the right, not the left. And they certainly don’t want to hurt their own side.
So it remains puzzling.
Perhaps especially with Obama in office, they know they have no ally to help them. They have to wait until he’s out of office before they do anything “controversial,” like killing terrorists.
Matt_SE:
It’s been a consistent policy for Israel for many decades. In the 40s, 50s 60s, and early 70s, when there were formal wars with Israel, most of the exchanges were for captured prisoners. Starting in the 80s, though, it started to be for terrorists. And it’s been going on ever since. Quite often the prisoners are released not for living hostages but for the bodies of dead Israelis.
It has nothing to do with Obama being president.
Hmmm.
I’ve heard that the entire Judaic code is based on affinity for life, and rejection of death.
This was a legacy of the Egyptian captivity, where pharaohs would build grand tombs for themselves, an almost exclusive focus on the afterlife, etc.
Moses developed the Judaic ethic to explicitly juxtapose themselves from this death culture.
That’s what I heard, anyway.
Maybe the Israeli government made this a conscious policy as a way of keeping faith with their deep roots.
A few observations:
1) One of the terrorists released for Gilad Shalit recently murdered a police colonel driving his family on West Bank. This was predicted by everyone and his cousin in the event of an exchange. Israel always knows it will lose more people than it saves it these trades. The exchanges are all the more astounding as Jewish prohibits saving one innocent life at the cost of another innocent life. There seems to be an element of delusional masochism in the Israeli soul, intent on unnecessary pain even at the cost of one’s life. The book The Oslo Syndrome discuss some of this delusional behavior.
2) The victims were f*ckin’ morons. Only morons would walk around without guns on the West Bank, especially in isolated areas.
3) When I worked for an Israeli government agency in Tel-Aviv news came that six armed religious settlers in Hebron were killed in an ambush. The attitude of my co-workers was six less religious to worry about. There was a sense that if you looked for trouble, as these had, and you find it, it is not my problem. Coupled with the misery the religious parties impose on the majority of secular Israelis there was little sympathy.
4) If Israel did retaliate we all know there would BS from everyone and his cousin about hurting the “peace process” and the need to show restraint. Meanwhile the BBC would go into apoplectic fits showing brutalized Palestinian children with associated UN condemnations.
5)Those released terrorists probably do more to harm their own side than Israel. Although they are held up as role models for the young in reality they are a collection of misfits and psychopaths. Corrupt deviant societies that worship its worse are incapable of a producing a constructive national effort that could produce a positive political entity, like a functioning government of a state.
Ira:
Wow. That’s amazing.
The Scriptures are full of a 1000 to 1 trade and principle like it which apply to all the nations including Israel:
Devarim:
For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.
29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!
30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
Tehillim:
Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon. 7A thousand may fall at your side And ten thousand at your right hand, But it shall not approach you. 8You will only look on with your eyes And see the recompense of the wicked.
Gidon:
Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” 5 So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink.” 6 Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. 7 The Lord said to Gideon, “I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home.”
– Sefer Shoftim 7:4—7
Hi, yeah, Allah akbar and all that.
My name is Mohammed and I’m a Muslim.
I guess I first knew there was a problem when I stuffed my first Jew into a dumpster. Excuse me, I was really raging. Had a lot to get off my chest. Just got out of the mosque and boy was I raging. I was out of control.
And that was just the beginning. (Excuse me, could you pass me one of those cookies?)
Yeah, and so I was really hurting. I made a lot of bad choices and went to a lot of different mosques where they never did anything but feed my addiction. So, I couldn’t stop killing Jews.
But, I feel better now. I think I’m over it. At least for the time being.
I’m with vanderleun. Israel needs to do something outrageously disproportionate that will scare the bejesus out of everyone, especially the US and EU.
May I suggest immediately hydrogen-bombing both Riyadh and Teheran. Followed by a full-scale invasion and annexation of Gaza including driving the Arabs out of Gaza into Egypt and Lebanon.
Annexation and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank would be a good idea, too.
And lumping them together is foolish.
It happens. Whether you want to call it foolish or not, won’t change the world.
3) When I worked for an Israeli government agency in Tel-Aviv news came that six armed religious settlers in Hebron were killed in an ambush. The attitude of my co-workers was six less religious to worry about. There was a sense that if you looked for trouble, as these had, and you find it, it is not my problem. Coupled with the misery the religious parties impose on the majority of secular Israelis there was little sympathy.
Sounds like Harry Reid, chasing out the ranchers from his Nevada territory.
If the Israelis were as bad as the Arabs claim, they would just take the prisoners who they wanted to trade for and just start executing them until their guys were released.
The Romans would have gone farther and crucified a few thousand. They knew how to bring order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPi76KvQF1g