Let’s Make a Deal – Not

We appear to be on the verge of what we are calling “a deal to save the hostages”. As anxious as we all are to bring our people home, this is a bad idea. It is a bad deal. I would argue that any deal is a bad deal.

The organization with whom we are dealing is Evil. Everything Evil says and does is meant to advance the evil it promotes. In 1982, I attended a symposium on terror at the University of Toronto. Dennis Prager, one of the panelists present, made the statement, “The West sees Evil, and tries to make peace with it.” It kind of hung in the air for a minute – one of those statements that are so profound in their simplicity, so simple in their profundity. It has stuck with me ever since. 

In this case, the evil Hamas expresses is the psychological rape of the people of Israel. They dangle the prospect of the release of our people, knowing that they wreak havoc on our personal and collective emotions, and hold us all hostage to their demands. We know from past agreements – for a ceasefire, for example – that we cannot trust them. Their commitment is to their cause, and their cause is our destruction. 

So what do we do instead? I am open to suggestions, so long as they are not things we have already tried and seen fail. The deal that freed Gilad Shalit put murderers among us. Sinwar tops that list. 

As for possible suggestions? Getting the civilians in Gaza out of the way to make the terrorists more accessible would be a start. Pressure should be placed on the Egyptians to open the border to take them in. They fear terrorist infiltration? I get that. So do we. But America has the wherewithal to push them to agree – the Egyptian economy relies heavily on US assistance. 

We should also place a retroactive death penalty on the prisoners demanded by Hamas. They have a certain period of time – say, twelve hours – to release ALL the hostages. That means those who were murdered and taken on Simchat Torah (October 7), those taken and subsequently murdered in captivity, and those still alive. When the deadline is not met, we begin executions.  

I know what you are thinking: This can backfire and Hamas can just murder all the remaining hostages in the face of such action. That may be true. We don’t know. But we do know that a lot more people will die at the hands of those Hamas prisoners we release.  

To get the hostages back, we must do whatever we can. That does not include whatever we cannot. A negotiated settlement (remember that phrase) is an option we cannot consider.