Hamas didn’t descend on us out of the blue: They plotted in plain sight, and we were both too timid and willfully blind to take notice
More than the slaughter of innocents and the IDF bases overrun on Simchas Torah, the snatching of an estimated 239 captives was Hamas’s single greatest achievement on that black day. Both Bibi Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have repeatedly said that the more military pressure exerted on Hamas in the ground operation now underway, the greater Israel’s leverage in the negotiations for the hostages’ release.
Both Bibi and Gallant are aware that this is only partially true and that the imperative of dismantling Hamas means that, inevitably, the captives need to be deprioritized.
Netanyahu himself will be aware that the story of the captives dates back to 2011. It was Bibi who authorized the Shalit deal, which freed 1,000 Palestinian terrorists in exchange for a lone Israeli soldier. Crucially, one of that number was Yahya Sinwar, who now heads Hamas in Gaza. The Shalit deal taught Sinwar that captives is an Israeli weak point, and he spent the subsequent decade determined to take advantage of that sensitivity, by digging attack tunnels to pull off the very scenario that occurred on Simchas Torah.
The Mishnah in Maseches Gittin — widely quoted at the time of the Shalit deal — forbids redeeming captives above their value so as not to whet the appetite of pirates to repeat their crimes against other Jews. Ignoring that elementary dynamic is human — after all, which leader can ignore the plight of a captive’s family when a trade of despicable murderers will bring their son home?
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