The Hostages

I really had meant to write the 2nd installment of my trip down sports marketing memory lane, which was to be about Tiger Woods, but given the news of the six dead hostages, I can’t. I’ll write it tomorrow.

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I’m gutted over the hostages.

So I’ll just let it rip about the subject of hostage-taking in general without further ado.

I’m against negotiating with terrorist organizations, period, end of story.

I considered qualifying that sentence by saying, “I’m against negotiating with terrorist organizations for soldiers. Civilians are different.” I am, but as the two cases are different, I have to explain why I would handle them differently.

In this post I wrote about the Gilad Shalit exchange. I do have a tendency to ramble and I’m not sure I made my feelings succinctly clear. I just wrote a lot of words about these lopsided deals. Moreover, at the time I didn’t know that Shalit made mistakes — he could have avoided capture.

JTA — Gilad Shalit’s capture was the result of operational failures on his part and on the part of other members of his tank crew, interviews with Shalit have revealed.

Read the whole thing, if you dare.

I blew a gasket after learning this and avoided the subject for months — until now.

Essentially: when you put that uniform on, your life is forfeit. But…

There’s a massive difference between the October 7 hostages and Shalit (and all the other soldiers Israel had bargained dearly for). The October 7 abductees were not. I need not list these differences except to note, because I must, that some were babies. Yes, some were soldiers. Even they were in a different category than Shalit et al in that they were lulled into a false sense of complacency by their superiors. Some were unarmed. In the case of the female observers, they had been dissed and dismissed by their superiors.

But then I thought about it.

I’m against negotiating with terrorist organizations, period.

However, when a soldier is abducted, life goes on. You look at the mistakes made, adjust, and continue. When something like October 7 happens, you cannot just go on. You need to shake the pillars of the building. Because there is no point in living in such a rotten structure.

Cards on the table: I’m not in the arena. I’m not the guy who is actually doing battle at the highest reaches.

But I don’t think I’m being a critic here — I’m admitting that I’m a little guy who doesn’t know all the stuff that’s going on behind the scenes, where the real action is.

So many times facts come to the surface a generation after the event and it changes our perspective. And think of all the things we never learn. We only know a tiny fraction of what really happened.

Granted: Israel’s leadership is subject to unbearable pressures (using the plural purposely) exerted from several directions: America (meaning its power structure), and its own divided public.

So for me to say: “There should never have been negotiations with a terrorist entity like Hamas” is for me to call for something impossible, and politics is the art of the possible.

But this is how I feel:

Negotiating with Hamas was a disgrace and an admission of weakness. A real president, even one personally hostile to Israel, would never have done that.

For his own reasons of power projection, a real president would have crushed Hamas into a thousand little pieces. The utter, outrageous gall of these motherfuckers. It can’t be allowed.

And —quite remarkably given the history — he would have had an ally in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf princes and princelings — apart from Qatar.

[Ah, Qatar, that giant can of worms. But I digress.]

It could have been done. The leaders could have been handed over to a court and tried. Or executed.

MOST IMPORTANT — THEIR FUNDING COULD HAVE BEEN DRIED UP.

No one does anything in this world without money. Hamas money is completely entangled with “legitimate” enterprises.

Hamas could have been isolated, stripped naked, and bankrupted.

This could have happened. I’ll go to my grave thinking this.

But we in the West don’t have real leaders, we have Quislings. The day has come when I can say that the Muslim world, or part of it, has better and more rational leaders than the West. Well, that’s something. But it sucks, because nothing takes the place of American leadership.

Day after humiliating day, Israel lost soldiers in a war whose purpose was unachievable because it was in conflict with the goal of saving the hostages.

The war’s ostensible goal was to “destroy” Hamas, then it became “degrade.” What next? Demystify? But the real illogicality was: you can’t negotiate with an entity you are trying to destroy! It’s crazy!

So what would I have done, given that politics is the art of the possible?

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I would have made a choice: war or hostages. And I would have told my people that. It would have been a bitter pill to swallow and perhaps I’d have lost power but that’s what I would have done.

That’s what I fault Bibi for: trying to have it both ways. He didn’t invent Pax Americana and all the bullshit that goes along with it, but he underestimated the maturity of his own people. Sometimes you have to level with the people.

Yes, I read a lot of stuff about how Israel has “degraded” Hamas, etc. And then I read that Hamas still has full brigades still waiting, and don’t forget, thousands of willing recruits. I’m sick of being lied to and censoring myself.

I think I can figure out what’s going on: Israel can control access to and from Gaza but there are still two million people, hostile, sullen, and full of rage, and this is not the Bronze Age, so they’re not going anywhere.

Take the win, as Joe Biden said.

I’m not going to go to pieces over this. It’s just another wound that will eventually scar over.

Tiger Woods tomorrow.