Negotiating with Hamas sets dangerous precedent
Hamas has finally released an American hostage.
President Biden on Sunday hailed the release of Avigail Idan, who turned 4 years old during her seven weeks in Hamas captivity and was the first American citizen to be freed by the group.
The president vowed to keep working to secure freedom for others in captivity and extend the pause in the fighting. ‘Thank God she’s home,’ Mr. Biden told reporters in Nantucket, Mass., where he has been celebrating Thanksgiving. ‘I wish I was there to hold her.’
(The New York Times, November 26, 2023)
No doubt, the release of this child is good news. However, President Biden’s jubilant reaction is troubling. After all, he’s not engaging in diplomacy; he’s dancing with the devil.
Sure, Biden is using Egypt and Qatar as intermediaries. But he has America negotiating with a universally recognized terrorist group, Hamas.
Biden is setting a dangerous precedent. His giddiness makes it seem like Hamas has America and Israel suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Not to mention the way Hamas is inducing Israelis to celebrate the release of each group of hostages. It’s as if their family members had just won the national lottery or survived a game of Russian roulette…
America never negotiates with terrorists!
Remember the good old days when America used to at least pretend it never negotiates with terrorists? Former President Ronald Reagan’s top aide went as far as taking a cake and Bible as cover for his hostage negotiations with Iran.
Fast forward to today, and President Biden is openly negotiating with Hamas as if it were a rival superpower. Even worse, Hamas seemed to relish refusing, until today, to release any American hostage just to make the mighty United States grovel.
The principle of not negotiating with terrorists has a simple logic: if you negotiate, you incentivize hostage-taking. Every concession made to a terrorist group is a signal to them: capture more people!
It’s a perverse cycle that endangers more lives than it saves, distorting the very essence of ‘e pluribus unum‘ – out of many, one.
The tail wagging the dog
This whole hostage negotiation smacks of a tragic tail-wagging-the-dog farce. I mean, we have the friggin’ President of the United States on TV practically begging, with fingers crossed, for terrorists to release American hostages.
This might be an all-time low in US foreign policy. It’s easily the lowest point since Reagan got caught trying to sweeten a deal with the Muslim Ayatollah of Iran. He sent him a Christian Bible.
Meanwhile, as each group of hostages is released, Israelis and Americans are celebrating in a manner reminiscent of Black South Africans celebrating Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
This analogy underlines the profound relief felt. But it also underscores the normalizing effect negotiating with terrorists has on people, a point the media never mention in their obsessive coverage.
Bring in the Seals?
The US invests billions in military intelligence and Special Forces for such situations. Instead of using these resources, Biden gave unconditional support for Israel to bomb Gaza to smithereens.
Now he’s negotiating with the terrorists Israel’s bombing was supposed to kill, notwithstanding the collateral damage that bombing posed to the hostages Biden wanted to save. And, of course, everything the US and Israel have done since October 7 is playing right along with Hama’s narrative of resistance.
The tragic irony of contradictory sympathy
I suspect many of you think this Hamas narrative is too perverse for words. But consider that no less an eminent person than former President Jimmy Carter decried Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid.
Given that, how would you have felt if Black South Africans did to their White oppressors what Hamas did to their Israeli oppressors on October 7? Further, where would you have stood if those Whites had retaliated by bombing the Black townships the way Israelis have bombed Gaza?
Fair consideration of that counterfactual might help you understand why world sympathy now lies more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. The relentless bombing of Gaza has clouded the bigger picture: Hamas’s responsibility for initiating and perpetuating this crisis.
I argued from the outset that, instead of bombing Gaza, Israel should have Special Forces plan and execute targeted attacks on Hamas fighters. Its failure to do so has inadvertently contributed to this contradictory outpouring of sympathy.
And America’s unconditional support of the Israelis has only intensified sympathy for the Palestinians.
Biden’s handling of this hostage situation with Hamas is a case study in how not to conduct foreign policy. He has betrayed America’s stated principle of never negotiating with terrorists.
Furthermore, he has emboldened terrorists and endangered future generations. The bombing is only creating a new generation of Hamas terrorists. These terrorists are hell-bent on attacking Israel and capturing Israelis and Americans as hostages.
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