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Any Hostage Swap Would Be a Terrible Mistake for Israel
An Israeli soldier keeps guard next to an entrance to what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim, Jan. 18, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Guez/Pool
Until the end of the 1970s, Israel’s policy on hostages, prisoners, and missing persons was based on national considerations. The Entebbe Doctrine permitted no negotiations with terrorist organizations that involved comprehensive deals for the mass release of prisoners, because doing so would amount to a surrender to terror.
Israeli hostages would be released either through operational means, local negotiations, or prisoner exchanges after fighting was concluded. But over the past four decades, ever since the Jibril Agreement of 1985, there has been a change in Israel’s policy on this matter, to involve wholesale prisoner releases. This has caused Israel profound strategic damage.
Negotiating with Hamas for the release of the hostages in Gaza through comprehensive, all-inclusive deals mediated by Qatar (“everyone for everyone”) would undermine Israel’s strategy in the Swords of Iron war. It’s time to make a fundamental change in Israel’s policy on this issue and readopt the Entebbe Doctrine, which can save the lives of the current hostages and prevent the taking of more in the future.
Before I address this difficult issue, I want to make clear that my heart goes out to the hostages in Gaza and their families.
Decisions affecting human lives that are made on the national level have to be based on risk management. Thus, decisions about safety measures, COVID lockdowns, the prevention of deadly infections in hospitals, medication availability, the combating of crime, and others are all based on risk assessments. Public opinion and political pressures factor into these assessments, but they are not usually the predominant factors.
Not so in security. In recent decades, a “shadow principle” has entered Israeli security theory that prioritizes the minimizing of casualties and the creation of “absolute security” above all other considerations. This principle represents a shift from national security to personal security.
The Israeli security organizations obsessively focused on preventing any casualties, and a public discourse requiring “a thorough investigation of every casualty” was enforced. All of this transformed security thinking into straw thinking that was centered on local and tactical risk, making it difficult to see the holistic broader picture.
This kind of thinking collapsed on October 7, and a clear shift back in the direction of national security doctrine is evident.
However, on one critical issue, there hasn’t been sufficient change in the management of security risks: the issue of hostages and missing persons. Ever since the Jibril Agreement of 1985, the obsessive national focus on captives and missing persons has undermined the national security foundations of Israel.
The Second Lebanon War began due to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and killing of three others, and Operation Cast Lead was launched in part to secure the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been in Hamas captivity for five years. Israel released 1,027 security prisoners in exchange for Shalit, including 280 who were serving life sentences for terrorism against Israeli targets. In addition, the prisoners who were released as part of the Jibril deal were active in the first intifada.
The issue of captives and missing persons has become the Achilles’ heel of Israel’s national security. It makes us vulnerable in the eyes of our enemies, weakens our regional status in the eyes of potential allies, and is baffling to our international and regional partners, particularly the Americans.
There are many reasons why it is bad for the nation to negotiate the release of captives as part of a comprehensive deal:
Damage to Israeli strategy: Israel’s strategy in the Swords of Iron war is based on the collapse of the Hamas organization in Gaza and the neutralizing of its leadership and military capabilities. These goals cannot coexist with a mass prisoner exchange negotiation, which would constitute a continuation of Israel’s recognition of Hamas as a force on the ground and a legitimate entity.
Damage to Israeli military operations: The IDF faces a tough and sophisticated enemy that has been preparing for this conflict for many years. Only military actions that maintain their strength and pace, effectively destabilizing the enemy and putting it off balance, will lead to the achievement of Israel’s goals with the lowest possible casualty count. Hesitation, delay, or a cessation of military action resulting from prisoner negotiation would likely have operational consequences.
Damage to moral clarity: Hamas, which has committed crimes against humanity and has genocidal aspirations similar to those of the Nazis, has disqualified itself as a legitimate partner for negotiations. By agreeing to conduct negotiations with them anyway, Israel would, in effect, be restoring their international legitimacy and negating Israel’s claims against other countries around the world, such as Russia, on this matter. The release of those involved in the operation on October 7 in an exchange deal would also damage the argument that they had participated in crimes against humanity. Those terrorists, as well as those captured in Gaza, should be brought to trial, with the death penalty hanging over their heads.
The erosion of the positions of Israel and the US in the Middle East: After the events of October 7, the collapse of Hamas is essential for the restoration of Israel’s position – and, consequently, the standing of the United States — in the Middle East. It forms the basis for Israel’s continued partnerships with Saudi Arabia and moderate states. The realization of a comprehensive mass prisoner-exchange deal would adversely affect both.
Hamas doesn’t really want a deal: Hamas understands that its very existence is at stake. Its continued hold on the hostages has one object: to use endless negotiation in order to undermine the dismantling of its political and military power.
There is no “everyone for everyone”: Hamas has only partial knowledge of which hostages are located where in the Gaza Strip and what condition they are in. For Hamas to organize the exchanges, it would need several weeks of quiet organization to locate them all. Israel cannot allow this for the reasons mentioned. Moreover, prisoners who subsequently fell into Hamas’ hands as the fighting continued would open the question of negotiations all over again. There will be no end to this unless Israel puts a stop to it. On top of these considerations, the mass release of Hamas prisoners would have significant and obvious security implications of its own.
A strict ban on joining the humanitarian effort: The humanitarian effort is a condition for Israel’s strategic ability to undermine Hamas politically and militarily. Connecting it to the issue of the hostages must be avoided.
For all these reasons, continuing negotiations for a deal for the hostages that includes the release of Hamas prisoners would be a serious strategic mistake on Israel’s part. In the management of national risks, there is no logic justifying the continuation of negotiations like this, which goes against all the above considerations.
Israel can create a historic change in the issue of captives and missing persons. A clear approach has the potential to fundamentally alter this area by achieving these goals:
Sending a vital message to Israel’s allies: Israel would be sending this message: “We are a Western and liberal nation committed to the welfare of our citizens as well as the citizens of other countries. We have conducted an examination of all the options available to rescue the hostages. We understand that this issue is being used as a strategic card against us to divert us from our main goal of the complete military and administrative dismantling of the Hamas organization, which commits crimes against humanity against us and against others. From this point forward, we will not engage in comprehensive negotiations for the release of captives with such an organization as it has disqualified itself as a legitimate negotiating partner.”
Enhancing international and Israeli pressure on countries engaging in dialogue with the Hamas leadership to secure the release of the hostages, with an emphasis on foreign nationals, civilians in general, the elderly, women, and children.
Spurring on-the-ground activity to promote the release of hostages.
Encouraging local deals for the release of hostages.
Promoting a process for locating hostages and conducting prisoner exchanges with the new regime in Gaza after the war is over.
This new approach by Israel would amount to a long-term strategic shift regarding the issue of captives and missing persons and a reversal of the ongoing serious damage caused by extensive deals with terrorists. The old approach caused Israel considerable harm. The new one has the potential to rescue the current hostages and prevent new cycles of abductions.
Col. (Res.) Shay Shabtai is a senior researcher at the BESA Center, an expert in national security, strategic planning and strategic communication. Cyber defense strategist and consultant to leading companies in Israel. Shay is about to finish his doctorate at Bar-Ilan University. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
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MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
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