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Why Israel had no choice but to make a ‘bargain with the devil’
(JTA) — In pressing for a deal that could see the release of 50 of the more than 200 hostages held in Gaza in return for a four-day pause in hostilities the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners, Israel’s National Unity Party Minister Benny Gantz described the return of the hostages as a “moral imperative and part of the resilience that enables us to win wars.”
But what if negotiating with Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel, creates a dangerous precedent and further encourages its enemies to view hostage-taking as a weapon? By putting its war on Hamas on a four-day hold, does Israel appear to be giving in to an enemy it has vowed to destroy? And by releasing three Palestinian prisoners for every hostage returned, does Israel risk allowing violent prisoners to go free?
These are the unbearable tensions Israeli and American negotiators faced in the leadup to the deal, announced Tuesday night. To understand the dilemmas and pressures Israel is facing, I spoke with law professor Robert Mnookin, director of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School and author of the 2010 book, “Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight.” Mnookin advises governments and corporations on negotiating strategy and conflict resolution and has written about Israel’s controversial hostage swaps with Hamas and other adversaries.
He is also the author, in 2019, of “The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World,” a book about Jewish peoplehood and identity.
We spoke Wednesday about the political pressure on Israel to strike a deal, how religious and national values play a role in hostage negotiations and why a “no-win” scenario is sometimes the best you can do.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Before we get into the details of this specific hostage exchange, I wonder if you could provide a theoretical framework for hostage negotiation, especially with an enemy deemed terrorists. What should any power consider before embarking on negotiations essentially with kidnappers?
One hard question, of course, is, are they likely to keep to the deal that you make with them? Kidnappers aren’t necessarily a reliable partner to a negotiation.
A second big issue is the question of precedent. What kind of precedent are they setting by being willing to negotiate? For many years, the United States government took the position that it would not negotiate with terrorists to try to release kidnap victims. And there was a lot of tension [between the government and victims’ families]. The stated policy was often informally violated by the U.S. government, that is, they sometimes did participate. And in fact, it turns out that European countries were negotiating with various — often Islamic — terrorist groups in the last decade, were paying money to get people released. The United States wasn’t and it changed its formal policy.
That they would pay ransom?
Not necessarily, but they no longer had an absolute policy that there should not be any contact between the government and terrorist groups with respect to kidnap victims.
You wrote an op-ed critical of the decision in 2011 by an earlier Netanyahu government to release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in 2006 and held hostage in Gaza. What made you call that a “crazy deal” and what might be different about the current situation?
There were lots of things wrong with that deal. First, the price was absurdly high. Second, it set a terrible precedent. And third, as it turns out, that deal strengthened Hamas and weakened the Palestinian Authority, because the Israeli government was negotiating with Hamas, who made sure the Palestinian Authority would get no credit. And comparatively few of the Palestinian Authority’s prisoners were released. And finally, it turns out of course, that among those released are at least some who now are apparently leaders of Hamas.
On the other hand, obviously, I’m thrilled that Shalit was released.
Robert Mnookin directs the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School. (Jon Chase/Harvard University News Office)
When you heard the terms of the deal Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, how did it strike you as someone who has an expertise in negotiations? Was there a winner? Was there a loser?
Well, listen, these kinds of negotiations often involve tragic choices. Who could not be very happy that women and children are being released? On the other hand, while we don’t really know the details of who’s being released by the Israeli government, I gather many of them are minors who participated in rather violent acts or very violent acts.
Should Israel worry that negotiating over hostages in this case is going to encourage its enemies to engage in more kidnapping?
They absolutely should.
Israel has a national ethos of returning its soldiers and protecting its citizens above all else — including by taking actions, like lopsided hostage swaps, that might endanger soldiers and civilians in the future. Do these sort of emotional goals — for the sake of national solidarity or morale, or even the religious imperative of pidyon shvuyim, or redeeming hostages — strike negotiation experts as irrational?
I don’t want to call it irrational because it may reflect and reinforce values that are really quite important. Israel has a tradition that no soldier would be left behind. Given that Israel has an army in which nearly all Jewish people participate, a truly citizens’ army, the Shalit deal was, for all its flaws, a valuable reinforcement of that ideology.
Israel is also a small country, and the degree of separation among its citizens is incredibly small. I imagine that any idea that it won’t negotiate with terrorists is impossible to maintain politically and morally when there are so many stories and they are so personal.
This is something I talked about in my oped many years ago, which is a very important psychological finding that people, in order to save identifiable individuals, are willing to take actions that are far more costly than actions that could save many more unspecified individuals. The classic example of this is when an individual is trapped in a coal mine: It becomes national news, and rescuers might spend millions of dollars to get them out — while the same government authorities are unwilling to spend anywhere near an equivalent amount on safety measures that would ultimately save many more people.
What we’ve seen in Israel, with so many victims, the political pressure is very, very substantial. You’ve seen these posters of all the individual kidnap victims. The families are trying to personalize it — appropriately, because it’s a good strategy. My wife last night was brought to tears with interviews of the family of one of the victims because their story was so sad. There’s this little girl, for example, who’s going to be 4 on her birthday, which is Friday. [Abigail Edan was kidnapped on Oct. 7; Hamas killed her parents, Roy and Smadar Edan; she is a U.S. citizen and President Joe Biden said he expects her to be released.]
Of course a government should be willing to work very hard to get her release. How can you feel they should not do so? These are very hard choices that governments have to face.
What did each side achieve in this deal?
What the Israelis achieved, of course, is that some fraction of the 200-plus hostages are being released and that there are going to be children and women among them. And the suspension of hostilities from Israel’s perspective is comparatively brief. As for Hamas, they’re getting credit for the release, they’re getting a rest in terms of hostilities and there’s going to be substantial humanitarian aid.
The other thing that I think is interesting about this arrangement, of course, in part goes to the reliability issue. They’re doing an arrangement where the hostages are going to be released partially each day, which is a way of reinforcing the ceasefire. Whereas if they were all released right in the beginning, Hamas would be taking the risks that the Israelis might immediately resume hostilities.
Do you accept the idea that a successful negotiation is one in which both sides are disappointed?
No. If the people are rational actors, it should create an outcome that each side views as superior to what their best alternative otherwise would be. Now, it is often the case that the negotiated deal is disappointing in comparison with a perfect world. But on the other hand, almost by definition, if you and I settle a terrible dispute, we wouldn’t have made a deal if we didn’t think it was superior to our expected alternative. And what’s often true is sometimes you and I could settle a conflict with an arrangement that makes us feel positive about doing business together in the future.
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The post Why Israel had no choice but to make a ‘bargain with the devil’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Meta Boots Anti-Zionist Columbia University Group From Instagram
Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march in front of pro-Israel demonstrators on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
Meta Platforms, Inc. has banned the infamous Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) anti-Zionist student group from its platforms, a decision that the company says is irrevocable.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD is responsible for spreading pro-Hamas propaganda, assaulting Jewish students, and disrupting academic study at Columbia with unauthorized demonstrations and property destruction. Its behavior, among other factors, drove the Trump administration’s cancellation in March of $400 million in federal contracts and grants awarded to Columbia.
CUAD first reported that Meta shuttered its Instagram account on Monday, denouncing the measure as being part of “a long and concerted effort from corporations and imperial powers to erase the Palestinian people.” Meta later justified the decision to Jewish Insider, explaining that CUAD had forced the company’s hand by ceaselessly transgressing the platform’s terms of use of agreement. Meta forbids groups which advocate violence to operate on Instagram, and CUAD has used its account to call for toppling the Israeli and US governments. Additionally, its Instagram account has been essential for promoting unlawful demonstrations CUAD continues to hold at Columbia University and for sharing resources that have helped its collaborators avoid punishment.
Meta told Jewish Insider that the group won’t be allowed back.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD’s activities have been described as a threat to the civil rights and security of Jewish Columbia University students.
Last April, CUAD members commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans. When the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrived to disperse the unlawful gathering, hundreds of CUAD members and their affiliates reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order. During ensuing clashes with law enforcement, one student screamed “Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” while others shouted, “Long live Hamas!” and filmed themselves praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the US-designated terrorist group.
In September, during the university’s convocation ceremony, the group distributed a pamphlet which called on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s movement to destroy Israel. Several sections of the document 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 was to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
In February, CUAD committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts.
Following two occupations of administrative buildings at Barnard College, Laura Rosenbury, the school’s president, denounced the group as a paranoid hate-organization.
“They [CUAD] operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote in an op-ed published by The Chronicle of Higher Education. “They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve.”
Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Meta Boots Anti-Zionist Columbia University Group From Instagram first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tlaib Set to Headline Terrorist-Connected Palestinian Event in New Jersey
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 11, 2025. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is set to headline a conference that is also hosting a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization, according to documents obtained by The Algemeiner.
The Palestinian American Community Center (PACC) in New Jersey will hold its annual conference, titled “Grounded in Action: Exploring the Power of the Palestinian Diaspora,” from Thursday through Sunday. Wisam Rafeedie, a self-admitted member of the PFLP, will address the conference virtually on the 4th day of the event.
According to PACC’s website, the conference “is a call to recommit ourselves to amplifying and supporting the Palestinian voices and advocates who have long been at the forefront of our struggle.” PACC also calls on members of the Palestinian diaspora “to leverage our unique positions and power” to “push for meaningful action.””
Tlaib is scheduled to headline the event’s “Youth Day,” in which she will host a reading and signing for her new children’s book, Mama in Congress, alongside her son Adam Tlaib. According to Harper Collins, the book’s publisher, Mama in Congress will chronicle Tlaib’s journey from Detroit to the halls of the federal government. The book will also detail Tlaib’s supposed efforts in working toward “justice for all” in Congress.
The conference will include several workshops educating attendees on “resistance,” “solidarity,” and “collective struggle.” The event will also feature a session stressing the importance of “centering Palestinian prisoners.”
This is not the first time that Tlaib has come under scrutiny for attending a pro-Palestinian conference tied to terrorists. Last May, Tlaib came under fire for speaking at the “The People’s Conference for Palestine,” which also hosted Rafeedie among other individuals connected to terrorist groups. During that event, Rafeedie praised Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza and murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, as a “resistance” against Israel. He defended and downplayed Hamas’s atrocities, saying that “Zionists lie like they breathe.”
“This is not a struggle between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is part of the resistance of the Palestinian people. The core issue is between the Palestinian people and the project of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing,” Rafeedie said.
Rafeedie also called for the complete destruction of Israel and the replacement of the Jewish state with a “democratic” Palestine.
“There is no longer a place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian. The only solution is one democratic Palestinian state on all Palestinian land, which will end the Zionist project in Palestine,” Rafeedie continued.
Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman elected to the US Congress, has positioned herself as a fierce and outspoken critic of Israel. Since entering office, Tlaib has repeatedly accused the Jewish state of implementing an “apartheid” regime in the West Bank and turning Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Tlaib has sharpened her condemnations of the Jewish state. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, she hesitated to release an official statement acknowledging the mass slaughter, abductions, and rapes perpetrated by Hamas. Less than two weeks after the invasion, Tlaib introduced a “ceasefire” resolution between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group. In November 2023, the House of Representatives voted to censure Tlaib over her anti-Israel rhetoric.
The progressive firebrand has also condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza, accusing the Jewish state of committing a full-scale “genocide” against the civilians of the enclave. She has also peddled the unsubstantiated claim that Israel has purposefully inflicted mass starvation against Palestinian civilians and urged the Biden administration when it was in power to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Simmering with anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel, she refused to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential bid.
Tlaib’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The post Tlaib Set to Headline Terrorist-Connected Palestinian Event in New Jersey first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Driver Charged for Brooklyn Car Crash Killing Jewish Family Has History of Claiming CIA Follows Her
An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman who was charged for a car crash on Saturday that killed a Jewish woman and her two young daughters has alleged in the past on social media that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is following her, a claim she also made to first responders after the fatal accident.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, is facing multiple charges, including three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault. Yarimi — a Brooklyn resident and wigmaker who is also a Jewish mother herself – was transported to NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn in stable condition. She was then moved to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital, according to reports.
The car crash killed Natasha Saada, 32, and her daughters – 8-year-old Diana and 6-year-old Deborah. Saada’s son Philip, 4, was injured in the crash and hospitalized at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park in critical condition. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested Yarimi, a single mother who has a young daughter, and she is awaiting arraignment in connection to the crash that took place Saturday afternoon at an intersection on Ocean Parkway off Quentin Road in Midwood. Police said she was driving with a suspended license at the time of the crash.
“This was a horrific tragedy caused by someone who shouldn’t have been on the road,” said Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “A mother and two young children killed, another child fighting for his life, a family and a neighborhood devastated in an instant. The NYPD sends its condolences to the family of the victims.”
Yarimi, who shares custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, reportedly told first responders with the Jewish-led volunteer ambulance service Hatzalah that she was “possessed” and that she believes the CIA was pursing her.
She has made similar claims about the CIA many times on Instagram, a former customer of hers told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased a wig from Yarimi several years ago and has been following her on social media for a number of years. Yarimi has 16,000 followers on Instagram and screenshots of her since-deleted posts, obtained by The Algemeiner, confirm she previously believed that the CIA is tracking her.
“It’s very convenient to plead insanity. But it’s not new. She is actually insane. This is [an] old topic,” the former client told The Algemeiner. “She thinks that she’s been followed by CIA for a long, long time already. She truly believes that CIA is spying on her … But only people who follow her [on social media] and know her for a long time would know this. She’s sick.”
In one since-deleted Instagram post, Yarimi wrote in part about the CIA: “They have control of EVERYONE here in this world BESIDES ME … when I went to Miami, it all clicked … once they knew that I knew, they followed me around the hotel, dressed up as young parents with a doona [stroller] and disco outfits like I was stupid and didn’t know who they were … if anything they stuck out like glue.”
“It was the government, blackjack, and the CIA who manipulated everyone and took control of everyone’s mind but because I was the catalyst and the sacrificial lamb so they did their best to break me,” she wrote in a separate post that has also been deleted. “They experimented (abused) me and that’s when they cloned my daughter and I so when I die, they could reinsert me into the crowd and make me into another person.”
Yarimi previously had a highlight on her Instagram page where she talked about demons and the CIA, but it has since been deleted, her former customer told The Algemeiner. Yarimi also wrote on her Instagram Story once that she believes Hollywood is trying to clone people to look like her.
“Why do you think most of the girls in Hollywood have similar features to me like Rita Ora & Jane the Virgin etc,” Yarimi once wrote on Instagram, as seen in a screenshot shared with The Algemeiner. “Wake up, this is not just happening in Hollywood. This is happening right here in the Jewish community in Brooklyn.”
Not long after she uploaded the Instagram posts, Yarimi was admitted to a psychiatric ward and when she returned to social media, she spoke about the experience, the source told The Algemeiner.
“After the above posts she was locked up for two weeks in a psych ward. She’s very public. She went live when paramedics broke into her house and took her. She came back online two weeks later and spoke about her psych ward experience,” Yarimi’s follower said. “And it was saved in her [Instagram] highlights as well … It was horrible.”
The Algemeiner has seen a copy of Yarimi’s Instagram video that shows police drag her out of bed after she refused their orders to get up by herself. In the clip, three police officers are seen in her bedroom and a fourth is standing by the doorway.
Another longtime Instagram follower of Yamini’s described her as “delusional” when speaking to The Algemeiner, and confirmed that Yamini has spoken online repeatedly in the past about how she believes the CIA is tracking her.
In December 2024, Yarimi won a $2 million settlement from the city of New York after she filed a lawsuit claiming that former NYPD Officer George Mastrokostas repeatedly raped her for several years after falsely arresting her.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Deputy Chief Richie Taylor attended the funeral for Saada and her daughters on Sunday in Brooklyn before their bodies were flown to Israel for burial. Saada is survived by her husband, Sidney Saada, her sons Philip and Jacob, her parents and three siblings. Adams called the crash “a tragic accident of a Shakespearean proportion.”
“A mother going for a simple stroll on a sunny day was struck and killed. As we pray for their families and this entire community, the city mourns this loss,” he added.
Police said Yarimi was driving a blue Audi A3 sedan when she rear-ended a 2023 silver Toyota Camry with TLC plates that was carrying four passengers – a mother and three children. NYPD Commissioner Tisch said the force of the crash caused the Toyota Camry to be pushed aside, while the Audi moved forward, crashing into Saada and her children as they were crossing the street before the car overturned. Saada and her two daughters were pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the Toyota Camry, a 62-year-old man, was hospitalized in stable condition. The four passengers inside his car sustained minor injuries and were also hospitalized, according to Tisch.
Yarimi’s car had 99 parking and camera violations between August 2023 and March 2025, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets, Eyewitness News ABC 7 reported, citing a website that tracks vehicle violations using city data. She had nearly $10,500 in fines and a car with the same license plate as Yarimi’s still has $1,345 in unpaid fines, the news outlet also revealed.
The post Driver Charged for Brooklyn Car Crash Killing Jewish Family Has History of Claiming CIA Follows Her first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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