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Women, Children, the Aged, and the Injured First? Male Hostages Shouldn’t Be Forgotten
Families and supporters react as they celebrate the release of Omer Wenkert, a hostage who was held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, on the day of the release of six hostages from captivity in Gaza as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gedera, Israel February 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
In negotiating the release of about 250 hostages, both living and dead, Israel has prioritized children, women, the aged, and the ill or injured. The prioritization was roughly in that order. Lowest on the list are younger men, and especially those without pre-existing medical conditions and who were not known to be injured on October 7, 2023.
Many people will assume that these are exactly the right priorities. However, there are good reasons for thinking that the matter is much more complicated. This is because every category of hostage is at greater relative risk of some serious harm. The challenge is to decide how to convert these different risk profiles into policy.
Among the reasons for prioritizing children, two main ones stick out. First, barring their captivity, they have the longest remaining life-expectancy, and thus more life-years can be saved by saving them. Second, they are among the least able to cope with captivity, which threatens them both in the moment but also their developmental needs.
There are also reasons for prioritizing women, and especially younger ones. They are arguably at greater risk of sexual assault. There have been reports of male hostages being subjected to such assault, and we still do not yet know the relative risk between the sexes.
While both sexes can be raped, younger females could also become pregnant as a result. The risks and horrors of enduring such a pregnancy and possible consequences are significant.
One reason for prioritizing the aged is that, like children, albeit in different ways, they are less able to cope with the physical assault of captivity conditions. However, there is also a reason to deprioritize older captives. Because their remaining life-expectancy is shorter, fewer life-years are saved.
Like the aged, the ill and injured can have added challenges in enduring and surviving captivity. The severity of the illness or injury affects the degree to which this is true.
These considerations are likely what informed the decisions about which hostages should be released first. However, we should not lose sight of the special risk profile of (younger) men, especially given that even some of the dead have been prioritized over them.
There is ample evidence that there are fewer psycho-social barriers to the infliction of (non-sexual) violence, including death, on males. Indeed, that is exactly why (young) men are so instinctually deprioritized in hostage releases. They may be at less risk in some ways but, as males, they are at more risk in other ways. This has already been acknowledged by one of the recently released young female soldiers, who said “We, the girls, suffered. But the boys and men suffered even more.” Further preliminary evidence is that, of the released hostages, the emaciated ones have been disproportionately male.
Sometimes the deprioritizing of younger males is thought to be justified by their being (combat) soldiers or at least of military age. Even when this is not a direct factor, it can be an indirect one. For example, it might be said that Hamas would be much less likely to release young males first. However, the fact that younger men are disproportionately combat soldiers, or seen to be so, it itself partly the result of a lesser valuing of male lives, and thus further evidence of the special risks faced by young men. Almost all the post-October 7 combat deaths have been male.
Weighing up the different risk profiles in decisions about whom to prioritize for release is an impossibly difficult and tragic choice. The matter is made even more complicated by other considerations, such as the expected timeline for the release of the final hostages.
The shorter the expected period between the initial releases and the final ones, the stronger the case for prioritizing those in more immediate danger. However, if the release of the final hostages is so far in the future that even the fittest young men are unlikely to survive, then the case for prioritizing the aged, for example, becomes weaker.
Obviously, any individual hostage’s risk profile is not determined only by their group characteristics. It can depend on which terror group is holding them, where they are held, whether the Israel Defense Forces is able to rescue them (without mistaking them for terrorists), and innumerable other circumstantial conditions and coincidences. Because these factors are even more unknown, there is less reason to consider them in developing a policy.
There has been some talk of the current policy favoring “humanitarian” cases. That is certainly a mischaracterization. Every hostage is a humanitarian case. (In the case of dead hostages, the main humanitarian considerations are their families’ interests in the return and proper burial of their remains.)
At the end of the first phase of the January-February 2025 hostage and prisoner release agreement, approimatly 27 living, and 32 dead, hostages remain in Gaza. They have been left until last. Some of the dead might not have survived precisely for that reason. For the others, we must hope that being left until last does not also mean that they will not last until they can be released.
David Benatar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town and currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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