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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.
The post Women, Children, the Aged, and the Injured First? Male Hostages Shouldn’t Be Forgotten first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: IDF Probes Whether Houthis Used Iranian Cluster Bomb-Bearing Missile

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi addresses followers via a video link at the al-Shaab Mosque, formerly al-Saleh Mosque, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
i24 News – The Israeli military said Saturday it launched a probe into the failure of its defenses to fully intercept a missile launched by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, parts of which struck not far from the Ben Gurion airport on Friday night.
According to the Ynet website, one of the hypotheses being examined is that the projectile contained cluster munitions, similar to those used by Iran to fire at Israeli cities during the 12-day war in June. Cluster munitions pose a challenge to interceptors as they disperse smaller explosives over a wide area.
In June, Iran fired several missiles carrying scattered small bombs with the aim of increasing civilian casualties.
The IDF said on Saturday that its initial review suggests the ballistic missile from Yemen likely fragmented in mid-air. Five interceptors from various systems engaged with the missile, including THAAD, Arrow, David Sling & Iron Dome.
Authorities said that shrapnel impacted a house in the central Israeli moshav of Ginaton, yet no one was hurt, with the fragment landing in the house’s backyard.
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Iran Forces Kill Six Militants, IRNA Reports, Israel Link Seen

The Iranian flag is seen flying over a street in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 3, 2023. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iranian security forces shot dead six militants in a clash in southeastern Iran on Saturday, a day after armed rebels killed five police officers in the restive region, the official news agency IRNA reported.
IRNA said evidence showed the group was linked to Israel and may have been trained by Israel‘s Mossad spy agency. There was no immediate Israeli reaction to the allegation.
Another two members of the militant group were arrested, the report said. All but one of the militants were foreign, it added, without giving their nationality.
Iranian police said this month they had arrested as many as 21,000 suspects during the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Iran’s southeast has been the scene of sporadic clashes between security forces and armed groups, including Sunni militants and separatists who say they are fighting for greater rights and autonomy.
Tehran says some of them have ties to foreign powers and are involved in cross-border smuggling and insurgency.
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Benny Gantz Urges Time-Limited National Unity Government to Further Chances of Hostage Deal

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz attends his party’s meeting at the Knesset, Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, June 27, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz on Saturday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition politicians to form a temporary national unity government to further the chances of bringing home the hostages held in Gaza.
Addressing Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman, Gantz said that the proposed government’s two supreme priorities would be the release of Israeli hostages held by the jihadists of Hamas and instituting universal conscription in Israel by ending the exemption from military service enjoyed by the ultra-Orthodox.
Upon attainment of the goals, the government would dissolve and call an election.
“The government’s term will begin with a hostage deal that brings everyone home,” Gantz said in a video address. “Within weeks, we will formulate an enlistment outline that would see our ultra-Orthodox brethren drafted to the military and ease the burden on those already serving. Finally, we will announce an agreed-upon election date in the spring of 2026 and pass a law to dissolve the Knesset [Israeli parliament] accordingly. This is what’s right for Israel.”