ALAN DERSHOWITZ: The Israel Hostage Deal Is Extortion

The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a “deal.” It was an extortion. Would you call it a deal if somebody kidnapped your child and you “agreed” to pay ransom to get her back? Of course not. The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime.

So, the proper description of what occurred is that Israel, pressured by the United States, capitulated to the unlawful and extortionate demands of Hamas as the only way of saving the lives of kidnapped babies, mothers and other innocent, mostly civilian, hostages.

This was not the result of a negotiation between equals. If an armed robber puts a gun to your head and says, “your money or your life,” your decision to give him your money would not be described as a deal. Nor should the extorted arrangement agreed to by Israel be considered a deal. So, let’s stop using that term.

When a terrorist group “negotiates” with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. They can murder at will, rape at will, torture at will and threaten to do worse. The democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage families. The result of this exertion was bad for Israel’s security, but good for the hostages who remain alive and their families. The heart rules the brain, as it often does in moral democracies that value the immediate saving of the lives of known people over the future deaths of hypothetical people whose identities we do not know. This tradeoff is as understandable as compassionate, even if not compelling as policy.

If every democratic nation adopted a policy of never negotiating with terrorists, it might discourage terrorism. But every nation submits to the demands of kidnappers and extortionists, so terrorism and hostage-taking have become a primary tactic of the worst people in the world. And the rest of us are complicit.