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It Wasn't a Deal - It Was a Crime

(Gatestone Institute) Alan M. Dershowitz - 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? The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime. The proper description of what occurred is that Israel, pressured by the U.S., 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. 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. When a terrorist group "negotiates" with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. A democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage 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. The writer is Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School.
2025-01-19 00:00:00
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