From Will Chamberlain on X:
I understand why the Israelis are going through with this lopsided hostage deal, but they will need to enact a major policy change to account for the downsides.
If you are going to release 30 serious criminals for every hostage you get back, you are obviously incentivizing the kidnapping of your civilians. The roots of 10/7 can be traced back to the Shalit deal, where Israel traded 1000 convicts for a single soldier.
You’re also making the de facto punishment for murder/attempted murder quite trivial. You might think you are imposing a life sentence, but the real sentence is more like “you will be in jail until your fellow terrorists manage to kidnap another Israeli civilian.” This means you are failing to give justice and closure to the families of the murdered and making it less scary for future terrorists to murder Israelis.
So, if Israel is going to do a deal like this, they need to start executing terrorists convicted of murder or attempted murder, with a streamlined process. You ensure that justice is done, and you avoid the problem of having a pool of convicted murderers waiting around to be released until Hamas kidnaps some innocent Israeli children.
Me: No way Israel is going to “start executing terrorists. No matter how much it would smartly reduce their number.
