By Geller Report | Created at 2025-01-21 13:22:08 | Updated at 2025-01-22 01:06:39
11 hours ago
“Do not make covenants with evil people.”
Exodus 23:32-33
Empty Chairs/Broken Hearts – Oct. 2023
**
A better way to free the Israeli hostages
by Madeline Brooks
January 20, 2025
There can be a moral perspective on how one deals with terrorists. Rabbi Manis Friedman says that negotiating with terrorists rewards and encourages them. According to him, it is wrong—indeed, it is definitely immoral—to reward terrorists with commuted prison sentences. Boldness, not bribes, is how one must deal with them, as the Bible instructed millennia ago.
Story continues below advertisement
He brings up the daring hostage rescue in 1976 in Entebbe, Uganda. Israeli commandos violated all sorts of international laws and killed the captors of the hostages—but the world celebrated the soldiers anyway because they did not negotiate with terrorists. They did the right thing, states the Rabbi. I would add that the world was also amazed by the boldness and skill of the rescue team. As for more raids in Gaza to free the captives in today’s war, since there were some successful raids, there are reports of suicide bombers surrounding the hostages, cutting short a direct approach.
Suppose your child was kidnapped, Rabbi Friedman ventures. Would you offer the criminals a reward or show them fake compassion to get your child back? No! You would have a right to be outraged. Period. The rabbi has moral clarity. He can call evil evil—and can tolerate knowing that evil exists—unlike many people who try to wish it away or explain it as a misperception or a mere reaction to a bad environment.
Image: Exultant Gaza residents call for the slaughter of the Jews.
X screen grab.
Ari Abramowitz, in the YouTube video The Israeli Guys, references the Bible on the current Israeli hostage problem. “Do not make covenants with evil people.” No deals, no negotiations. Exodus 23:32-33.
In the Biblical Messianic age, the hope is that all will live in peace and fellowship. But we are not there now, and it is a grave mistake for tender-hearted Jews, beleaguered as they are, to imagine otherwise. Acknowledging the bloodthirsty ways of Hamas, Abramowitz comes up with a novel way to get the hostages back home. Israel has hundreds of prisoners: murderers, rapists, beheaders, etc. All it has to do is make very public announcements in Gaza that every hour, a prisoner will be executed in a public and humiliating way until all the hostages are released. This makes sense to me because it plays to the fact that Israel has the upper hand by dint of its military might, even though, sadly, it is not using it.
And what can Israel do about changing the culture of violent Hamas? Forget curriculum changes in children’s textbooks. The problem is deep-rooted, even spiritual. It goes all the way back to warlike Ismael, Abraham’s illegitimate son.
Abromowitz states that Muslims must be proven wrong through military defeat. As Muslims expand their territory, their conviction grows that their god is strong and favors them. So they have to experience that their god is weaker than the Israeli God to accept defeat. That can happen if Jews totally crush Hamas and take Gaza back again. Here, too, Israel does have the upper hand, but it holds back out of a twisted sense of pity for the enemy.
I would add that the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua command the Israelites as they emerge from the desert to take the land of Canaan, which includes Gaza. The Lord ordered every single inhabitant killed to prevent His people from participating in the Canaanites’ “loathsome” customs. (If this sounds mean, you can argue with God, not me.)
Practically speaking, negotiating with terrorists who vow to return to jihad just as soon as they can makes Israel look dangerously weak, as if it devalues itself, inviting new attacks. The United States demanding negotiations looks weak, too. And for every Jew living in the diaspora, our lives are now even more devalued, more threatened. This can and should change.
“No deals, no negotiations”
**
Madeline Brooks, M.A., is the former head of the New York chapter of ActforAmerica and is a conservative and counter-jihad writer. Her articles have been published in AmericanThinker.com, CanadaFreePress.com, FamilySecurityMatters.org, and elsewhere. Her book, What You Need To Know About Islamic Jihad: Information The Main Stream Media Is Not Giving You, is available on Scribd. She can be reached at [email protected].
The Truth Must be Told
Your contribution supports independent journalism
Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more.
Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible.
Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too.
Please contribute here.
or
Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently
banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds.
They are disappearing us. But we are here.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s essential NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America's survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Follow Pamela Geller on Gettr. I am there. click here.
Follow Pamela Geller on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social. It's open and free.Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spammy or unhelpful, click the - symbol under the comment to let us know. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.
If you would like to join the conversation, but don't have an account, you can sign up for one right here.
If you are having problems leaving a comment, it's likely because you are using an ad blocker, something that break ads, of course, but also breaks the comments section of our site. If you are using an ad blocker, and would like to share your thoughts, please disable your ad blocker. We look forward to seeing your comments below.
