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Hostage Strategies [1]

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Date: 2023-10-23  

I just heard on MSNBC: if Hamas releases two hostages a week, with the number of hostages they have it would take about two years for them all to be released.

That’s a long time for a hostage crisis to play out, with the power of the hostage-takers on repeated display. It’s a story that empowers the hostage-takers at the expense of those who want the hostages to be returned safe.

Today, that MSNBC news show has been talking about the newly released hostages for most of an hour. There’s lots else going on in the crisis that they haven’t gotten to, and may not today.

The bigger the hostages are made, as a part of the larger crisis, the more powerful Hamas is in the situation .

The hostage strategy of Hamas is to milk it for all the leverage, inhibition, and political advantage they can get.

The hostage strategy of the rest of the world must keep the hostage issue in proportion compared to all the other huge matters at stake in this crisis. (Indeed, if things should be out of proportion, it should be in the direction of making it seem smaller , in the Whole Picture, than it really is.)

This repeats what I said in a previous posting here over the weekend, whose title articulated the basic point: “We Need to be More Rational about Hostages.”

I thought the point important enough (and I, at least, am not hearing it elsewhere) to bear repeating, even though that first piece garnered little interest.

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