It’s only fair to trade a body for a body; that’s how it works in much of the Middle East.
(April 7, 2025 / JNS)
Israel just found and eliminated one of the savages who kidnapped 4-year-old Ariel Bibas and his 9-month-old brother, Kfir, and then murdered them—mere babies. Forensic evidence and intelligence indicate that the Bibas children were slain by Hamas-aligned terrorists “with their bare hands.” We should hope that the rest of these monsters are also eliminated during their capture.
But what if they aren’t? Suppose Israel captures them alive? Sure, there will be a fair trial. And sure, if the evidence is solid, the savages will get one, two, four, or 10 consecutive life sentences.
They, and we, know that it’s meaningless. If captured alive, those killers will at some point likely walk free to terrorize and murder again.
Kidnapping works for their sick cause. So Islamofascists will take more Jewish hostages to trade for these baby-killers. And a weak Israeli government under intense public pressure from hostage families, typically on the political left, will make yet another lopsided trade.
In peacetime, overpaying for hostages is against traditional Jewish law. During hostilities, however, paying anything at all may be forbidden because “any concession, payment or reinforcement of the terrorists is aiding and abetting the enemy and we may not do so even to save the lives of hostages.”
But a weak government will do it anyway.
The baby-killers know it right now. Even worse, we also know it right now. Sadly, the entire process of trials, evidence, convictions and life-long prison sentences has become just a farce.
Yet Israeli law contains a solution: the death penalty. It is still on the books. It is neither cruel nor unusual. The modern-day State of Israel has tried to be super-civilized on this issue, having applied its death penalty in exactly one case so far—Adolph Eichmann’s—but it seems that the matter deserves serious re-examination in the light of recent events.
Cruel? Cruel is letting Jew-killers free, not just from the flagrant disrespect to the memories of their victims and the emotions of the victims’ families. It is also cruel to anyone the Jew-killers harm after their release. Who can forget that senior Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had been lawfully convicted in an Israeli court in 1989 of orchestrating the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers, in addition to the execution of four Arabs suspected of collaborating with Israel. Sinwar proudly testified, “I strangled them with my own hands” (his preferred method, just as his associates murdered the Bibas babies).
Sinwar was sentenced to four life terms but was then set free in 2011 in a lopsided exchange of 1,027 prisoners for one kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The exchange replenished Hamas leadership: 280 of the released prisoners—Sinwar and 279 others—were serving life sentences. Sinwar then went on to lead Hamas and organize the orgy of murders, rapes, mutilations and kidnappings on Oct. 7, 2023, by his organization and by ordinary Palestinian Arab civilians in Gaza. That’s when they kidnapped the Bibas family and many others from their homes in various Jewish communities in the country’s south.
The Midrash teaches, “Whoever is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind.”
Unusual? Would it be unusual for Israel to resume enforcement of its death penalty? Many countries in the world, including most, if not all, Islamic countries, plus the Palestinian Authority, institute the death penalty, usually for far less than willfully strangling helpless babies. Apostasy (conversion out of Islam), homosexuality, selling land to a Jew and drinking alcohol are examples. Israel would never stoop as low as our enemies and other savages in the enforcement of its death penalty.
The world will certainly condemn Israel if it resumes its death penalty for Jew-killers. But it will single out Israel for condemnation anyway, as long as it commits the sin of surviving. So what?
Jew-killers captured alive by Israel and then lawfully convicted should be executed. It’s only fair to trade a body for a body—or better, a body for a living innocent hostage.
If we do not execute these killers, how will we be able to look the relatives of their next victims in the eyes? Unless something changes, Jew-killers Israel releases alive will continue to inflict suffering on new victims.
In this season, as we move between the holidays of Purim and Passover, we should note that both holidays teach a different approach. The Jews of Persia definitively ended Haman and his evil collaborators. And a strong hand and an outstretched arm definitively ended the warriors of Pharaoh’s army before they could murder Jewish civilians who were fleeing to freedom.
None of the terrorists in those eras survived to be traded alive. Not one of them could replenish the forces of our enemies.