Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Walter Reich

That Israel’s leadership can’t figure out what to do when faced with the challenge of ransoming kidnapped Jews is excusable. That much of that leadership seems to be ignorant of the fact that Jews have given two thousand years of thought to exactly that problem, however, isn’t.

A few weeks ago, in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers taken captive by Hezbollah two years earlier, Israel released to that organization five prisoners, including one, Samir Quntar, who stands out for his brutality in the annals of terrorism against Israelis. Of all Arabs captured by Israel with “blood on their hands,” this one was one of the most despised. Yet, in order to obtain the bodies of the Israelis taken captive by Hezbollah, Israel released Quntar and the four others.

Israel engaged in this prisoner release as part of its tradition of doing everything possible to get Israeli soldiers out of the hands of Israel’s enemies—and in response to pressure, utterly understandable, from the families of the kidnapped soldiers and from many other Israelis. But Palestinian leaders immediately announced that Israel’s willingness to give up prisoners in order to obtain even the bodies of kidnapped Israelis showed that kidnapping is a tactic that works, and that should be used again. For example, Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the umbrella terror group Popular Resistance Committees, said that the exchange “proves that kidnapping soldiers will continue to be the most efficient, favored and ideal way to release Palestinian prisoners, particularly those defined by the enemy as having blood on their hands.” In a valuable post on this site, Robert O. Freedman, reflecting the views of many in Israel, sharply questioned the wisdom of Quntar’s release.

So the psychological insight that such exchanges could encourage more kidnappings did surface in Israel’s debate. But it is hardly new. Indeed, it’s an insight that has been discussed at length by Jews since Roman times. And it has been discussed not for theoretical reasons but because paying ransoms for kidnapped Jews has punctuated the experience of the Jews throughout that long period.

The problem of paying ransom for Jewish captives was raised in the Mishnah some 2,000 years ago, and was frequently discussed in the Rabbinic literature in the centuries that followed. In the Middle Ages, families and communities often paid enormous sums, sometimes impoverishing themselves, in order to ransom kidnapped Jews. This occurred throughout Europe but also in Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. The Cairo Genizah—a collection of some 200,000 documents found in the 19th century in a Cairo synagogue that included materials from as far back as the 9th century CE—includes some ransom receipts.

One of the most famous cases emphasizing the danger of rewarding kidnapping involved Rabbi Meir ben Baruch, known as the Maharam of Rothenburg, who lived in 13th-century Germany. The Maharam was held captive by Emperor Rudolf of Germany, who demanded a large ransom from the Jewish community for his release. According to various sources, the Maharam forbade his fellow Jews from paying it, since he feared that such a payment would encourage further kidnappings. He spent seven years as a prisoner, and died in captivity.

The purpose of this brief excursion into Jewish law and history is to point out that this dilemma has been discussed extensively for at least twenty centuries by Jews throughout the world. The circumstances have been different: the old kidnappers sought money rather than the humiliation and ultimately the destruction of a Jewish state. And in Europe and elsewhere the Jews had no army, whereas in modern Israel they do. But the psychological dilemma—the problem that ransoming kidnapped prisoners is likely to encourage more kidnappings—is similar.

What’s disheartening is that so many Israeli leaders, both civilian and military, seem ignorant of the long experience of the Jews in trying to cope with this dilemma. Now, following the Quntar exchange, the debate within Israeli society has become more focused than ever before. One hopes that Israeli leaders will take this debate seriously, and develop a policy that will help the country deal with the kidnappings that are surely yet to come. They could do worse than take Jewish history, and even traditional Jewish texts, as their point of departure.