Q&A - Hostage Swaps From an Halachic Perspective - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

uh this is a huge huge problem uh indeed I have I have you know Shor man have to go for several hours so we we don't have time to to cover everything right now uh as you correctly note this is not the first time we faced this problem we had this issue with gilad Shalit although galit quite literally a thousand terrorists were released in exchange for him was a th to one here Kamas is very very generous uh all they require is three for one right for for the 50 they get 150 I'm sure they'll nominated this is maybe not even a joke they'll be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their humanitarian gesture in releasing their 50 hostages um you know I actually think that may happen but okay uh but anyway uh so the Shila always is this the Shila always is on one hand pigeon Shan ransoming captives a great MIT you even sell a saer Torah for Pigeon you sell a show you do whatever you can P saving people whose lives are endangered every single second so of course your initial reaction might be we have to do whatever we can to save these lives but the problem is by releasing terrorists back into either our population like in galit or back to Kamas or whatever it would be what you're doing is you're creating dangers for other Jews the galad Shalit case itself we already know that at least one of the terrorists who was released in that deal was very instrumental in planning the October 7 Massacre so the question becomes are we obligated or are we even permitted to save lives in a way that will that may endanger future lives of even a larger number right we're saving let's say 50 people or let's say Bash 200 people let's assume we'll save 200 people we might be endangering thousands of more people right so this is a huge mlus it's actually based on a mish in gon the Mion G says that we do not Ransom hostages for more than their economic value as slaves we don't we don't pay exorbitant ransoms lest we encourage more hostage taking in the future and uh in in this case you have two ideas number one you're encouraging hostage taking if they could get released and number two you're actually creating a danger in the release of the terrorist see there are two different points here one is you're encouraging further hostage takings because they get something out of it number two you're endangering the population by the release of the terrorist so the simple meaning of the mission in gon would be this would be forbidden however uh tosos brings a sha that the whole Mion is only talking about a kidnapped victim whose life is not in danger but when it comes to P we have to look at the people who are presently in danger because they're in V Sak and the future population is only a suff Sak and the V trumps the suff and the whole Miss is only talking about kidnappings that do not involve now the ramban explicitly argues and he says it's a that even if the hostages have to die you don't endanger the future populations by releasing terrorists or giving into ranom so it's a hugus and all I can tell you is that contemporary GM were divided over this very issue Raj yoseph wrote a famous chuba uh going all the way back to inbi now inbi at the end of the day did not involve uh terrorist exchanges and tbbi had the raid but but the government was was contemplating a deal maybe it was just strategically they were just saying they were doing it and Raj was asked and Raj said it was M because overrides the in other words present overrides the speculation of future Sak because after all maybe the terrorists will be disabled maybe they'll die you know Etc so it's only a suff so you got to deal with the vad over the suff and re vaj writes that Rebel Yos was I don't think we have a cha from Rebel Yos but Rebel Yos was MIM to this uh other gdolim were against keski said you can't do that because you're endangering a population and you cannot do that so it is a big it is a huge huge mlus now I will say one thing I do think that on one level the hostage this type of Hostage deal might be a little more acceptable Hally than the gadet thing because the point is we're releasing the terrorists back to Hamas but then we're going to continue the war me meaning in the in case of galat chalit the problem was you're releasing these thousand people and there's no active war going on to eradicate them so they're going to just go back and and do the terrorism again here maybe that's less of a concern because Israel is going to be resuming the War I mean in a way it almost sounds kind of stupid meaning uh we're going to give you back your people then we're going to try to kill them okay but uh that's what it is so it could be when you're in the middle of an ongoing conflict maybe there's more of a Heder for that reason but again according to Raj and re even the G thing was M because he was in vak and vak over um rules the suffix are kind of that you're putting people into okay so was a little confusing I understand but from a from a human and emotional level this is an excruciatingly difficult decision it really is because what do you tell a parent of someone you know their child is a captive what do you tell them or their or their parents or or their children or their siblings uh According to some poim the answer is you know if they have to die they have to die because we can't endanger the war effort but other postum do allow it to say Rebel Yash allowed it re vaj allowed it and the like you know one thing that really I mean it rips my heart every time I hear it is just to imagine what the hostages are going through um when they found uh the body of I think it was an 8-year-old a young girl so the father's reaction isem that she's dead because at least I know she's not going to be abused so that's how bad it was in which you were grateful that the person your child was dead because at least they're not going through something even worse so we have to really understand how difficult this situation is how tragic this situation is and therefore it's understandable why the postum looked for ways in which we could try to secure their release even though it creates a real problem that that you've identified