Q&A: Pardoning Jewish Terrorists as Part of a Hostage Deal
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Pardoning Jewish Terrorists as Part of a Hostage Deal
Question
Have a good week, Rabbi,
What do you think about pardoning Jewish terrorists as part of a hostage deal in order to “balance” the two sides? Is that correct / appropriate?
Best regards,
Answer
Absolutely not. Maybe in the name of equality we should also release all the terrorists, including those we didn’t commit to in the deal? There’s a difference between a release we are coerced into and a sweeping release. There is a reason they are imprisoned (deterrence and punishment), and that reason has not disappeared from the world.
Discussion on Answer
Very important to clarify. In the following academic article you’ll get a Nobel Prize for that. But for our purposes it’s completely irrelevant. Criminals should sit in prison as sentenced.
I want to emphasize two things:
The Nukhba terrorists are not just ordinary murderers; comparing these human beasts to Jews who murdered (on nationalist grounds) is an injustice.
There are almost no “Jewish terrorists,” not only relative to the murderers who come from the Arabs, but even in absolute terms (there is a table maintained on the subject on Wikipedia).
There has never been much Jewish terror (on nationalist grounds, of course), and most of the plots (as mentioned, few to begin with) that were planned by Jews were usually stopped beforehand, or did not end with people being murdered. Incidents involving hilltop youth who attack and only rarely even kill Arabs are generally clashes between the two sides, and should not be called murder. Just like the hero from Lod who struck a terrorist who charged at him at the beginning of Guardian of the Walls.