For nearly five months, the Jewish world has been calling for the release of hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacres in southern Israel—all of them. Indeed, the freedom of the hostages is one of Israel’s two main war goals alongside the elimination of Hamas. But as ongoing negotiations for the release of the more than 100 Israelis still being held captive by Hamas in Gaza continue with flurries of diplomatic activity involving the United States, as well as Hamas’s ally Qatar, something is missing from the discussion of the proposed terms for such a deal. And that is a moral compass.

Trading the lives of innocent Israeli civilians who were kidnapped from their homes amid an orgy of mass slaughter, rape and torture that took place on Oct. 7 for the release of Palestinians who have been convicted of acts of violence against Jews, including murder, is a bizarre and immoral concept that has already become normalized. Indeed, it is Israel’s government that has done more to normalize this idea because of its record of paying exorbitant prices to free Israelis held by terrorists. The most recent was in 2011, when Jerusalem traded 1,027 prisoners, including hundreds with Jewish blood on their hands, to gain the release of Gilad Shalit, a young soldier who had been kidnapped by Hamas in 2006. That decision by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now hangs over the current negotiations as not just a terrible precedent but a benchmark of extortion that Hamas—and its foreign enablers—believe can be made to look as if it were a bargain.

The terror group that ruled Gaza as an independent state in all but name until Oct. 7 also wants many of the terrorists released to return to the Strip, thus giving them the opportunity to kill more Jews.

That’s because Israel is reportedly willing to trade large numbers of terrorists for each individual hostage with the number of female Israelis held captive by Hamas (undergoing who knows what torment at their hands) being especially high. The hostage releases are supposedly also going to be strung out over weeks as part of a process in which Hamas can play with the emotions of Israeli families as they hope and pray that their relatives will be let go—and that they are among those still alive (dozens of those still unaccounted for are believed to be dead). Hamas doesn’t want to include captured soldiers, particularly female soldiers, in the early stages of the deal, preferring to hold them as bargaining chips for even higher prices. The terror group that ruled Gaza as an independent state in all but name until Oct. 7 also wants many of the terrorists released to return to the Strip, thus giving them the opportunity to kill more Jews.

More than that, each hostage released, in addition to terrorists freed, will gain Hamas a day of halted fighting and increased supplies to go into the parts of Gaza controlled by the Islamist group. As such, the freedom of Israelis will not just ensure that Palestinians who have committed acts of violence will evade justice; it will mean that the terrorist group itself—pledged to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its population—is the main beneficiary of the deal. It will be allowed to regroup, resupply and prepare to continue its war on the Jews.

With Biden promising to treat any pause in combat as an excuse to work for a permanent ceasefire, the main outcome of the next hostage deal (and there inevitably will be another) will be not so much an egregious act of extortion as a political victory for Hamas that will solidify its hold on Gaza and its place as the preeminent voice of the Palestinian people.

Pressure on Netanyahu

We know that as far as the families of the hostages are concerned, no price is too high to pay for their loved ones. They are fully entitled to advocate for a deal at any price, and no one should blame them for doing so. Who wouldn’t trade the whole world to save our children or other relations?

It’s true that the campaign inside Israel to pressure Netanyahu to accede to Hamas’s terms is inextricably tied to the country’s politics. To listen to the speeches at weekly Saturday-night rallies in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square,” as I did recently, you’d think it was Netanyahu and not Hamas who was the kidnapper, and that he was holding them in his basement rather than desperately waging military and diplomatic campaigns to free them from captivity inside the Islamist group’s remaining tunnel strongholds.

But as sensitive as the prime minister is to that kind of political pressure, the most worrisome aspect of the effort to force Israel to halt the war against Hamas is not coming from within the Jewish state but from its closest ally.

If the reported terms of a hostage deal—the prospects for which seem to change every day, if not every hour—are true, then it’s an astonishing result that ought to give everyone in the civilized world pause. The hostages are important. Still, those tasked with keeping the world safe from terrorism and working against forces that threaten the stability of the Middle East should not just be appalled by the terms, even if they mean freedom to the hostages. They should be actively using all of their political, military, economic and diplomatic leverage to ensure that it doesn’t happen. A Hamas victory in the war, sealed by a hostage deal, would not simply be a defeat for Israel but a devastating blow to the interests of the United States with implications that go far beyond the conflict with the Palestinians.

American interests at stake