The world doesn't get to choose how Israel rescues its hostages - analysis

Some 44 years ago, Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) carried out a daring rescue operation to free some 20 hostages being held at the Iranian embassy in London. Twelve years ago, the British Special Boat Service, supported by members of the Nigerian army, attempted a rescue mission to free a British and Italian contractor kidnapped by al-Qaeda terrorists in Nigeria. That raid failed, and the two hostages were killed.

If BBC anchor Helena Humphrey had been presenting the news on either of those days, she might have asked a British government spokesperson why they did not give a warning before launching what proved to be deadly raids since that was the staggering question she asked former IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus about the hostage raid that freed four Israelis from Hamas captivity on Saturday.

This question rivaled for audacity one that Sky News presenter Kay Burley asked former government spokesman Eylon Levy in November – one that prompted a Levy eyebrow raise that went viral and was seen around the world – about whether the fact that Israel was willing to trade hundreds of terrorists for each Israeli hostage was not proof that Israel thinks “Palestinian lives are not valued as highly as Israeli lives.”

Criticizing Israel and its rescue operation 

Humphrey, citing Palestinian civilian casualties during Saturday’s rescue operation, implied in her question that Israel should have warned of the raid in advance to reduce civilian casualties.

Questioning Conricus’s assertion that hundreds and thousands of Palestinian civilians in the area where the hostages were held knew of their captivity and were therefore complicit with Hamas, Humphrey rejoined: 

“We do not know for sure that they were necessarily complicit with Hamas, all of the casualties that were incurred, there were reports of women and children who were among the dead, it is appearing to be a high civilian death toll – were there to have been a warning to those civilians to get out on time?”

In other words, why didn’t Israel drop leaflets and tell the Palestinians that it was about to conduct a hostage rescue operation?

Without missing a beat or raising an eyebrow, Conricus replied: “Of course, we cannot anticipate Israel to be warning ahead of a raid to extract or to save hostages because then what the terrorists would do is to kill the hostages and that would defeat the purpose.”

That exchange was an illustration of the degree to which Israel and some of the rest of the world – including some of the elite media, some Western diplomats, and many of Israel’s immediate neighbors – live in parallel universes.

The hostage release was celebrated and welcomed as a breath of fresh air across Israel, while abroad, there were some entities – such as the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey – who slammed Israel for a “massacre,” making absolutely no mention of the fact that these deaths took place during a mission to rescue Israeli hostages being held by Palestinian civilians in a civilian area.

Or, as Conricus rightly said, “The whole civilian issue here really needs to be analyzed impartially and understood. 

According to the reports I have gotten and also through the testimony of fighters and even statements made by Hamas spokespeople, the Israeli hostages were held and jailed by Palestinian civilians in a Palestinian civilian area.

As regrettable as any loss of life is, I think we would have to investigate who the people who jailed the Israeli civilians for eight months, why they did it, and what the role of the surrounding community and hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians who were aware of the fact that the Israeli hostages were being held in their midst, and why were they complicit with Hamas.”

Humphrey was not the only one living in an alternate universe. The Washington Post online headline to a story about the rescue operation placed the focus on Palestinians killed rather than Israelis freed.

“More than 200 Palestinians killed in Israeli hostage raid,” read the headline that cited that number without flagging the reader in the headline that these were Hamas figures.

“Residential blocks were destroyed, tanks menaced the streets, and grievously wounded Palestinians, some without limbs, writhed in pain on the dusty roads of the camp’s [Nuseirat] central market, according to videos and images of the raid. Many of them never reached local hospitals, health officials said. But even then, medical facilities decimated by the war often have little ability to treat injured patients,” read the third paragraph of the story that said the “brazen operation to rescue four hostages” left “unimaginable devastation in its wake.”

Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointed out on X, formerly Twitter, one glaring omission in the Post’s story: “Eleven (yes, 11) reporters on this @washingtonpost story and yet not one mention that the #Israeli hostages were evidently kept not in underground tunnels but in private #Palestinian homes in crowded, multi-story buildings, which would raise disturbing questions about broad complicity in their captivity.”

Not a word about Israeli civilians being held by Palestinian civilians in a civilian area.

EU foreign policy czar Josep Borrell was also living in this parallel universe, blasting Israel on X for perpetuating “another massacre” of Palestinians. After initially articulating relief at the release of the hostages and calling for the release of all the hostages, he wrote: “Reports from Gaza of another massacre of civilians are appalling. We condemn this in the strongest terms. The bloodbath must end immediately.”

He was not the only European diplomat so disconcerted. 

The deputy foreign minister of Norway, Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik, echoed Borrell and said, after also articulating that Norway shared in the relief of the hostages’ families, that his country is “appalled” by reports of “another massacre in Gaza.”

Norway, the diplomat said, “condemns attacks on civilians in the strongest terms.”

Norway did not, however, find it fit to condemn Hamas for paying civilians living in a civilian area to hold Israeli civilians as captives, thereby knowingly placing civilians in mortal danger because no country on earth would forfeit their right to rescue their kidnapped nationals because it may lead to the death of civilians who are holding them or others complicit in their captivity or serving as human shields. That is an absurd standard to which only Israel will be held.

But not everybody – including those far more important than Borrell or the Norwegian deputy foreign minister – is living in that parallel universe. 

US President Joe Biden and his national security advisor Jake Sullivan welcomed the rescue without any equivocation, as did some other world leaders, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Despite those words of support, however, the feeling Israelis with various social media accounts walked away with on Sunday after seeing some of the diplomatic and media reactions to the rescue operation was a sense that while they were celebrating the rescue of the hostages, not an insignificant part of the world would deprive Israel of the right to undertake a military operation to free its kidnapped nationals.

But Israel did not accept this double standard.

Or, as a Facebook poster that went viral put it: “You don’t get to choose how we rescue our hostages.”