Redeeming Captives "Let My People Go!" vs. "Bring Them Home Now"

Rav Aviad Tabory - Yeshivat Har Etzion

This mishna explains that this halakha is because of tikkun olam (changing the world for the better). In other words, we must act responsibly for the entire Nation of Israel and not necessarily think only about the individual. We must consider the welfare of the community against the welfare of the captive.

The Gemara gives two reasons for this ruling:

1. Preventing a "burden on the community," since collecting large sums of money to free a captive causes great strain on the community.
2. Discouraging extortion, since paying exorbitant sums of money in exchange for captives inevitably leads to more kidnapping.

Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg - A Historical Test Case

Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg was considered the most outstanding Jewish sage in Europe in his generation. In 1286, at the age of seventy, he was taken captive by King Rudolph I of Germany, and held for a ransom of 20,000 marks, an astronomical sum in those days.

Almost all of the rabbis and leaders of the European Jewish communities in that generation were students of Rabbi Meir, known as Maharam. He authored thousands of halachic responsa, as well as the Tosafot commentary to the Talmudic tractate Yoma. The most famous of his students was Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel, known as Rosh, whose rulings are cited extensively in the Shulchan Aruch.

It was precisely because the Maharam was so important a figure that Rudolph hoped to extort a huge ransom from the Jewish community. Indeed, the emperor’s evil scheme nearly succeeded: Maharam’s students and admirers were prepared to raise the sum necessary to free their master.

Their reasoning was based on the story cited in the Talmud concerning Rabbi Joshua’s rescue of the young child who became Rabbi Ishmael “at whatever price may be demanded.” ... the justification being that this was a matter of saving a life. A second justification provided by Tosafot is that due to the unparalleled scholarship of this child, which Rabbi Joshua already sensed, he was permitted to pay the inflated ransom.

The students of Maharam felt similarly: although the law forbids paying more for a captive than the accustomed amount, when the captive at hand is the leading Jewish scholar of the generation, and the entire community is in need of him and his wisdom, it is permissible to pay any fee.

Maharam himself, however, rejected this rationale, as he felt that this would lead to the capture of other Torah leaders. As explained by the 16th-century halachist Rabbi Shlomo Luria, Maharam feared that his ransom would lead to a much greater threat to the continuity of Judaism, should all the Jewish scholars be made easy bait for ransom to a point where the community would not have the money to ransom them, ultimately leaving them without any leadership at all.

Rabbi Meir died, seven years later (1293), in captivity in the fortress of Ensisheim.

The tragic saga of his imprisonment came to a close when his body was ransomed, 14 years after his death, by Alexander ben Shlomo (Susskind) Wimpfen, who was subsequently laid to rest at his side.

Letter from Noam and Aviva Shalit to their son, Gilad Shalit, Jun 27 2006

Our dear, sweet Gilad,

Mom and Dad, Yoel and Hadas are very concerned for you, want to hear [from] you and are hoping you are well and feeling all right – as good as possible in your condition.

We are hoping you can read this, and we want you to know that everything possible is being done to bring you home to Mitzpe Hila and the Galilee, as quickly as possible, to your family, your room that’s waiting for you (and to help us with the B & B rooms).

Know that we’re thinking of you all the time and hoping you’re managing somehow and surviving these difficult moments.

We know and believe that whoever is holding you also has a family and knows what we’re going through and will know to watch over you and your health.

Loving you and encouraging you,

Mom and Dad

Rav Tabori:

In 1970, Rav Yitzchak Hutner boarded a plane which was hijacked and forced to land in Jordan. This might have been the first time since the kidnapping of the Maharam of Rothenburg that the Jewish community debated the application of the rule referenced in the above Gemara, that for a talmid chakham there is no limit to what ransom may be paid. Rav Hershel Schachter quotes Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky arguing that what happened in Jordan is considered halakhically an act of war and falls under the halakhic definition of “milchemet mitzva.”

…Although generally in a case of pidyon sh'vuyim (rescue of captives) the Jewish community is forbidden to ransom a captive for an exorbitant sum, the ruling in the case of a great scholar is that he should be ransomed even for a sum that exceeds his "worth." Thus, many Rabbis were of the opinion that every effort should be made to secure Rav Hutner's release. Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky dissented, however, arguing that the mitzvah of pidyon sh'vuyim only applies in peacetime, but surely not during hostilities, when the delivery of ransom money to the enemy would strengthen their position! He continued to explain that although a cease-fire existed at the time, the 1948 War of Independence had never really ended, for the Arabs' avowed goal to destroy the State of Israel and drive the Jews into the sea had never been renounced. In his view, although Israel was not then engaged in active battle, in the eyes of the halacha it was considered to be experiencing a mere lull in the ongoing original 1948 War of Independence.[2]

Similarly, Rav Yisrael Rosen, editor of the proclaimed series Techumin, wrote an article questioning the heavy price which Israel paid for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken captive in 2006. After quoting the many articles throughout Israel’s history of kidnappings, he concluded that one cannot use the Gemara in Gittin as a reference in cases where the ransom is not money but rather freeing live terrorists. In these cases, he argues that

Halakha remains neutral and leaves room for tactical decisions to be made by the government.[3]

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the Halakhot of Hostages: Part I - Jewish Review of Books

• By Elli Fischer
• November 2, 2023

After the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 but prior to the IDF’s daring Entebbe rescue on July 4, 1976, the families of the hostages asked Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) for a halakhic opinion whether on Israel could release terrorists in exchange for the Entebbe hostages.

Rabbi Yosef had an encyclopedic knowledge of rabbinic literature and was one of the most brilliant halakhic thinkers of the twentieth century. His teshuvah (responsum) repays close reading, especially now in light of the 240 or more hostages presently being held by Hamas in Gaza, and Hamas’s demand that Israel release all current Hamas prisoners in exchange for the release of hostages. Over the next few weeks, I will translate and briefly analyze key passages of his twenty-page teshuvah, some of the sources Rabbi Yosef drew upon, and other texts that address the duty to ransom captives.

Rabbi Yosef first published his teshuvah in 1977 in a rabbinic journal and later included it, with minor variations, in the tenth volume of his Responsa Yabi’a Omer (Hoshen Mishpat §6). In the classic fashion of any posek or halakhic decisor, he begins with a statement of the facts and a legal reformulation of the question.

On 29 Sivan, 5736 [June 27, 1976], an Air France airplane on its way from Paris to Israel was hijacked by terrorists. The hijacked plane contained many passengers, including 104 Jews on the way to Israel. The plane landed in Uganda, which is four thousand kilometers from Israel. In Uganda, the terrorists were aided by the Ugandan authorities, who are Jew-haters. There, all passengers were released except for the Jews among them. The hijackers presented an ultimatum, demanding that their comrades, forty terrorists imprisoned in Israel, be released within forty-eight hours, or else they would harm the hostages they were holding.

The question arose: According to halakhah, should the terrorists imprisoned in Israel be released, as the hijackers demand, to save the lives of the abducted Jews? Or perhaps we should say that, aside from inviting further abductions to extort the release of more terrorists once this plot succeeds, there is also concern that the terrorists released from prison will almost certainly attempt to infiltrate the State of Israel again, to kill and murder men, women, and children. Thus, to save the abducted Jews from certain danger, we place the entire Jewish population of Israel, and especially of border cities, in circumstances of real potential danger.

The first stage of Rabbi Yosef’s long analysis revolves around the question of endangering the lives of some to save the lives of others:

The basis of the law . . . is in Tosefta Terumot (7:23): “A group to whom gentiles said, ‘Give us one of you, and we will kill you, and if you do not, we will kill you all,’ they should all be killed and not hand over a single Jewish life. But if they specified, as in the case of Sheba son of Bichri, they should hand him over and not be killed.”

. . . Accordingly, in the present case, it would seem at first glance that since releasing imprisoned terrorists would endanger many residents of Israel, we should not take such an action . . . even though it entails the rescue of a hundred kidnapped Jews—in accordance with the law of the Tosefta . . . “they should all be killed and not hand over a single Jewish life.”

However, we can distinguish between the law of the Tosefta . . . and our case, for there, the very act of handing over a Jew to be killed is an act of cruelty, giving him to spillers of innocent blood to save themselves with his life. Therefore, they should all be killed rather than handing over a single Jewish life. Here, however, the act of releasing imprisoned terrorists is not being done with murderous intent. Rather, the goal is to save a hundred abducted Jews from their captors, in exchange for the release of these [terrorists]. . . .

The earliest rabbinic sources severely limit the circumstances under which a group of Jews may hand over one of their own so that the collective is spared. As he often does, Rabbi Yosef concludes his exhaustive discourse on the various aspects of the dilemma by introducing a distinction that allows him to circumvent these textual precedents: handing someone over is a form of collaboration with the killers, and one may not collaborate, even on pain of death. An exchange of prisoners, however, is fundamentally an act of rescue, not of collaboration, and therefore might be permitted.

He develops this line of reasoning by considering a kind of rabbinic version of the famous trolley car problem, which poses the question of whether one can save many lives by sacrificing one or a few. In Rabbi Yosef’s scenario, an agent can minimize fatalities by diverting a bomb or grenade away from a large group, which will inevitably cause the death of someone in the device’s new path.

Diverting an arrow (or bomb, or hand grenade) from one side to another is fundamentally an act of rescue, and it is not at all directly linked to the killing of the individual on the other side. It is merely incidental that there is a Jew on the other side right now, and perhaps we must make every effort to minimize the loss of Jewish life to the degree possible, for otherwise many lives will be lost. . . . The same is true in the present case; the release of terrorists is not akin to killing outright. Rather, it is like one who diverts and redirects a hand grenade and prevents the loss of many Jewish lives to the degree possible . . . especially since we are not certain that the terrorists who will be released will return to murdering Jews, since they have suffered for their wicked schemes.

Rabbi Yosef ends this first part of his responsum by concluding that exchanging terrorists for hostages is not akin to handing over one person for slaughter to save another, and is therefore permitted.

In our next translation, Rabbi Yosef turns to address a different, related problem: May individuals risk their lives to save others who otherwise will certainly die?

Part II

When Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was asked whether one could exchange hostages for imprisoned terrorists in the midst of the Entebbe crisis, he began by arguing that to do so would not violate the prohibition on sacrificing one person in order to save another. We read that even if the released terrorists went on commit further acts of violence, the exchange itself would be an act of rescue, not an act of collaboration with evildoers. We now turn to the next section, which makes up about half of Rabbi Yosef’s long, learned responsum and concerns the duty to save another’s life at risk of one’s own.

The Torah commands, “You shall not stand by the blood of your fellow” (Leviticus 19:16), from which the Rabbis derive that if one sees another “drowning in a river, being dragged away by a wild animal, or under attack by bandits,” he must rescue him (Sanhedrin 73a). These examples seem to indicate that one must take risks—confront bandits and wild animals or jump into a raging river—to try to save someone else. But is the charge not to “stand by the blood of your fellow” absolute, regardless of the risk one incurs, and regardless of the likelihood of a successful rescue?

To answer this question, Rabbi Yosef turned to the thirteenth-century sage Rabbi Meir HaKohen whose work Hagahot Maimoniyot (Glosses to Maimonides) supplemented Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah with rulings from the Ashkenazic tradition, and Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (known as the Radbaz; 1479–1573), who served in the rabbinate in Egypt and the Land of Israel after being expelled from Spain. Hagahot Maimoniyot requires a person to endanger himself to save another based on a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud. Radbaz argues, to the contrary, that someone who risks his life to rescue another is a ‘pious fool’ (hasid shoteh), explaining that “the possible [danger] to himself outweighs the certain [danger] to his companion.” So must one risk his life to save someone else? According to Hagahot Maimoniyot, yes, according to Radbaz, no—in fact, it is forbidden.

However, Rabbi Yosef introduces three key exceptions to Radbaz’s restrictive view: (a) one may risk his life to save a large number of people in danger; (b) one may risk his life to save a great sage or leader, upon whom the community depends; and (c) one may take a minor risk in order to save someone from grave danger. In mentioning this last exception, Rabbi Yosef refers to his own ruling on kidney donation: there is a risk to the donor, but since it is minimal whereas the recipient will almost surely die without a healthy kidney, donation is permitted.

Despite these hedges, Rabbi Yosef concludes in the penultimate paragraph of this section that the question of exchanging dangerous terrorists for the Entebbe hostages would still be a matter of dispute between the opinions of Radbaz and Hagahot Maimoniyot—and that settled halakha follows the opinion of Radbaz:

According to the view of Hagahot Maimoniyot, in the name of the Jerusalem Talmud, that one must incur possible danger to save a companion from certain danger, it seems that in the present case we would have to release the forty terrorists imprisoned here—since even though it might result in their posing renewed danger, it remains uncertain—[in contrast] to saving the abducted Jews from certain danger….

But as a matter of law, we do not follow [the ruling of] Hagahot Maimoniyot. . . rather, we say that uncertain [danger] to oneself overrides certain [danger] to one’s companion, as it says: “Your brother shall live with you” (Leviticus 25:36) [which the Sages in Bava Metzia 62a explain to mean:] your life comes first. And we require that one makes certain to live, as in Yoma (85b), that [the biblical phrase] “and live by them” (Leviticus 18:5) means that one may not put himself in a situation of potential danger.

This would seem to tilt the scales definitively against a prisoner exchange. Halakha follows the view that one may not incur risk to rescue another, so how could Israel risk the lives of its citizens by turning terrorists loose, even to save the lives of hostages? Yet it is at precisely this point in the argument that Rabbi Yosef introduces a further line of inquiry, undermining this conclusion.

Is there, he asks, a difference between endangering oneself to rescue someone and endangering others to rescue someone? Because the exchange of hostages for terrorists is clearly a case of the latter, and the distinction might cut both ways. On the one hand, Hagahot Maimoniyot might require one to incur risk only to oneself but forbid endangering a third party to save another; on the other hand, Radbaz may only prohibit endangering oneself (“your life comes first”) but allow a third party to rescue Person A by placing Person B in some danger.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

Rabbi Yosef analyzes this question through the lens of two early modern responsa. In these two cases, saving one person may endanger another. The first incident comes from Responsa Maharival (2:40), by Rabbi Yosef ibn Lev (1505–1580, Turkey and Greece):

Reuven is friendly with the royal advisers and noblemen, and sometimes [the noblemen] would arrest wealthy Jews on behalf of the regime and conscript them…. This Jew [Reuven] is favored by the noblemen and can save a Jew from that misfortune, but he is afraid that if he saves Shimon, they will take Levi in his stead. [But] who is to say that Shimon’s blood is redder? Maybe Levi’s blood is redder! And so he asks whether he is permitted to save Shimon from his troubles.

The second case appears in Beit Hillel (Yoreh Dea 197) the legal commentary of Rabbi Hillel ben Naftali Hertz (1615–1690, Poland and Germany):

I was asked concerning a young woman who was living with her uncle in one community. A gentile libelously accused her of promising to abandon Judaism and to marry him. When her uncle learned that she was thus slandered, he sent her to a different community, governed by a different nobleman. Then, when this gentile saw that she was sent away, he went to the [local] nobleman, who arrested the rabbi and communal leaders, demanding that they bring the young woman before him for trial.

Now, the rabbi and communal leaders wrote to me to extradite the young woman to their city, so that she may stand trial before the nobleman and thus free [the rabbi and communal leaders] from prison. But the young woman cries bitterly that she never spoke even a word of such matters with that gentile.

In both cases, there is an opportunity to free a Jew from prison, sparing them from imminent danger, but to do so endangers others to some extent.

Maharival rules that Reuven may intervene to release Shimon from prison since:

if it is possible that the outrage will pass and no one will be taken in his stead, an uncertainty does not take precedence over something certain. . . . So clearly [such a] rescuer has done nothing wrong and, to the contrary, has done a mitzvah.

In the overall calculus, Reuven has liberated Shimon while only possibly placing Levi at risk. (Maharival does not explicitly invoke Radbaz or Hagahot Maimoniyot, and it is possible that both would agree in this case.)

In the second case, Rabbi Hillel rules that the young woman need not endanger herself to rescue the imprisoned rabbi and leaders because she herself would be in far graver danger than the rabbis and leaders whose freedom she could secure, as only she is accused of breaking the law. The implication is that if the local leaders were in greater danger than the young woman, then the rabbinical court of the community harboring her would have to extradite her to stand trial—possibly according to both Hagahot Maimoniyot and Radbaz.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef concludes that it is legitimate for a third party to subject one party to moderate risk in order to save another party from mortal danger:

When the choice is given to a third party to decide between two, one who is in a state of possible danger, and the second in certain danger, the possibility [of danger] does not supersede certain [danger], and the rescue of the one in certain danger is given precedence.

In the final paragraph of this section, Rabbi Yosef adds one final argument in favor of exchanging prisoners for hostages:

It seems that we really must be much more concerned about the immediate danger to the hundred abducted Jews, as the cruel terrorist hijackers brandish the sword blade at their heads, threatening to execute them by Thursday, 3 Tammuz [July 1], at 2:00 p.m.—and these evildoers do not make empty threats. But the future risk that the release of forty imprisoned terrorists is liable to pose is not our immediate concern. It is rather a future, long-term concern.

Rabbi Yosef bolsters this argument for the distinction between immediate danger and future danger by citing a rather surprising precedent.

Rabbi Yehezkel Landau, who was the Chief Rabbi of Prague and one of the towering figures of the late eighteenth century, was once posed a question from London. Could surgeons be trained by performing autopsies, which are generally forbidden, on corpses? Rabbi Landau ruled that if a patient was present, and if conducting the autopsy would directly help the performance of the surgery here and now, it was permitted. Under normal circumstances, however, autopsies were forbidden, even though they advanced the medical profession and contributed to the saving of lives in the future. Rabbi Yosef takes Rabbi Landau’s ruling as indication that long-term considerations do not factor into the calculation of risk against rescue.

With these two arguments—that even if one may not put risk his life to save another, one may place a third party at some risk in order to save someone in greater danger, and that indefinite future risk cannot be part of the calculus—Rabbi Yosef concludes, once again, that it is permissible to release terrorists in exchange for hostages.

In the third part of this classic responsum, which I will turn to in the next installment of this series, Rabbi Yosef lays out the parameters of the mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim, the ransoming of captives.

Part III

In the first two installments of this series, we saw how Rabbi Ovadia Yosef permitted the exchange of imprisoned terrorists for hostages, despite the possibility, even likelihood, that the released terrorists would harm or kill further innocent victims.

In the next part of the responsum, Rabbi Yosef discusses such an exchange under the rubric of pidyon shevuyim (the redemption or ransom of captives). Pidyon shevuyim has a long history that is both tragic and comforting, as Jewish communities almost always managed to purchase the freedom of fellow Jews. Moses Maimonides described the obligation to redeem captives with uncharacteristic rhetorical flourish:

The ransom of captives takes precedence over feeding and clothing the poor. There is no mitzvah greater than the ransom of captives, for a captive is in the category of the hungry, thirsty, unclothed, and in mortal peril. One who averts his eyes from his ransom transgresses [the negative commandments]: “You shall not harden your heart or close your hand” (Deuteronomy 15:7), “You shall not stand by the blood of your fellow” (Leviticus 19:16), and “He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight” (Leviticus 25:53). Moreover, he has neglected the [positive] commandments: “You shall surely open your hand to him” (Deuteronomy 15:8), “Your brother shall live with you” (Leviticus 25:36), “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), “Save those who are taken to death” (Proverbs 24:11), and many similar statements. There is no mitzvah as great as the ransom of captives (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 8:10).

Documents discovered in the Cairo Geniza show that Maimonides’s rhetoric was far from empty. Around 1170, soon after his arrival in Egypt as a refugee from the Almohad Caliphate, Maimonides led fundraising efforts to ransom Jews who had been captured by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem’s conquest of Bilbeis. One of his letters, sent to communities throughout Egypt, includes the following appeal:

God bless anyone who has acted on behalf of the captives, may God release their bonds. We send you this letter with … Rabbi Aharon HaLevi…. When he reads it before you, brothers, do as is fitting for you and earn great reward. Do as we, all the judges, elders, and Torah scholars have done; we go about day and night, imploring people in the synagogues, on the streets, and at the gates of houses, until we obtain something for this massive undertaking….

The Supreme God will not bring you to distress; He will protect you and shroud you in His abundant mercy….

Moshe, the son of Rabbi Maimon

In the long and sordid history of Jewish captivity, of which this incident was a part, Jews were rarely a specific target. They were captured in battles such as this one, or, especially later, by pirates and bandits, who sold them into slavery or offered them for ransom. In both cases, Jewish communities had one effective tool for redeeming them: money.

However, by the time Rabbi Yosef was writing in 1976, the State of Israel had other tools available. One was to exchange prisoners for captives. Another, the one famously taken, was military rescue. It is no wonder, then, that Rabbi Yosef devotes most of his discussion to a risk analysis; in halakhic literature, as in the historical reality it reflected, pidyon shevuyim, was a matter of ransom, not risk.

When Rabbi Yosef turns to pidyon shevuyim in his responsum, he begins not by emphasizing its importance, as Maimonides did, but with its limits. A mishnah states that “we do not ransom captives for more than their price, to benefit the world (tikkun ha-olam).” (Gittin, 4: 6) The tension between this pragmatic public policy and the idea that there is no mitzvah greater than ransoming captives was eventually codified in the Shulhan Arukh which restates Maimonides’s ruling and then continues:

Every moment that one delays pidyon shevuyim when it could have been done earlier is akin to bloodshed.

Captives are not to be ransomed for more than their price, for the benefit of the world. (Yoreh De’ah 252:1-4)

At the heart of pidyon shevuyim, then, is the difficult, perhaps impossible, dilemma, which faces Israel now: How do we balance the immediate needs of the captives with tikkun olam? The Talmud offers two views on how refusing to overpay benefits the world. First, if Jews were to overpay to ransom their captives, it would place communities under a great financial burden. Second, it would incentivize potential captors to target Jews.

The Talmud seems to prefer the latter reason, and the major halakhic codes cite only the second rationale: Overpaying captors would effectively declare open season on Jews. Rabbi Yosef applies this rationale to the case of the Entebbe hostages:

Based on this, there is reason to think that the release of a large number of terrorists, as in the present case, due to the bold actions of their comrades, the hijackers, will encourage them to plan the hijacking of another plane with many Jews and thereby extort the release of more terrorists imprisoned in Israel.

This reasoning leads to something like the “no negotiation with terrorists” doctrine developed in the West in the 1970s, according to which any capitulation encourages further acts of terror.

Yet the restriction on overpaying for captives (like the “no negotiation” mantra) is far from the final word on the subject. As Rabbi Yosef demonstrates, the medieval rabbis developed a series of exceptions to the rule. In fact Jews often paid exorbitant ransoms to free captives.

MODERN TIMES:

Poll: 79% of Israelis Support Shalit Deal, YNet News, Yedioth Ahronoth, 17.10.11

The vast majority of Israel's citizens are in favour of the deal securing the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 terrorists, a public opinion poll commissioned by Yedioth Ahronoth shows.

Asked whether they were in favour of Shalit's release in exchange for 1,027 terrorists, 79% of the respondents said yes and only 14% said no...

Among male respondents, 74% support the deal and 19% oppose it, while 86% of the women support it and only 5% are against it...

Examining division of opinions within religious sectors, the survey revealed that seculars reject out of hand the inclusion of rabbis in such decisions (78%), the conservatives are divided to those who oppose such an option (43%) and those in support of including the IDF chief rabbi as a decision maker (41%), and the religious sector is in favor of incorporating the IDF chief rabbi (47%) or other rabbis (47%) in the decision-making process. Common view among the ultra-Orthodox community is that that rabbinical establishment's stance should be taken into account (83%).

Bloomfield, A., 2011. Palestinian militants vow to abduct a 'new Gilad Shalit'. The Telegraph, 18 Oct

The Popular Resistance Committees, the Hamas-dominated militant coalition that captured Sgt Maj Shalit, vowed that it would seize another Israeli soldier to force Israel to release the 6,000 Palestinian prisoners that remain in its custody.

"We are going to capture another soldier and cleanse all the Israeli jails of our prisoners," said a masked spokesman using the nom de guerre Abu Mujahid.

For many Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, the release of so many prisoners for one man is evidence that Israel responds only to threats, making the path of peaceful negotiation espoused by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and his moderate Fatah party nonsensical. "The people want a new Gilad, the people want a new Gilad," chanted the tens of thousands who gathered at a Hamas-sponsored rally in Gaza city to welcome home the freed prisoners.

(See 'Hamas Video: Training to Kidnap an Israeli Soldier': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0zHyTBxwoU)

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaLevi Kilav, Techumim 4 (1983)

Furthermore, it seems that nowadays, when terrorists declare their desire to kidnap and murder Jews and, in fact, act upon these declarations without any compassion for the victims whether me, women or children, that releasing terrorists is actual danger and is therefore forbidden. This is true even according to those who maintain that [the prohibition] is based on “the burden imposed on the community”, since the danger [here] is tangible and arises immediately upon their release. Added to this is the fact that they join the forces that battle us from their countries with long range weaponry and thus represent a threat even if they don’t actually penetrate our borders. It therefore seems that it is forbidden to release terrorists and murderers in exchange for captives, not just an exchange of many [terrorists for one [Jew], but even one for one, because of the future danger.