When It Is Proper to Support the Killing of Hostages During Wartime By Armed Groups (Not by States)
We are coming off the heels of a recent case in Gaza where six hostages were executed by Hamas. The reason seems to be that their captors feared that the army was trying to rescue them, so the captors killed the hostages rather than allow the IDF to rescue them.
This is actually a sensible policy Hamas put in because the last time Israel tried to rescue hostages, it murdered 270 people and wounded almost 1,000 more in doing so. Obviously Hamas cannot allow that to happen again.
So it logically decided, “No more of this,” and said that if Hamas felt that army was trying to rescue a hostage group, the captors would simply execute the hostages.
When guerrillas take hostages they often say they will kill them if the army tries to rescue them.
A number of hostages were taken by FARC a number of years ago. The army tried to rescue the hostages, who were being held in decent enough condition. During this operation, the FARC killed the hostages.
I supported this decision for one thing because I…
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