The Price of Israeli Hostages - with Haviv Rettig Gur

Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

Ark Media

Society, October 7, Hamas, War, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Israel, News Commentary, News, Politics, Elections, Palestine, Dan Senor, Government

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Haviv Rettig Gur returns for our weekly conversation from Jerusalem to provide real-time reporting and analysis on the war, and invaluable historical context. More than 240 people, including a number of U.S. citizens, were taken hostage during the Oct. 7 massacre. More than half of the hostages have foreign nationalities (either as dual citizens or solely as foreign nationals). Four hostages, including two U.S. citizens, have since been released, one has been rescued and two others were found dead. In this episode we discuss how Israeli decision-makers are working through options to return the hostages. How is the IDF trying to prosecute this war knowing there are hostages? Do the twin objectives of eradicating Hamas and returning the hostages reinforce one another or conflict with one another? Where is the Israeli public on these horrific decisions and trade-offs? The families of the hostages have become a critically important voice in these deliberations -- what has been the effect?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Israel has made a demand to receive a huge number of hostages in exchange for some small measure of cease-fire.
0:08.1	Why would it be willing to have any ceasefire at all if the logic is that the military pressure is what's actually getting
0:13.4	Hamas to agree to release hostages in the first place.
0:16.4	And the simple answer is the Israeli leadership understands this war is a very long-term war.
0:21.8	This is not going to take days or weeks. It's going to take months. And if it's
0:25.5	going to take months, then even if five days or seven days will give Hamas time to
0:29.8	regroup. Over the course of those months, we can afford it if it means getting out a significant number of
0:35.9	hostages but it has to be significant enough to dramatically lower the pressure on the
0:40.6	cabinet going forward so that the war can continue with less hostage pressure.
0:45.7	The deal in which Hamas gives that up for a few days of ceasefire is hard to imagine.
0:50.8	And so we're a little bit stuck. My guess is there won't be a hostage deal anytime anytime in the York City on Sunday, November 19th it's 2 a.m. in Israel on Monday
1:18.8	November 20th. In today's episode we are going to have a more comprehensive discussion than we have had on an issue that has been front and center and extremely deep and understandably very raw in the Israeli national conversation.
1:36.0	Oddly, it's a topic that has not received the same attention here in the United States or elsewhere in the diaspora and around the world when it comes to the
1:45.8	overall war in Gaza and that is the question of how Israeli society is working through
1:50.6	what to do about the hostages in Gaza.
1:55.0	More than 240 people, including a number of US citizens,
1:59.3	more than half the hostages have foreign nationalities,
2:02.0	were taken hostage during the October 7th massacre.
2:06.0	Four hostages, including two U.S. citizens, have since been released.
2:11.3	One has been rescued and two others were found by the IDF to be dead.
2:17.0	Now, just to state the obvious when discussing this topic, we are going to be talking about the ongoing negotiations. There are
2:26.2	reportedly breakdowns and talks and then they pick up again and so the obvious observation
	...

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