Hamas has released hostage Edan Alexander, held in Gaza since 2023

6 comments

1. Perhaps a radical idea for Hamas (not as if they’re not familiar with those), but how about releasing ALL of the remaining hostages NOW?

   Is that too far fetched?

2. This man is not a hostage. He is a POW.

   He is was a uniformed, armed, IDF soldier who was captured during October 7th.

   He is a war criminal who was assisting a hostile foreign nation in committing genocide against their indigenous population.

   Israel can keep this piece of shit.

3. Israel should release the tens of thousands of Palestinians hostages too, why Palestinians are the only ones forced to do this, but Israel can take Palestinians as hostages all they want to, and no one can stop them.

4. Palestine starts a war by comitting a massive terror attack, then abducts civilians and keeps them as hostages and then, when they release one, edgy western college kids cream themselves to praise the oh so benevolent terror organisation.

   Now cue the downvotes bc the western college kids who couldnt find the region on a map if their lives depended on it are BIG mad now

5. Were there no Palestinian prisoner releases in exchange for Eden’s freedom?

   Amazing to have him returned, and alive. Only 58 more to go (less than half still alive).

   Hamas uses Israeli hostages as leverage, and as proof of potency – without hostages, Hamas’s threats are toothless, and they would have limited power to negotiate for their own existence to continue to attack and kill Israelis. The sooner every hostage is returned, the sooner Hamas ceases to exist as a viable political and military entity in Gaza, the sooner normalized governance can step in and improve the lives of the Gazan people and hopefully engender long-term peace.

6. Since people in this thread don’t understand why Edan is a hostage when he was a soldier and why Palestinian prisoners aren’t, here is the ICRC definition:

   > The International Convention against the Taking of Hostages defines the offence as the seizure or detention of a person (the hostage), combined with threatening to kill, to injure or to continue to detain the hostage, in order to compel a third party to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage.

   https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule96

   The definition of hostage taking **does not differentiate between civilian and military status when determining status as hostages.**

   Hostage taking means taking someone with the explicit goal of using threats to compel a third party to do/abstain for something. In other words, they are captured solely to be used as bargaining chips. PoWs are not taken to be used as bargaining chips. They are taken because an enemy combatant needs to be removed from combat and killing them is either undesired or illegal (if they surrender you can’t shoot them in the head but if you release them they may shoot you in the chest later)

   Israel’s Palestinian prisoners are not taken to be used as bargaining chips. They are either imprisoned for crimes or supposed security reasons. In many cases Israel’s taking of Palestinian prisoners is a war crime, but not the war crime of hostage taking.

   By objective standards of international law, Hamas hostages are hostages and Israeli prisoners are prisoners.

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