Every Israeli family celebrates when hostages return. We embrace them. We weep with them. But today I stand before you to say what many know but few will speak: our celebrations mask a strategic catastrophe that guarantees the next kidnapping, the next massacre, the next round of mourning.
I come before you today to propose a fundamental shift in Israeli policy - a doctrine I call “Carthage.”
Israel operates under an unspoken social contract. Citizens serve; the state promises to bring them home—through rescue or negotiation at any price. This sacred principle, the cornerstone of our resilience, has become our gravest strategic liability.
Citizens serve; the state promises to bring them home—through rescue or negotiation at any price.
Our enemies have studied us. They understand that capturing one Israeli achieves what they cannot accomplish on the battlefield. The 1985 Jibril deal released 1,150 prisoners for three soldiers. The 2011 Shalit exchange freed 1,027. In 2023, we traded 240 for 105. Each deal taught our enemies the same lesson: kidnapping works.
The consequences are written in blood. The Israeli Association of Terror Victims documents that 180 Israelis died at the hands of terrorists freed in prisoner exchanges since 2000. Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari confirmed the prisoners from the Shalit deal collectively murdered 569 Israeli civilians. Among those released was Yahya Sinwar. He spent 22 years studying Hebrew in our prisons, analyzing our society, planning his revenge. We freed him. He orchestrated October 7th.
Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Sinwar’s brothers specifically to free Sinwar. The operation succeeded exactly as designed.
Our ancient sources understood what modern leaders have forgotten. The Mishnah warns against redeeming captives at exorbitant prices—not from callousness, but from wisdom. Our rabbis understood that paying any price encourages more kidnappings, ultimately causing greater suffering. They codified this into law “for the sake of the good order of the world.”
When Abraham rescued Lot, he did not negotiate. He pursued. When David recovered the people of Ziklag, he did not bargain. He attacked. Biblical precedent supports rescue operations, not concessions that legitimize captors.
There is a critical distinction we must recognize. The Geneva Conventions govern prisoner exchanges between sovereign states—symmetrical trades of uniformed combatants at the cessation of hostilities. What we practice is fundamentally different. We negotiate with non-state actors who operate outside any legal framework. We trade for civilians unlawfully abducted from their homes—itself a war crime. And we accept ratios of a thousand to one.
I must speak directly to what weighs heaviest in this chamber: the covenant between the Israel Defense Forces and its citizen soldiers.
Every young man and woman who puts on the uniform does so with an unspoken understanding: the state will move heaven and earth to bring them home.
Every young man and woman who puts on the uniform does so with an unspoken understanding: the state will move heaven and earth to bring them home. This is sacred. This is what makes our people’s army function. Fathers send sons, mothers send daughters, knowing the nation stands behind them.
I do not ask you to abandon this covenant. I ask you to fulfill it honestly.
The covenant has never been “we will trade a thousand murderers for you.” The covenant is “we will not leave you behind.” There is a difference. Rescue honors the covenant. Capitulation corrupts it.
To the families of hostages—those who marched, who prayed, who demanded action—your grief is Israel’s grief. Your loved ones’ suffering is a national wound. But I must tell you what others will not: every exchange that freed your family member also signed the death warrant for someone else’s child. The 180 Israelis killed by released terrorists had families too. They also marched, prayed, and grieved.
The choice is not between caring for hostages and abandoning them. The choice is between a policy that guarantees endless kidnappings and one that ends them.
Israel’s Hannibal Directive recognized a hard truth: better to deny terrorists the strategic value of a captured soldier than to allow that capture to dictate national policy. The directive sought to prevent the hostage crisis before it began.
But Hannibal did not go far enough. It addressed the moment of capture. It did not address the organizations that plan, execute, and profit from hostage-taking.
I propose we extend Hannibal’s logic to its conclusion.
The name is deliberate. Hannibal was Carthage’s greatest general. But Rome understood that as long as Carthage existed, the threat would return. Rome did not negotiate with Carthage. Rome destroyed it. The threat ended.
If Hannibal denies terrorists the value of a captured soldier, Carthage denies them the value of their organization.
The social contract must evolve. The state’s promise cannot remain “we will trade for you.” It must become “we will destroy those who capture you.”
This shift—from retrieval through concession to deterrence through decisive action—changes the enemy’s calculation entirely. When hostage-taking leads not to strategic victory but to organizational annihilation, the incentive disappears.
I call upon this Cabinet to adopt a resolution declaring that Israel will no longer negotiate with terrorist organizations for hostages. Instead, Israel will employ all necessary force to rescue its citizens and to exact existential consequences upon any organization that takes them.
Sometimes the most humanitarian act is refusing to negotiate with those who weaponize humanity itself.
Sometimes the most humanitarian act is refusing to negotiate with those who weaponize humanity itself.
History will judge Israel not by how many hostages we recovered through negotiation, but by whether we found the courage to end the hostage cycle permanently.
The promise to our soldiers, to our citizens, to our children must be clear: Take an Israeli, and we will find you. We will destroy you. There will be no exchange. There will be no survival.
Only then will the cycle break.
Thank you.
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For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman
roman@meforum.org
+1 (215) 546 5406
