Never mind Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism — or Gary Oldman’s ridiculous defense of him this week. Israel (and America) can take a bit of advice from the character Gibson played, Tom Mullen, in the 1996 film “Ransom.”
In fact, the Jewish state seems to be doing just that.
For nearly two weeks now, Israel has been cracking down on Hamas, which it says is behind the June 12 kidnapping of three teenagers.
Shortly after the boys disappeared, the Israeli Defense Force launched Operation Brothers’ Keepers, putting Hebron and its outskirts — a Hamas stronghold — under siege. Hundreds of West Bank Hamas operatives were arrested. Homes of its bigwigs were razed.
The group’s financial and social infrastructure was hit, and charities, media assets and bank accounts were confiscated.
Separately, some right-wing Israeli legislators are drafting a law to limit the prime minister’s ability to free hundreds of Arab terrorists in exchange for a small number of Israeli abductees.
As if to underscore the point, this week the national police named Ziad Awad as a suspect in an April murder of an Israeli cop. Awad was released just recently as part of an exchange of hundreds of terrorists for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. Now Israel is rearresting dozens of them.
Israel’s new approach is reminiscent of Gibson’s in “Ransom.”
In the film, Mullen, an airline exec, at first contemplates paying the kidnappers $2 million to get back his young son. But then, he changes his mind. As he displays the cash on live TV, he tells the bad guys: “This is as close as you’ll ever get to it.”
No ransom will be paid, he says. “Not one dime. Not one penny. Instead, I’m offering this money as a reward on your head. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter.” It’s a terrific moment.
Like the father in the movie, and even more than in other free societies, Israelis see each abductee as their own child. Consider: Until last month, few Americans outside of Hailey, Idaho, ever heard of Bowe Bergdahl.
Then suddenly, he became a political football. Every detail of his capture was reexamined, and President Obama’s release of five Taliban terrorists to free him was heavily criticized.
But imagine that debate had Bergdahl’s face been plastered on every billboard and every newscast across the country for the entirety of his five-year captivity.
That’s how it was in Israel when Gilad Shalit was held incommunicado in Gaza for half a decade. (Until last month, more New Yorkers had probably heard of Shalit than Bergdahl.)
In the tiny Jewish state, public pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pay any price for the return of Shalit — everyone’s “child” — was enormous. To free him, Bibi agreed in October 2011 to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including terrorists convicted of mass murder.
The swap was history’s most uneven, but far from unique for Israel. Since the 1980s, it has exchanged as many as 7,500 Arab prisoners for 14 living abductees and the bodies of six dead ones.
Israel puts an extremely high premium on captured citizens, and in the age of insta-media this vulnerability has become a major weakness (even though some rightly argue it’s also the country’s real strength.)
Well aware of this, Hamas has plotted more kidnappings, hoping to reap the political benefits of mass-prisoner release. Soldiers, civilians, girls, boys, the elderly — whatever. Hamas sees their abduction for ransom as a major new terrorist weapon.
And sure enough, when 19-year-old Eyal Yifrah, 16-year-old Gilad Shaar and 16-year-old Naftali Frenkel (who has US citizenship) disappeared last week while hitchhiking home from a religious school in Gush Etzion, a large Jewish settlement block in the West Bank, they became everyone’s boys.
Only this time, Israel is trying to turn the tables.
It’s looking to impose a high price on Hamas for the kidnapping. True, it’s not clear if Jerusalem can stick to this crackdown. Pressures abound: World leaders waste no time denouncing “collective punishment.”
Fears that reported IDF “atrocities” could ignite region-wide violence (as Ramadan begins Saturday) are very real.
Indeed, only two weeks into the abduction crisis, the IDF already seems to be easing the Hebron siege. And eventually Netanyahu may well let prisoners go, in exchange for the three teens.
Still, Israel is aiming to convey a message to Hamas: Whatever benefit you may get in the end, the price you pay will be higher.
After turning the tables in “Ransom,” Gibson “congratulates” the kidnappers: “You’ve just become a $2 million lottery ticket,” he tells them. No, reality is not a movie. But that doesn’t mean films can’t make good points.
Israel is now proving a useful lesson from “Ransom”: Even in the most heart-wrenching of circumstances, the bad guys don’t have to win.