How to free the hostages peacefully*

* Sha'i ben-Tekoa, 16 February 2025

Israelis, for all their intelligence-gathering prowess—the late Major-General George J. Keegan Jr once said the Mossad is worth five CIAs—still suffer from an insufficient understanding of the psychology of their Arab-Muslim enemies.

The Israelis brilliantly figured out how to plant individual bombs on some 3,000 Islamic Party of Islam’s God monsters (Hezbollah) to blow them all up simultaneously, but when it comes to their enemies’ psychopathology, they are less adept.

The late, esteemed anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) discerned two principal socialization techniques: shame and guilt. She said there are shame societies and guilt societies. The late esteemed psychoanalyst Erik Erikson likewise described shame as the first stage in childhood development, later followed by guilt. Shame depends on being seen in a forbidden act; guilt is experienced even if no one saw.

Judaism and Christianity are guilt cultures; Japanese and Arabs are shame societies in which “saving face” is paramount.

Moreover, the Arabs’ principal religion, Islam, means “submission,” so theirs is also a culture of domination and submission, in which humiliation is a major component. The Qur'an explicitly orders Believers to “oppress and humiliate” the Jews, and as we have seen these last 15 months since October 7, 2023, for Muslim Arabs, holding someone hostage means more than the loss of the captive’s freedom. The hostage in their clutches must also be “oppressed and humiliated.”

We also know of the Palestinian Authority police and the fate of fellow Arab Muslims that they arrest. In PA police jails, they, too, are tortured and humiliated. For these psychopaths, total domination of others, especially Jews, is also religiously sanctioned.

In sum, in light of the psychology of the Muslim kidnappers in Gaza, here is a simple plan that might work to free the hostages:

Needed Supplies:

1 garden-variety garden hose

1 professional TV video camera

1 trenching machine

20 pitas

Implementation:

1) Outside the Israeli prison housing the most dangerous terrorists, the trenching machine should dig a trench 76 feet long (the estimated number of still living hostages) and 3 feet wide (in honor of the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and 12-feet deep (after the 12 Tribes of Israel).

2) When the trench is completed, in the middle of the night, in a surprise raid inside the prison, Israeli forces will rouse Marwan Barghouti and 75 of the worst terrorists from their beds and drive them into the trench, at which point they’ll be told its dimensions and their meaning. It will be a great humiliation for these kidnappers to be told they are now the hostages of the Jews, the evilest people in the world for Muslims. And in this trench, they will remain until the Israeli hostages go free.

3) Once a day, forty half-pitas should be thrown into the trench, allowing the video camera to capture for a 24/7 Internet podcast the starving terrorists down below fighting over them. Likewise, once a day, a hose should rain down water on the terrorists, forcing them to open their mouths to catch as much of the spray as possible, like trained seals waiting for their trainer to throw them a fish.

4) The terrorists will also have to relieve themselves of their liquid and solid wastes where they stand, an activity also recorded by the live-streaming Internet video.

5) A contest should be held in Israel and the United States. Entrants will have to pay a small fee, and the contributions will go to the families of the American and Israeli victims. The entrant should submit his/her best guess as to how long before Barghouti and his fellow humiliated ghouls, sex maniacs, murderers, and mutilators begin crying and begging their comrades in Gaza to let the Israeli hostages go free. Prize for the closest guess to be determined.

And yes, this may sound harsh, but you must fight the enemy you have, the one that has been subjecting Israeli civilians, including women and children, to this same treatment, not some pristine enemy you imagine.

Crossposted from American Thinker with the author's permission. Sha’i ben-Tekoa’s PHANTOM NATION: Inventing the “Palestinians” as the Obstacle to Peace is available at Amazon.com in hard cover, or a Kindle ebook. His podcasts can be heard at www.phantom-nation.com.

Picture credit:

Grok

Md iet - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23253108

DrZubairRashid - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90332154

Comments:

On 4 May 2025 at 20:42, Ben Dor A. wrote:

Dear Anjuli Pandavar

A great idea. Regretfully, I doubt anyone in Israel has the balls to execute such a plan.

But I'll share it anyway 😂😂

Best Regards
Ben Dor A.

On 4 May 2025 at 20:53, Anjuli Pandavar wrote:

Dear Ben Dor A.

I agree that these ideas are great, but credit for them goes to the author, Sha'i ben-Tekoa, who will no doubt appreciate your comment.

Best regards,
Anjuli

On 4 May 2025 at 22:21, Jalal Tagreeb wrote:

Hi Anjuli,

Thanks for this fantastic article!

What you said in this article is very important. As an Arab I can confidently tell you that our society is indeed a shame society (saving face) and I do not think that other societies have it to our degree – including the Japanese. Just to give you a simple supporting example. Do you know how Islamists were treated by the past anti-Islamist Arab regime in Syria? Not killing or execution, but something very simple: "humiliation". Full facial hair shaving and applying complete woman face makeup! You will be surprised at how sexy they are! What was their reaction? "Please kill us!" and they begged and cried like a child for it. I can share a video with you about it if you like.

On a related subject, I think the humiliation that the U.S. and Britain did to Saddam Hussein was truly a perfect job. The humiliation that Saddam Hussein got was more powerful than throwing a nuclear bomb on him. Broadcasting all that on T.V., his photos in his underwear, etc, made the documentation eternal such that no one in future can argue about it.

In a relatively recent publication, the Daily Mail published new photos of Saddam showing his head covered by a polyester hood following his capture, this was never seen before. So, it is possible that they have other interesting photos of him in an iron cage covered by curtains, folded as U.S. officials give a briefing – as Mr Bush planned to do. Revealing something like that will prove the fake white wash of similar historical cases like the capture of Ottoman sultan

Bayezid I, “the Terroriser of the World” by Timur. Timur threw the sultan in a small iron cage and carried him a trophy. The Terroriser of the World was plucked from the highest jihad victory and put on display in a cage by none other than “The Sword of Islam” himself, during one of Islam’s holiest months! Islamic literature tried to white wash this in a weak way. However, many Persian and Arab literature books clearly mention it was a "Qafas" which means cage ... the story is true. For this reason I say that the U.S and Britain should have recorded such a scene of Saddam in a cage as a proof for future.

BTW, the anniversary of Saddam's paid price is on Eid al Adha. I have all the photos, videos and content to write a good article about his humiliating capture. I can write it for MtH if you are interested.

Kind regards,
Jalal.

On 5 May 2025 at 10:49, Anjuli Pandavar wrote:

Dear Jalal,

Thank you for your kind words. The article is not mine, but that of Sha'i ben-Tekoa. I'm sure he would appreciate your comment.

This year's Eid al-Adha, from sunset 6 June to sunset 7 June, coincides exactly with Shabbat. That's a great deal of psychological ammunition that the Israelis, as usual, will squander. I have no intention of letting it go to waste.

You've submitted articles on Saddam's humiliation before. You will recall that I did not accept them for publication. The topic is very important and you clearly know a great deal about it, but the writing has to go beyond the obvious, else the reader gains nothing that AI could not do. I want to publish that story, very much so, so feel free to submit it again. What I'll be looking for is: what does Jalal Tagreeb bring to this collection of information that no one else can? Make connections that only you, with your unique knowledge and personal experience, can make. I am also not interested in sentimentality. If you can do this, then we're talking. Nonetheless, thank you for the offer. Let's see where we go from here.

With best regards,
Anjuli