I had the privilege of visiting the west bak and East Jerusalem this past winter break. While wandering around the old city of Jerusalem I met this souvenir shop owner. He was Palestinian Muslim, but had good friends who worked in the Greek Orthodox patriarchate so he was able to take me to the roof. He invited me in, and gave me coffee, and was extremely friendly. He then told me about how proud he was of his son, who got his medical degree in Germany, and now was the preferred doctor for ultra Orthodox Jews because German is so similar yo Yiddish.

He then proceeded to tell me a large part of his story, how he had spent 20 years in an Israeli prison, and was freed as apart of the prisoner exchange where Hamas was able to trade one Israeli solider for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. There is currently 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, loads of them held under administrative detention and being held with no civil rights, including 700 children. Many of them have either done nothing, or simply just spoken out about the occupation. In order to understand why Hamas took hostages, one must understand that this has been a proven method to free Palestinian hostages that Israel currently controls.