WHY SOME HOSTAGES FIGHT

An interesting note: the hostage situation in Sydney, Australia brings thoughts about hostage behavior to my mind. A news commentator asked a rhetorical question about why the 10 hostages didn’t simply overpower the hostage taker. +Charles Krauthammer, extreme rightwing author and intellectual, wrote a perceptive essay concerning the revolt of passengers on “only one” of four hijacked planes during those terrible times on September 11 (When Imagination Fails, in Things that matter. 2013). Why didn’t passengers on all the planes fight. He speculated that the thing that sparked the uprising of passengers related to their cell phones. They found out hijackers crashed the three other airplanes in to buildings that day; two crashed in the Trade Tower and the third into the pentagon. The logic he used in coming to the conclusion he did was that those in the plane realized when you crash an airplane everyone dies; there is no way out other then to take command of the plane to prevent that from happening. Even if they die attempting to overpower the hostage taker the alternative is as it is. In the Sydney restaurant situation, there is always hope, as there is in school shootings, for example, with a student with a gun; each teacher believes there is hope of surviving.

This is the message that negotiators should have for the hostages, which logically would be the same for the hostage takers. Of course, when hostage takes want to die, all bets are off.      

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