Two Hostages, Two Attitudes

The Times of London raises an important point about the way Hamas has handled the Gilad Shalit and Alan Johnston kidnappings:

Hamas’s attitude to the two prisoners varies wildly. It has demanded that the Army of Islam, its former comrades-in-arms, release Johnston immediately, and has threatened to use force to free him. Those threats may have prompted the gang to up the ante by rigging the journalist with explosives.

But Hamas is deploying different tactics over Corporal Schalit, using him as a bargaining chip with Israel, an act denounced yesterday by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem as a war crime.