Terrorists attribute all responsibility for hostage harm to the adversary provoking them.

Evidence

When Sayyid Abbas al-Musawi of Hezbollah was asked whether the “oppressed” were responsible for taking hostages, he shifted the blame to international foes: “Only the United States, France, and Israel are responsible, since they provoke such actions by their hateful policy toward the Muslim people and their barbaric practices, the consequences of which they must accept” (Kramer, 1990). The same attribution of blame occurs concerning the safety of hostages during their captivity. Terrorists warn officials of targeted nations that if they take retaliatory action, they will be held accountable for the lives of the hostages. At different phases in negotiations for the release of hostages, terrorists continue to displace responsibility for their safety to the reactions of the nations they are fighting. If the captivity drags on, terrorists blame the suffering and injuries they inflict on the hostages on the officials who fail to make what they regard as warranted concessions to remedy social wrongs. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2166

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Direct illustration of moral disengagement through displacement of responsibility; parallels the victim-blaming and ‘we were provoked’ rationalizations examined in the vault’s Islamophobia claims.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2166