Posted on 10/19/2011 4:42:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
MANY ISRAELIS, and many friends of Israel in the West, think there is something to be admired in the lopsided deal that will free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners -- including hundreds of terrorists serving life sentences for murder -- in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas in 2006 and held virtually incommunicado ever since.
According to an opinion poll published Monday, 79 percent of the Israeli public approves of the swap, with only 14 percent opposed. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the agreement last week, he described it as evidence that "the nation of Israel is a unique people; we are all mutually responsible for each other." In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal echoed a popular opinion when it explained Israel's willingness to pay such a steep price for Shalit's freedom as "a testament to its national and religious values, which stress the obligation to redeem captives."
Israel is famous for its ironclad commitment never to abandon its captured or fallen soldiers. In a country where nearly every family has loved ones in uniform, the anguish of the Shalits -- whose son was just 19 when Hamas gunmen crossed the border from Gaza and grabbed him -- was a nightmare with which all Israelis could empathize. Across Israel's often volatile political spectrum, the longing for Shalit's return was universal and heartfelt.
But this is not the way to bring him home.
According to the deal Netanyahu has accepted, Hamas is to release Shalit today; simultaneously Israel will release a first wave of 477 Palestinian prisoners. A second, even larger group, will be freed in two months.
Just who are these prisoners? They include the perpetrators of some of the most ghastly terrorist attacks of recent years: Brutal killers like Abd al-Aziz Salehi, who gleefully displayed his blood-soaked hands to a cheering Ramallah crowd in 2000 after lynching two Israelis and mutilating their bodies. Like Ibrahim Yunis, mastermind of a 2003 cafe bombing that left seven innocents dead, including an American-born doctor and his 20-year-old daughter on the eve of her wedding. Like Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian television personality who boasts of her role in organizing the 2001 bombing of the Sbarro's pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem, in which 15 people were killed, seven of them children.
To read the descriptions of the prisoners being released is to be reminded in gruesome detail of the unremitting savagery of Israel's worst enemies, and of the horrors they are prepared to commit in their bid to destroy the Jewish state. It is also to be reminded that Israel has done this before -- and that the results have invariably been disastrous.
Time and again Israel has agreed to free hundreds of violent terrorists in order to bring home one or two or three captured Israeli soldiers. And time and again it has done so knowing that many of those set free will go right back to trying to kill Jews. One of the Palestinians being released today, for example, is Musab Hashlemon, who was given 17 life sentences for a Beersheba massacre he planned in 2004. That massacre occurred just months after an earlier prisoner exchange in which 435 Palestinians went free -- Hashlemon among them. The Jerusalem Post, citing the Almagor Terror Victims Association, noted last week that 183 Israelis have died since 2004 in attacks carried out by terrorists who were previously released. How many more Israelis will now die because the political pressure to bring Shalit home -- at any price -- was more than the Israeli government could resist?
There was a time when Netanyahu would have been the first to denounce the mass release of dangerous prisoners. In 2008, he blasted the release, under then-prime minister Ehud Olmert, of some 200 security prisoners as a goodwill gesture toward the Palestinian Authority. "This crossing of a line, this release of murderers, is a dangerous move in the war on terror," Netanyahu thundered in the Knesset. "This weakens Israel and strengthens the terror elements."
For Gilad Shalit and his loved ones, a terrible personal ordeal is finally coming to an end. But their relief is being purchased at an unconscionable cost. To bring Shalit home, the Jewish state has effectively condemned tens -- or scores, or even hundreds -- of other victims to death. This is capitulation to terror. Israel's friends should be appalled.
Too steep plus Hamas did not commit to stop kidnapping prisoners.
A really bad, stupid move by the Israelis. They must have gotten their advice from Hillary and Holder.
It is amazing the suicidal depths to which the Israelis sometimes sink in order to pander to stupidity.
Objectively and logically, I disapprove of the swap. Emotionally, however, its hard to argue with seeing that poor kid freed. Its a tough one.
Get our guy back, then carpet bomb every hamas enclave. They have proven time and time again that they are less than human.
Way back when, Rome had a policy that if you attacked a roman citizen Rome would destroy your city. Everyone feared Rome and Roman citizens were free to go wherever they wanted in safety.
We need to start implementing that policy. The moslem savages (but I repeat myself) only understand fear. We must make them fear us again.
If they prize being martyrs than we should martyr as many of them as possible, as quickly as possible. If it is genocide to kill every adherent of a political-religious system, then lets do genocide!
More Israeli families will be mourning because of these releases. Also, this is more evidence that prisoners that are given life sentences under existing law should be executed instead. If the crime is such that incarceration forever is appropriate, the state should not create prizes to be released by future terrorist acts.
On the other hand with the threat that more Israeli soldiers could be kidnapped, how many approve of it now?
When the killing resumes, the 80% will forget their approval and blame the Israeli govt.
The worlds sane population has to see that a people that would accept these terrorists back in their presence is not a people that should have a State or a country to lead.
How can the UN take seriously an effort by these low lifes to become a state when they want 1,000 murderers and killers back in their own country.
What does it say to the families of the murdered and mutilated victims of these savages, when the government makes such a deal and lets them go?
Its’ a bit like cutting a cancer from a patient and then deciding to put it back.The cancer goes back and grows.
Should Hamas or Fatah, or the so called Palestinians who welcome back trash like this be a nation? A state?
It’s ludicrous to even ponder.
How many of the released Palestinians are Israeli agents?
Would that each one had a tracking device that could be activated if Israel wanted to. Then they could detect where they meet and give them a little greeting.
I hate to second guess why this lop sided exchange was made. I do wonder, however, in light of the escalating hatred and threats towards Israel in the middle east if it was a logical move. If rockets start flying, the best place for the 1000 terrorists to be is under them in their terrorist homeland.
Trading 1000 cut-throats for 1 captured soldier is the kind of deal made by leaders with too little testosterone. Saving 1 soldier now will cost 10’s of Israeli lives later. I swear the world is run by the insane.
If I were a Palestinian, I’d be embarrassed to have one Jew worth 1,000 Palestinians. And I thought our inflation was bad.......
just give each prisoner a “health screening” right before releasing them. insert some explosives where they cant get them out along with a remote detonator. When they are being debriefed by their bosses, push the green button!
No one, including me, who has a shread of human decency cannot feel sympathy for Shalit, but this deal will bring many tears to other Israeli families.
Israel should have been killing ten of the captured terrorists a day until Shalit was released.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.