Free Republic

With Middle East peace talks all but stalled, one of J Street's top board members took it upon herself to meet with Hamas earlier this month. That J Street board member is Kathleen Peratis (also an initial founder of the group), a partner at the New York law firm of Outten & Golden LLP. She also co-chairs the Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch. Peratis recounted her time exploring Gaza's illicit smuggling operation in a recent article for The Forward. While Peratis was not in the Gaza Strip at J Street's behest, I can't help but wonder why a...

President says 'pleasantly surprised' by Turkey's help in securing kidnapped soldier's release. 'They favored the humanitarian side over politics,' he says. PM's negotiator: Mission yet to be accomplished. Will the Shalit deal help improve the Israel -Turkey relations? President Shimon Peres used his public meeting with Israeli negotiator David Meidan on Wednesday to laud Ankara for its contribution to the deal securing kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit's release. Without elaborating, Peres said, "I was pleasantly surprised by the Turkish government's stand. "They put everything aside and favored the humanitarian side over politics," said Peres, addressing the Turkish stand on the captive...

Every day in the Middle East, terrible things happen. The lies and distortions of truth help ensure things don’t get better. Every day in the Middle East, terrible things happen. The worst are the acts of violence and oppression. The second worst are the lies and distortions of truth that help ensure things don’t get better. Every day in the West, the lies are echoed and amplified, and new ones invented. This not only helps ensure things don’t get better in the Middle East, it guarantees they will get worse in the West. There is an ancient Navaho proverb that...

Gilad Schalit is home. And that is wonderful. The terrorists Israel released in exchange for the IDF soldier held hostage by Hamas for more than five years are running around Judea, Samaria and Gaza promising to return to terror. And that is a nightmare. But so far, the Israeli public is happy with the outcome. Indeed, the polling data on the government’s decision to swap 1,027 terrorists for Schalit are stunning. According to the New Wave poll carried out for Makor Rishon, for instance, 75.7 percent of the public supported the deal and only 15.5 percent opposed it. In a...

Muckraking journalist Raviv Drucker said Wednesday the conduct of Israel's media in terms of Gilad Shalit was a model of surrender to emotions – which has caused tangible damage to the nation. Drucker told Israel's Hebrew-language Marker, "The media went bankrupt. It behaved emotionally, crazily and irrationally. This included Channel 10. It was psychosis. One program closed every day with a song about Gilad – and another program made a point of counting the days [he was in captivity]." "It's not that they silenced critics," Drucker said. "Nobody stopped me when I spoke out against the deal. But there was...

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...

I can still see his eyes and his twinkling smile as I walked him to the bus, with his rucksack over his back and a pair of ‘kafkafim’ (shower shoes) tied on and dangling from a piece of string. It was Sunday night, the first week of June 1982 and once again Israel was at war. After incessant shelling from the PLO in Lebanon forcing the people in northern Israel into their bomb shelters all weekend, Israel had finally had enough. AT 5 a.m. on June 5, IDF forces crossed the border into Lebanon. That evening, Rav Amital z”l, the...

Shalit Interview ....jockeying for the rights to conduct the first interview with Gilad after he returned home. But they were all trumped by Egypt's state-controlled media – which conducted its own interview with Shalit, minutes after he was handed over to Egypt by his Hamas captors. Israeli officials are up in arms over that interview, with a government spokesperson saying that Israel had expressed its “shock” to the Egyptian government for forcing Gilad to go through what was clearly a very difficult experience. The interview was conducted by veteran Egyptian TV personality Shahira Amin on behalf of the government-owned Nile...

Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit is set to be released on Tuesday. In exchange, Israel will release 1,027 terrorists, among them murderers sentenced to consecutive life sentences. Needless to say, ‘life sentence’ does not carry the same force in Israel as it does in other places. Those Israelis who have greeted this news with euphoria argue that Shalit has suffered, his family has suffered, and so everything must be done to release him. This myopic view ignores the suffering of those families who seek justice for the death of loved ones murdered by the terrorists about to be released. Israelis in...

A Heavenly Promise – Thy Children Shall Come Back to Their Own Border By Ari Bussel and Norma Zager 2,700 hundred years ago, the Prophet Jeremiah described a mother, lamenting her sons, for they were gone, and with them she had no hope for the future, for her end of days, for continuation. It was a time of deep sorrow and mourning, describes the Prophet and says that God will turn it into immense joy and jubilation. He promised that the mother’s sons would return to their borders from enemy land. This can be the cruelest torture of a parent,...

As the Shalit family sets out on a major public campaign, Israel debates whether to meet Hamas' painful price for the kidnapped soldier's freedom.....

The parents of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit have change tactics and plan to file a suit in a Paris court regarding his being held as hostage. They say he may have “suffered acts of torture or of barbarism.” Gilad Shalit is a French citizen, whose French-born parents Noam and Aviva live in northern Israel. He was kidnapped by Hamas, Army of Islam and allied terrorists five years ago this month when they attacked Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint adjacent to the Gaza region, killing two of Shalit’s comrades. The family told the French news agency AFP it will file the...

Marking the 5th anniversary of Gilad Shalit’s capture by Hamas, the International Red Cross (ICRC) has now, for the first time, called on Hamas to prove that he is still alive. Shalit was 19 when he was captured on June 25, 2006 by Hamas terrorists, only a few months after he began his three-year compulsory IDF service. He was serving at the time on Israel’s border with Gaza, when several terrorists tunneled under the border, killed two soldiers, and abducted Shalit into Gaza. His whereabouts have been unknown ever since. “Because no sign of life has been had from Shalit...

The London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Friday that Hamas's military wing vetoed a 'good deal' offered by Israel. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Friday for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Schalit has been held by Hamas for five years without visits from international bodies such as the Red Cross. Sources from Merkel's office said a draft of a final agreement for Shalit's release prompted the joint statement. German mediators in the Shalit deal reportedly visited Gaza two months ago. According to the sources a thousand Palestinian prisoners would be handed over in exchange for...

Prime Minister Netanyahu's Remarks 26 June 2011 Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser June 25th, 2011, was the fifth anniversary of Gilad ShalitÂ’s Abduction. He is being held by a brutal enemy, Hamas, which refuses to uphold either the minimal demands of the international treaties or humanitarian conditions. It has refused to allow him even one visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It is holding him in harsh conditions and we know how his family is suffering. I think that the entire nation and all fair and just people in the world are incensed at what...

Gilad Shalit and a World Full of Crazy By Norma Zager “We are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.” President Ronald Reagan Opportunity knocks. At times it is at a moment when it can be used for great advantage. The release of Gilad Shalit is one such moment. What most fail to realize is there are two great lessons to be learned from this so-called exchange of prisoners. First and foremost the Gazans wouldn’t dare show the...

JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - Israel and Gaza's Hamas Islamist rulers agreed on Tuesday to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli captive soldier Gilad Shalit, resolving one of the most emotive and intractable issues between them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking his cabinet to approve the lopsided swap and under constant public pressure to bring Shalit home, said the soldier would be reunited with his family "in the coming days." Palestinians in the Gaza Strip greeted the agreement, brokered by Egypt and a German mediator, with celebratory gunfire. Hamas confirmed that it only remained to conclude technical arrangements for...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to congratulate him on his deal with Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit. Clinton reportedly told Netanyahu the decision took "courage and leadership." For his part Netanyahu thanked Clinton for her well-wishes and said that it was a difficult decision for him, being a moment where leadership is tested. Observers say Clinton's sentiments are particularly surprising given the enduring and iron-clan policy of the United States against negotiating with terrorists, instead preferring to mount rescue operations where viable, or to leave captured citizens in captivity. Negotiating...

This is the consequence of the lopsided trade that Israel is about to conclude with Hamas for Gilad Shalit, There will be no more IDF soldiers captured by Hamas. Even if the IDF has to kill them itself. This is known as the IDF's Hannibal Protocol.

The US government wanted to remove Hamas from the Iranian/Syrian camp and place it in the Egypt/Muslim Brotherhood camp. Was achieving their goal contingent in getting Israel to accept the release of 1000 terrorists, or would it have taken place regardless, If the latter, it was a window of opportunity. If the former, Bibi was forced into accepting the deal. By the way Bibi had to agree not to pursue or kill these terrorists after their release. Of course Hamas was not asked to agree not to use these people to commit more terrorist attacks or not to take new...