Sunday, September 22, 2013

What the Gilad Shalit Deal Has Wrought

Gilad got his life, but others lose theirs:
The kidnapping and murder of 20-year-old Sgt. Tomer Hazan is not the first attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers or civilians in the two years since the Gilad Shalit deal.
 
Unfortunately, it also won’t be the last.
Since the deal, about which many of Israel’s security heads warned, the calls for kidnapping a “second Gilad Shalit” have been heard repeatedly from terrorist organizations. Though the motivation for such kidnappings existed before Shalit’s release, there is no doubt that freeing 1,027 prisoners, many of whom were convicted murderers, gave a meaningful push to actual attempts to create a “bargaining chip” in order to secure the release of additional prisoners.
On the day of Shalit’s release, thousands of Hamas operatives took to the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The slogan coming from the mouths of Palestinian youth, especially prisoners’ family members, was that the Palestinians needed “another six Shalits” in order to empty out Israel’s prisons...
The take-away: when you make a deal with devil, you're bound to get burned.

1 comment:

Carlos Perera said...

Israel--and the West in general--used to have an absolute policy of non-negotiation with terrorists. It was admittedly harsh, but rational . . . I guess it couldn't survive the replacement of hard-headed dead white male linear logic with the limbic system-driven emotionalism that has taken its place in the West.