DAVID M. WEINBERG
Many Israelis will say that the hostage release deal under discussion is sad but necessary--that it is the government's moral obligation to free as many hostages as possible, as soon as possible, despite the high price, and that the suffering of our hostages and their families is intolerable on the personal and national levels.
Many will say that giving freed hostages a national hug will be the greatest triumph of all--something so necessary for Israel's collective spirit and its resilience over the long term.
Many Israelis might feel this to be so even if the deal entails a near-total withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Gaza Strip. In other words, even if Hamas retains power and survives to fight another day.
However one finesses the diplomatic and defense dilemmas here, there is one additional grand security calculus that seems absent from public discourse: the piercingly high price of releasing many Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails which will be part of any deal.
The released terrorists assuredly will strike again with God-only-knows how many Israeli casualties in the future. Their release certainly will incentivize future kidnappings, pour gasoline onto the terrorist fires already raging in Judea and Samaria, and catapult Hamas toward its intended takeover of Judea and Samaria, too.
I know this because its has been the case with every previous terrorist release. Israel has repeatedly erred by letting terrorists loose to murder more Israelis.
Each time, in advance of every deal, the Israeli "security establishment" arrogantly and falsely has assured Israeli politicians and the public that it "would know how to manage the situation," i.e., how to track the terrorists and crush any nascent return to terrorist activity without too much harm done.
But this has never proven to be true. Every deal involving the release of terrorists has led to more bloodshed, planned and carried out by these released terrorists.
The 1,150 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in the 1985 so-called Jibril deal, in which three Israeli soldiers who had been taken hostage in Lebanon by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were released, proceeded to fuel the First Intifada, which ran from 1987 to 1993 and lead to the deaths and injuries of Israeli and other citizens. According to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, about 10% of the released Palestinian terrorists returned to active terrorist duty.
Then came the Oslo Accords, when Israel mistakenly allowed at least 60,000 Palestinians from "abroad" into the Palestinian territories, including 7,000 card-carrying PLO terrorists. Between 1993 and 1999, Israel released additional Palestinian terrorists as "gestures" to the PLO, which fueled the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005. These shocking figures were revealed in an Israel Defense and Security Forum report from last year.
In 2004, Israel released more than 400 Palestinian prisoners and some 30 Lebanese prisoners, including leaders of Hezbollah, for one civilian captive--Elhanan Tannenbaum--and the bodies of three IDF soldiers. The Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah followed not long after.
The 2011 deal for Gilad Shalit was the worst; more than 1,000 terrorists were released in exchange for the 25-year-old IDF soldier, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Hamas-led attacks and atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023. In fact, almost the entire Hamas command structure involved in planning last year's Simchat Torah assault on Israeli towns and cities, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed on a single day, was made up of terrorists released in the Shalit deal.
1 comment:
Danger, Danger Will Robinson. Pressure comes on Israel to pull out of Gaza leaving Hamas in charge and the PA poised to take over the West Bank in an Abraham Accords sponsored two-state solution fiasco. Throw in Hezbollah to complete the trinity of terror.
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