Broken Record

Batya Medad
Shilo Musings
22 December 09

I'm sure I sound like a broken record, no not the Guinness type of the most and biggest. The idiom "broken record" comes from the day when recorded music was on a round plastic disc with groves. If one of the groves was faulty, the sound repeated and repeated until you moved the arm with the reading needle to a better spot. When it comes to the issue of protests and negotiations to free Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas three and a half years ago, I'm sure I sound like a broken record.

We need some G-dly Being to lift the arm and place the needle someplace else, totally different tactics.

Palestine Media Watch presents a very comprehensive report explaining why the current policy is so dangerous.

It's very hard to get balanced news about it. On the IBA's official site this morning, as I write this post, these are the following headlines:

• Meeting continues on the prisoner release proposals
• A rally taking place in front of the Prime Minister's Office to free Gilad Shalit
  
• Senior ministerial forum continues deliberations on Shalit deal
  
• Ben Eliezer: Israel has taken steps to bring Abbas back to negotiations
  

Yes, half of the eight headlines concern Shalit. The media campaign is massive, massive but mistaken. We keep hearing that "the fate of Shalit is in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's hands." That's not true. That's because Shalit isn't in "Netanyahu's hands." He's in Hamas, Arab terrorists' hands, and they are the ones who have the physical and moral responsibility to free him. It's not up to Israel. Those Arabs are being strengthened by the Israeli media, because the media blame us, Israel, and not the Arab terrorists who are the guilty ones.

So, I keep rewriting the same message, in different ways time after time like a broken record, hoping and praying that there will be a total turn-about in the Israeli negotiations and in the public campaign to free him.

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