Caroline B. Glick
carolineglick.com
29 June '10
To the roaring cheers of the local media, on Sunday the Schalit family embarked on a cross-country march to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s residence. They set out two days after the fourth anniversary of IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit’s captivity.
Outside their home on Sunday, Gilad’s father Noam Schalit pledged not to return home without his son. The Schalit family intends to camp out outside of Netanyahu’s home until the government reunites them with Gilad.
The only drawback to this dramatic, newspaper- selling story is that it is wrong. Gilad Schalit is not a hostage in Jerusalem. He is a hostage in Gaza. His captor is not Netanyahu. His captor is Hamas.
And because the story is wrong, the media organized cavalcade of ten thousand well-intentioned Israelis is moving in the wrong direction. And not only is it going in the wrong direction, it is doing so at Gilad Schalit’s expense.
The truth that Yediot and Ma’ariv’s marketing departments ignore is that Schalit’s continued captivity is a function of Hamas’s growing strength. To bring him home, Israel shouldn’t release a thousand terrorists from prison.
To bring Gilad Schalit home a free man, Israel must weaken Hamas. And this is an eminently achievable goal. Noam Schalit knows it is an achievable goal. That is why last week he was the most outspoken critic of Netanyahu’s decision to abandon Israel’s economic sanctions against Hamas-controlled Gaza. That is why over the past four years, the Schalit family has staged countless protests against Israel’s massive and continuous assistance to Hamas-controlled Gaza. If anything positive is to come from this march, then when the Schalit family arrives in Jerusalem they should abandon the newspapers’ demand that Israel surrender to all of Hamas’s demands. They should acknowledge that doing so will only guarantee that more Israelis will be kidnapped and murdered by Hamas and its allies.
If the Schalits wish to criticize the government, they should criticize Netanyahu and his coalition for the steps they have taken to strengthen Hamas. The Schalits should demand that the government reinstate and tighten Israel’s economic sanctions against Gaza. They should demand that Israel end its supply of electricity and gasoline to Gaza and take more effective action to block smuggling through the tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.
All of these actions will weaken Hamas, and so contribute to the prospect of it being forced by the Gazans themselves to release Schalit to his family.
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Here is a solution for Israeli leadership: Declare Gaza a state right now- why? because it is such: it has a flag, territory, a elected leadership (Hamas) and all the financial backing it needs from Iran and international monies. Israel must re name the game, and treat these hostile combattants as a enemy state. No concessions, zero tolerance for rockets flying into Sderot. Zero tolerance for Flotillas threatening the shores. Zero tolerance for kidnapping and holding one of dear children(Gilad) hostage.
ReplyDeleteThis idea that Gaza is simply a amorphous, non-entity, without any power, filled with starving helpless Palestinians needs to rectified right now. It is a living lie that grows bigger everyday, and as long as Israel plays their game as such, Hamas wins popularity.. meantime, inside Gaza the Palestinians are building beautiful homes, marketplaces, gorgeous beautiful olympic swimming pools ,cafes,and a free flowing of goods from Egypt.
Netanyahu's defeatist policy will endanger Israel more than any outside enemies. The opposition, Kadima and Labor, are worse. Is there any leader in Israel with a lick of sense that can see that "Land for peace" is the prescription for a war and our ultimate forced squeeze out of our land, Israel. To me, the enemies are amongst us- the leaders in the Knesset have no imagination and no moral courage to change the rules of the game.