Abbas: Palestinians who murder Israelis must not be arrested - no reaction?

...Comment from the White House? No. Nor from the State Department. Not a peep from the various Jewish organizations ostensibly so keen for peace. Nor any significant follow up by the journalists covering the event. Shame on all of them.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
23 September '16..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=71490



Incredible.

Let's read this short excerpt from Mahmoud Abbas' UNGA address:

"We remain committed to the agreements reached with Israel since 1993. However, Israel must ...cease the arrest of our people, and must release the thousands of our prisoners and detainees..."
Mahmoud Abbas UN General Assembly September 22, 2016

That's right.

Mahmoud Abbas stated that if a Palestinian goes out tonight and slaughters 20 Jewish babies in a hospital that Israel must not arrest the Palestinian.

Sure, Abbas may put out a press release opposing violence. But he is clear that Israel must not arrest Palestinian murderers.

And the reaction?

A deafening silence.

Unsurprising and “traditional” that freeing terrorists is seen as the way to propitiate Abbas

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
26 April '13..



It may seem amazing, but in the wake of the Boston attack the Obama administration is pressuring Israel to free terrorists guilty of particularly heinous acts of murder.

On Wednesday the Knesset “discussed America’s demand that Israel release terrorists as a good will gesture to the Palestinian Authority.” The demand is part of intensive efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a peace settlement—efforts that are amazing in their own right considering that the Palestinian Authority has consistently shown for 20 years that it is incapable of accepting Israel and not interested in a state “living in peace” beside it.

Kerry—with Iran at the brink of a nuclear capability, Syria a maelstrom of clashing terror factions, Egypt close to economic collapse, and North Korea threatening nuclear aggression—has in recent weeks been meeting with PA president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Riyadh, Amman, and Istanbul.

Abbas’s preconditions for resuming negotiations are the same as they have been for years: Israel committing beforehand to a withdrawal to indefensible borders, prohibiting Jewish building in Judea, Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem, and releasing terrorists from prison. Israel is reportedly, at this point, rejecting all these demands.

The Obama administration is also “preparing a multi-billion dollar economic initiative that would bring international businesses and major infrastructure projects to the West Bank”—again, nothing essentially new but, rather, part of a 20-year tradition of Israeli, U.S., and European efforts to bribe the Palestinians into adopting Western norms and practices of peace, prosperity, and tolerance.

Meanwhile the terrorists the U.S. is pushing Israel to release include the killers of:

● Amnon Pomerantz, stoned by a mob in Gaza in 1990 and then burned to death in his car

● Yigal Vaknin, stabbed to death in an orchard in 1993

● Rachel Weiss and her three young sons Ephraim, Netanel, and Raphael, all burned to death in a firebomb attack on a bus in the Jordan Valley in 1988.

● Menachem Stern, a 64-year-old acclaimed historian stabbed to death in Jerusalem in 1989

Palestinian prisoners releases - A brief history

...This descent into irrationality was inevitable, as the Palestinians’ decades long obsession with prisoners has never been predicated on the quest for justice, but rather is a manifestation of the consecration, and resultant pursuit, of terror which to this day pervades every aspect of Palestinian society. For Hamas, this is understood by most observers; but it no less true of the Abbas-led PA.

Charles Byblezer..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
24 April '13..

Last Wednesday, Palestinians worldwide held protests to mark “Prisoner Day,” an annual event meant to highlight the alleged plight of, and to celebrate, Palestinian criminals and terrorists imprisoned in Israel. The matter has gained notoriety over the past two years as the Palestinian Authority has made the release of prisoners a precondition for renewed peace talks with Israel.

“The Palestinian leadership gives priority to the prisoners issue and [to] ending their suffering,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed earlier this month. “We cannot be silent about their staying behind bars.... [We] have demanded the freeing of all prisoners.”

Abbas reportedly stressed the importance of the subject both during last month’s visit to Ramallah by US President Barack Obama, and in a recent meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, following which a PA official reiterated that “without the release of a significant number of prisoners... there can be no talk about resuming the peace process.”

While there is nothing unique about Palestinian preconditions to negotiations – which presently also include that Israel cease construction in settlements; accept the 1967 borders as a basis for talks; and cede territory from Area C in the West Bank, under exclusive Israeli jurisdiction as per stipulations in the Oslo Accords, to Palestinian control – demanding the release of prisoners, many with “blood on their hands,” is particularly perverse and revealing.

Abbas predictably assumed this position not long after the October 2011 Gilad Schalit prisoner-swap deal with Hamas, in which 1,027 Palestinians – nearly 20 percent of all Palestinians either imprisoned or detained in Israel at the time – were exchanged for a single captive IDF soldier.

Hamas’ popularity ballooned following the deal, so Abbas felt compelled to demonstrate his own pro-terrorist bona fides in order to reinforce his standing as the “legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

Contrary to popular belief, the Schalit deal was not particularly ground-breaking.

A year later - A personal reflection on the Shalit deal

Convicted terrorists by the busload: October 18, 2011
[Image Source]  

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
18 October '12..








Whatever it takes: Looking back at the Shalit deal
Arnold Roth, Jerusalem

When the deal to bring Gilad Shalit home was announced a year ago, three aspects caused a rising sense of trepidation in my home. One: the number of Arab prisoners going free was huge and unprecedented. 1,027 is substantially more than al-Qaeda’s entire membership at the time of the 9/11 atrocities [source].

Secondly, hundreds of killers including the woman who had been in our nightmares for years were on the list. Three: the terms had been hammered out with no meaningful attempt to address the concerns of the terrorists’ victims. Gilad was no POW. This was no conventional prisoner exchange. Kidnapped and held hostage in a dark hole, he was disconnected from the world for some 2,000 days. We can only guess at the despair endured by the Shalits. His captors were dispatched by Hamas, not an army but a movement defining itself in religious terms. Their war was never about winning independence or military advantage. The hold they sought was not over Israel but over their own home base, the Palestinian Arabs. They aimed to displace the Fatah/PLO camp of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas. Their method was an audacious act of extortion. Neither political strategists nor public figures, Frimet and I wrote and spoke widely in the years before the deal. As parents of a child murdered by Hamas and part of Israel’s ever-widening circle of terror victims, it was evident to us that freeing Gilad raised multiple considerations, only some of which were being publicly evaluated.

The central message of the Free Shalit campaign was that Israel must do “whatever it takes” to bring him home. They said terrorism was basically under control; releasing unrepentant killers would have little impact on Israel; our side would know how to handle them. Jewish ethics mandated that you do everything to rescue the hostage; more so when it’s an IDF soldier.

These assertions seemed dubious before the release. With a year’s after-the-fact hindsight, their wrongness is clearer to us now.

Malki, your death will not remain demeaned

As the grief deepens..

By Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
08 August '12..

Malki, my angel, know we will never cease fighting for justice. Your death will not remain demeaned.

Eleven years ago today, Israel was rocked by one of the worst terror attacks it has known. The suicide bombing of Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant left fifteen men, women and children dead – the equivalent of 643 Americans or 121 Britons.

Memories of that horrific day are chillingly vivid for my family: our teenage daughter and sister, Malki, was among the fifteen who perished in the inferno produced by the 10 kilograms of explosives concealed in the terrorist’s guitar case.

On the heels of that grief, we have suffered an unprecedented travesty of justice perpetrated by our own leaders. Malki’s murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, was one of 1,027 Palestinian terrorists released in the Shalit deal of October 2011. Alongside our untold personal pain, that move shook the foundations of Israel’s justice system and, perhaps most disturbing, has endangered all Israelis.

Uncontroverted evidence has emerged of the consequences of that fateful move. Starting the day after Gilad Shalit returned to Israeli soil, a succession of journalists, IDF officers and Netanyahu confidantes have publicized damning information hidden from the public throughout Shalit’s captivity.

First we learned that, contrary to our prime minister’s insistence, the release of murderers was not the only way to rescue Shalit. Intelligence and military options existed for locating and saving him but were never pursued. [See "Why Did Netanyahu Free My Daughter's Killer? Mother Blasts Prisoner Exchange To Free Gilad Shalit", published in FORWARD December 09, 2011 [source]

The soccer player really was a member of Islamic Jihad

Elder of Ziyon..
10 July '12..





From AP:

Dozens of Islamic militants fired rifles in the air Tuesday in a rousing homecoming for a member of the Palestinian national soccer team who was released by Israel after being held for three years without formal charges.

The player, Mahmoud Sarsak, 25, had staged a hunger strike for more than 90 days to press for his release, winning support from international sports organizations.

Israel accused Sarsak of being active in the violent Islamic Jihad group, a charge he denied while in custody.

However, senior Islamic Jihad officials were present during a welcoming ceremony for him in Gaza City on Tuesday, and one of the group's leaders, Nafez Azzam, praised the soccer player as "one of our noble members."

(Read full "The soccer player really was a member of Islamic Jihad")

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Roth - One down, 1026 to go

Click to enlarge this celebratory 2011
 snapshot of convicted (but freed)
Palestinian Arab terrorists in
Gaza returning to action

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
01 February '12..


Yesterday, the IDF announced it had taken into custody one of the 1,027 terrorists released in the October 2011 deal with Hamas for the freedom of the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit. The Israeli news sources that originally reported this on Tuesday seem to have published (in more than one case) the wrong name. Challah Hu Akbar published this about yesterday's confusion.

What we know about the man arrested yesterday is that his name is Mahmud Abdallah Abd al-Rahman Abu Sariya. He appears at position number 189 in the official terrorists-going-free list published by the Israel Prison Service. In May 2002 when he was 32, he and a colleague walked up to the Beer-Sheva Old City branch of an Israeli bank and placed a package on the group before fleeing for their lives. (Hebrew report here.) The package contained a bomb that thankfully failed to explode completely. As a result, "only" ten people were injured. The terrorists intended to execute a massacre (16 Israelis were killed a few days earlier in a Hamas bombing attack on a club in Rishon Leziyon), and would probably have succeeded but for the incompetence or bad luck of the bomb-maker. Abu Sariya was sentenced to 38 years in prison, and was unjustly released after serving less than nine.

Free and at liberty to do whatever constructive thing came into his head, he re-established himself in terrorism and, fortunately, will be out of action again for some time to come. He will surely be the very last of the unjustly-freed Shalit deal convicts to return to terrorism. Surely the very last.

Link: http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2012/02/1-feb-12-one-down-1026-to-go.html


Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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(Video) Wafa, Failed Suicide Bomber, Wants Another Chance

Love of the Land
20 December '11

Then:

A would-be female suicide bomber who planned to blow up at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on Monday (20 June '05), the same hospital where she received treatment for burns this past year, was caught at the Erez crossing wearing explosives stitched to her underwear. She said she wanted to kill up to 40 or 50 people, including as many youngsters as possible.


Uploaded by tw2424 on Jun 6, 2007


Now:

Wafa, recently freed in the mass prisoner release, wants another chance. Not only that, she is more than happy to share with us, her dreams, her goals, her aspirations. Surprised? Why?


Uploaded by DMartyr11 on Dec 20, 2011


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CAMERA - Ethan Bronner and Facts Too Good to Check

Alex Safian, PhD
CAMERA Media Analysis
18 December '11

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=2169

Leave it to the New York Times to simply take the word of any Palestinian who tells a tale of woe that puts Israel in a bad light; apparently such stories are simply too good to check. This time the occasion was the release of 550 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the second group of prisoners released as part of the deal freeing the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Ethan Bronner’s report, Israel Frees Palestinians in 2nd Stage of Exchange, named only one of the Palestinian prisoners being released, Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who, readers are told, was arrested three years ago at the age of 15 for “throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.” Here is the full passage about the young miscreant:

Sarah Abu Sneineh came with her family to greet her grandson Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who was arrested three years ago at age 15 for throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.

“He was just a schoolkid when he was arrested,” she said as she waited for him outside the tomb of Yasir Arafat. “We want him to go back to school. Only education is the way forward.”

Now, as should be obvious to Bronner and his editors, if Israel really imprisoned Palestinian children merely for putting up flags or throwing stones, there would be tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, instead of less than two hundred. Whatever young Abu Sneineh did, it had to involve something much more serious than what Bronner reported.

In fact, it is not hard to find out what he did – the Israeli Prison Service on Dec. 14 published a full list of all the prisoners about to be released. The English press release on the IPS website states that:

Roth - Freeing still more convicted terrorists, and unanswered questions

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War
18 December '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/12/18-dec-11-freeing-still-more-convicted.html


It's late Sunday night here in Jerusalem. In the dark, Israel is releasing 550 Palestinian prisoners from its jails. This is the second and final phase of the agreement between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization, brokered by the government of post-Arab-spring Egypt, by which the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit was freed from illegal captivity. Shalit is now safely at home, but hundreds more Palestinian Arabs, many of them convicted of terrorist offences, are being bused at this moment to various places: 505 of them to Judea and Samaria via Beituniya Crossing; two prisoners to East Jerusalem via the Atarot army base; two more to Jordan via the Allenby Bridge; and 41 to the waiting arms of Hamas in Gaza.

This lot will join the 447 Palestinian murderers and arch-terrorists who were freed by Israel in the first part of this appalling deal. Our daughter's murderer was sent to Jordan in October; it's the land of her birth, the country where she spent almost her entire life until she was convicted on fifteen counts of murder, and the kingdom in which her father and siblings live - yet it's called 'exile'. Since her arrival there, she has been feted as a celebrity and a hero.

Ynet is reporting that IDF forces and some 400 relatives of the Palestinian Arab prisoners being freed in this transaction clashed tonight at the Beitunia checkpoint near Ofer Prison, a few minutes drive from where we live in Jerusalem. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported that a soldier was lightly injured by a hurled stone.

Shalits must fight for Gilad, but Netanyahu must resist

Uri Dromi
The Jewish Chronicle
01 July '10

Thousands of Israelis have joined Aviva and Noam Shalit in a march meant to pressure the Israeli government into concluding a prisoner swap deal, and bring their son Gilad back home, after four years in captivity.

Isn't the government interested in freeing Gilad Shalit? Of course it is and, through the good services of the German mediator, it came as close as possible to striking a deal with Hamas last year. However, the government refused to yield to Hamas's demand to release some of the worst terrorists, responsible for the killing of hundreds of innocent Israelis.

When the marchers entered the city of Akko on Tuesday, the city's Chief Rabbi Yosef Yashar addressed them.

"We call on the prime minister to show responsibility and heed the nation's call," he said. "Gilad's life is more valuable than all of the despicable Hamas prisoners, including those with blood on their hands."

I don't disagree with the rabbi. The prime minister should indeed show responsibility. Yet showing responsibility is also considering whether giving in to terrorist extortion now will not lead us to worse situations in the future.

(Read full article)

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Israel stands firm: We won't free 'mega-terrorists’ in swap

Hamas fails to respond to new prisoner exchange offer; captured soldier's family sets off on march to Jerusalem.


Herb Keinon-Tovah Lazaroff
Israel/JPost
27 June '10

(An important article that gets to the heart of the matter. Do the math and ask what is the government's responsibility? No one has marched for the hundreds murdered by those previously released, and yet we'll do this once again? Y.)

Hamas has not replied to an Israeli offer to release hundreds of terrorists – including more than 100 responsible for murdering more than 600 Israelis – in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit, on condition they do not return to the West Bank, but go either to the Gaza Strip or to another country.

Israel, according to government sources, sent the offer through a German mediator six months ago, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The offer includes a willingness to release 450 Palestinian prisoners in negotiations with Hamas, and another 550 prisoners unilaterally as a gesture to the Palestinian Authority – meaning the Schalit deal would be one for 1,000.

Of the 450 Israel agreed to release in negotiations with Hamas are more than 100 terrorists with “blood on their hands.”

However, Israel has made clear it would not release what it has called “mega-terrorists” – those responsible for some of the worst atrocities.

Among those are the terrorists responsible for the attacks at Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant where 15 people were killed in 2001; the Moment Café where 11 were killed in Jerusalem in 2002; Café Hillel where seven were killed in the capital in 2003 ; the Rishon Lezion attack where 16 were killed in 2002; the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv were 21 were killed in 2001; and the Park Hotel in Netanya where 30 people were killed on Seder night in 2002.

Israel has made clear that these, and other mega-terrorists would not be released because they would establish a “terrorist industry” wherever they were sent.

Hamas, however, is demanding the release of these megaterrorists.

They are also demanding they be allowed to return to the West Bank in order, according to Israeli assessments, to rehabilitate Hamas’s military capabilities there, after they have been dealt a huge blow over the last few years.

Israel’s demand that more than 100 of these 450 prisoners not return to the West Bank stems from the country’s bitter experience with previous prisoner releases, when many of those released returned to terrorism and were responsible for killing additional Israelis.

According to government numbers, some 45% of released terrorists return to terrorism.

The number is even higher among Hamas members, of whom 63% return to terrorism, and the Islamic Jihad, for which the number rises to 67%.

The most recent example of this recidivism can be seen in the case of the 400 terrorists released to gain the return of Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three IDF soldiers in 2004. Fifty-two percent of those released have returned to terrorism and are responsible for killing 27 Israelis is a number of different attacks.

According to government figures, 42% of the 1,150 prisoners released for three IDF soldiers in the Jibril prisoner exchange in 1985 returned to terrorism and, according to Israeli assessments, many were leaders of the second intifada.

(Read full article)

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The correct choice is clear

FresnoZionism
22 December 09

I think it’s certain that Israel will agree to something like Hamas’ conditions for the release of Gilad Shalit:

After the nocturnal inner cabinet meeting ended overnight Monday, reports began emerging that the seven-member forum had reached its decision. Israel Radio cited an unnamed senior Israeli official as confirming one such report.

Former Fatah-Tanzim leader and terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences after being convicted in fatal attacks against Israelis, would be allowed to return to his West Bank home, a Palestinian close to the negotiations said. Hamas agreed that several other hard-core convicts would be deported, he said…

After more than four hours of talks, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office released a statement early Tuesday morning [today] saying only that instructions were given to the negotiating team about “the continuation of efforts to bring Gilad Schalit home safe and sound.” There was no word of a decision, further meetings or steps. The decision to continue negotiations came in lieu of any final decision by the government to agree unequivocally to Hamas’s demands.

The inner cabinet met into the night Monday in what was described by insiders as a final marathon discussion on the prisoner-swap deal that would end Schalit’s Gaza captivity.

According to sources close to the deliberations, the proposal to release some 950 Hamas gunmen and activists, some of whom have been convicted of fatal terrorist attacks, for the 23-year-old soldier was expected to gain approval by the forum, after which it would be presented to the full 30-member cabinet. — Jerusalem Post

Israel — and it really is the whole country — is facing a “Sophie’s choice“.

(Read full post)

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PMW Special Report on Palestinian kidnap-for-hostage tactic

Itamar Marcus, Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Barbara Crook
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)
21 December 09

This PMW Special Report includes 50 Palestinian statements concerning the Palestinian kidnapping-for-hostage policy. The statements cover the period since the release of 1000 terrorists by Israel in exchange for a kidnapped Israeli in 2004, until the current negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit in December 2009. These Palestinian statements document that the Palestinian motivation and justification today for continued kidnappings is the direct result of the earlier prisoner releases.

Israel's release of prisoners in exchange for hostages is not seen by Palestinian society as merely the last stage of one kidnapping, but as the first stage of the next kidnapping.

Executive Summary:

Background:
More than 10,000 Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons for terrorism of various degrees. The Palestinian Authority demands that Israel release them all, including murderers of civilians and masterminds of suicide terror who are serving multiple life sentences. Israel argues that they have been imprisoned following proper judicial process and must complete their sentences.

PMW Findings:
Due to Israel's willingness to release Palestinian terrorists from jail in exchange for freeing kidnapped and imprisoned Israeli hostages, Palestinians have concluded that kidnapping-for-hostage is a valid strategy to achieve the release of additional Palestinian terrorists. This report documents that these opinions are found across the political spectrum and among the Palestinian leadership, both Fatah and Hamas.

(Read full bulletin)
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Releasing Terrorists: New Victims Pay the Price

Nadav Shragai
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Published August 2008

(According to an informal estimate by Israeli security bodies, about 50 percent of the terrorists freed for any reason whatsoever returned to the path of terror, either as a perpetrator, planner or accomplice.)

The Israeli Cabinet approved on August 17 the release of almost 200 Palestinian security prisoners as a “goodwill gesture” to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. The list includes several prisoners “with blood on their hands,” who, by definition, were involved in the murder of Israelis.

According to an informal estimate by Israeli security bodies, about 50 percent of the terrorists freed for any reason whatsoever returned to the path of terror, either as perpetrator, planner, or accomplice. In the terror acts committed by these freed terrorists, hundreds of Israelis were murdered, and thousands were wounded.

Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners and five other prisoners in return for Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was held captive by Hizbullah, and for the bodies of three soldiers kidnapped on Mount Dov. According to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, from the date of the deal on January 29, 2004, until April 17, 2007, those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis.

An investigation by the Almagor Terror Victims Association in Israel revealed that at least 30 of the terrorist attacks perpetrated since 2000 were committed by terrorists freed in deals with terror organizations. Many were freed in the framework of goodwill gestures because they were defined by Israel as “without blood on their hands.” The bloody swath cut by these terrorists claimed the life of 177 persons, with many others wounded and made invalids.

Another “Goodwill Gesture”

In anticipation of the return to the Middle East of ...

(Read Full Issue Brief)
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I lied...

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
22 December 09

I wrote that I was on the fence between two sides of a debate about Gilad Shalit. One side is ready to do all that is necessary to finally bring him home; one side refuses to trade 1,000 terrorists and murderers for one Israeli soldier. Between the two are many who want so desperately to see Gilad home and yet understand so completely what will happen if this trade is confirmed. I wrote that I sat there on the fence because...because it is the easiest place to be.

To stand on the side willing to trade 1000 for Gilad means to accept responsibility not if, but when, these terrorists kill again. It means knowing that Gilad's parents will celebrate and Gilad will come home...and in the future, even the near future, other parents will know the sorrow of Gilad's parents...but the price will be 2,000.

To sit on the side against the trade means to accept responsibility that Hamas may kill Gilad and worse, they may say they did...and then that they didn't...and then that they did...and then that they didn't. And each time will be agony; each will be unbearable sorrow. I means knowing Gilad may never come home.

To sit in the middle is to say I understand both sides, agree with both sides and can't make up my mind because it is too painful.

But, the truth is...I lied.

(Read full post)
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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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Good news: Obama demands Israel match Hamas terrorist release for Fatah

Carl in Jerusalem
Israel Matzav
20 December 09

This was expected. The Obama administration is demanding that Israel release Fatah terrorists to shore up Abu Bluff's standing in the event that it releases Hamas terrorists in exchange for kidnapped IDF corporal Gilad Shalit. As a result, the price for releasing IDF Shalit from Hamas' custody has just doubled. And apparently, that's even giving the government second thoughts.

A senior official in the U.S. administration told Haaretz that if the deal for Shalit's release is completed, the U.S. would be interested in seeing Israel releasing Fatah prisoners as well, in addition to other gestures to bolster's Fatah's status compared to Hamas. "We are telling the Israelis that [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas' situation needs to be mitigated," the U.S. official said.

(Continue article)

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Israel’s deadly mistakes

Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
20 December 09

IN 1983, ISRAELI authorities arrested Ahmed Yassin, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. He was convicted of unlawfully stockpiling weapons and establishing paramilitary jihadist organizations, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Just two years later, however, he was set free in the now-infamous “Jibril deal’’ - the release of 1,150 security prisoners held by Israel in exchange for three Israeli soldiers held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group headed by Ahmed Jibril. Yassin soon launched Hamas, a murderous organization committed to Israel’s liquidation. Over the years, Hamas terrorists have killed hundreds of Israelis, and maimed or wounded thousands more.

Few Israeli policies have been as counterproductive or morally questionable as the lopsided prisoner exchanges it has entered into with terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Time and again, Israel has paid for the freedom of a few POWs - sometimes just the remains of a few POWs - by releasing hundreds of violent detainees, many of them complicit in the deaths of civilians. And time and again, the newly freed terrorists have picked up where they left off.

(Continue article)
Related: A nation held hostage
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A nation held hostage

R. Stewart Weiss
Guest Columnist/JPost
17 December 09

Israel Television aired a documentary last week on the saga of Gilad Schalit entitled A Family Held Hostage. Yet a sequel to this tense and tortuous no-win situation in which we all find ourselves might aptly be called A Nation Held Hostage. For if our soldier is freed at the cost of unleashing hundreds of unrepentant, bloodthirsty terrorists upon our civilian population, it is the entire country which will become the victim, having capitulated to an extortion scheme unparalleled in the history of democratic nations.

Freeing the worst of the terrorists - in particular, mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti - will not only result in the invariable murder of many, many more innocents and encourage a new wave of kidnappings; it will undermine the very foundations of our society. How can we maintain faith in a system of justice that pardons the worst crimes imaginable due to blackmail by hoodlums, aided by intense pressure from the media? What message do we send our children when we take our most cherished ideals - right and wrong, the sanctity of life, reward and punishment - and turn them upside-down, dashing them upon the rock of expediency?

Is there any other civilized nation in this world which would free its worst criminals to pay a ransom? Would America let Charles Manson out of jail in response to one of his crazed followers kidnapping someone else? Would Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin be set free? What about Carlos the Jackal, or Yigal Amir, for that matter? I'm only thankful that this government was not around when Adolf Eichmann was put on trial; they might have freed him, too, if some neo-Nazis had succeeded in abducting a soldier. Perverting the course of justice returns us to the law of the jungle, where victims' next-of-kin will have to exact the punishment which society should have carried out.

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