Author Archives: Rabbi

That the announcement of an impending deal to exchange the IDF soldier Gilad Shalit for more than 1000 hard-core Arab terrorists has unleashed raucous celebrations in the Arab territories and restrained relief in Israel demonstrates the winners and the losers in this awful ordeal. Israel – which once boasted that it never negotiates with terrorists, and mocked the Europeans for doing the same – now is the only country in the world that negotiates with terrorists, and does it quite poorly to boot.

Two questions that are not being asked are: first, how long will it be before another Israeli is taken captive by Hamas et al, in order to exchange for more prisoners ? My guess is months, although a few weeks is also a possibility.  Second, how many Israelis will be killed in the future by this latest batch of freed terrorists ? The organization Victims of Arab Terror reports that approximately 200 Israelis have been murdered in the last 20 years by freed
terrorists. Based on past results, and logic, Israelis should start preparing
both fresh graves, and new organizations to memorialize those future victims.

Certainly, I have no complaints at all against the Shalit family, and they acted as any family would and should – prioritizing the life of their child, an individual, over the lives of the public and the community. If I were in their predicament, G-d forbid, I would be doing the same thing. But it is at that moment – when emotion and sympathy provoke the desire to free the innocent captive at all costs – when the cooler heads who govern the nation are supposed to have the national interest at heart and do what is in the interest of the nation, and not the individual. And I would be told that the consequences of this transaction – politically, emotionally and militarily – are just too grave. But the Prime Minister, who has a smooth tongue but often seems to function without a spine, caved. It is a populist act, until, of course, the real price is paid.

Politically, it is a victory for Arab terror and can only provoke more terror. The bar has been lowered still further for those who want to kill Jews. Jewish blood – past and future – has become cheaper, and future terrorists will be even more emboldened that they can murder Jews with impunity. Those who will pat themselves on the back that the trade demonstrates how Jews value life are, in fact, misguided and short-sighted; it is further proof of how the will of many Jews has been broken by terror and they can no longer even think beyond the present. (It is not speculation that freed terrorists will murder Jews; it has been proved 200 times already.) It is not even a small comfort to recognize that, indeed, the life of a Jew is more valuable than the life of an Arab; about 1000 times more valuable according to the prevailing market rate.

Emotionally, it must be devastating for the families victimized by the Arab terrorists who will now be eyewitnesses to those murderers returning to their homes amid heroes’ welcomes and parades, and watching them walk the streets and plot more mayhem against Jews. When will the butchers who carved up the Fogel family be released? Not now – maybe next time, or the time after that. After all, we can’t bring back the dead, so why punish the living hostage and his/her family.

Militarily, it is a security catastrophe as one thousand hard core terrorists re-enter Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper (for the Israeli Arabs who will be released) to sow the seeds of the next rebellion. (Remember, the first civil war in Israel – in 1987 – erupted a little more than one year after the infamous Jibril exchange released more than 1000 poisonous terrorists into the Israeli bloodstream. Reportedly, this latest group includes about 1/3 currently serving life sentences. And many of these terrorists were captured in undercover operations in which soldiers and security personnel risked their lives, and in some cases were killed. But why risk one’s life to capture a terrorist today who will be freed tomorrow ?

Prisoner exchanges outside the context of an end to hostilities undermine any deterrence that might have existed. Every future terrorist can go about his ghastly business expecting to be released at some point, and be feted and handsomely rewarded when he is released.

Imagine, for a moment, the parents of a sick child whose life could be saved for ten billion dollars of medical care. They demonstrate, rally, petition and pressure the government – and even call the government immoral for rejecting their entreaties. Instead, the “callous” government responds that all life is precious, but the government does not have ten billion dollars to spend on one child, sad to say, and that money can instead be used to spare the lives of thousands of other children. Rational, yes, but small comfort to the parents of that child. But governments – and hospitals – makes such triage decisions all the time.

One might well argue that the Shalit case is different – it is not an individual illness but a soldier sent to do his duty on behalf of the nation for whom the nation than always has an obligation to redeem at any cost. After all, Israel boasts of its mantra that it will never abandon soldiers on the battlefield. But that tripe is obviously untrue. At least three Israeli governments have negotiated with Syria over the disposition of the Golan without first demanding the release of (or information about) the three captives from the Sultan Yaakob battle in June 1982 – Yehuda Katz, Zachary Baumol and Zvi Feldman). And even more Israeli governments abandoned Jonathan Pollard on his battlefield, with Ehud Barak even preferring the pardoning by Bill Clinton of Marc Rich over the pardoning of Pollard. So the cliché is inspiring but ultimately meaningless. It is the type of contention that is made and appreciated but subjected to rational cost-benefit analysis before actual implementation. (Israel also vows never to leave a body in the field, but they would be fools to have half a platoon killed in order to retrieve a body.)

By way of contrast, there are currently American soldiers captive in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US is not exchanging Arab terrorists for those captives. Those who conclude that is evidence that the US does not value life should at least consider the alternative; perhaps that is proof sufficient that the US does value life, and perhaps even more than Israelis do. They value not only the life of their captive soldier, but more broadly the lives of the soldiers who captured those terrorists and the lives of the citizens that will be snuffed out by those released terrorists.

What does Jewish law say about such grisly ransoms? Unfortunately, we have too much experience in this field. The Talmud in Masechet Gittin (45a) states that we “do not ransom captives for more than their value…because of tikkun olam” (the betterment of society), and the Sages offered two reasons, both of which resonate now: either because it will impoverish the community (i.e., endanger their future well-being) or because it will just encourage more hostage-taking by the wicked. Both are true in this context, and Jews have traditionally heeded such guidance. The Torah values life, but life is not our highest value, and the life of an individual does not supersede the welfare of the community. If that were the case, one should never go into battle, in which individual lives will be sacrificed for the good of the community and nation.

Why now? Why wait five years when a similar deal could have been done – at lower cost – five years ago ? Chalk that up to another blundered negotiation by the Israelis, and a persistent inability on the part of much of the populace to recognize – and to retain the reality – that they are in a war that has no end in sight. Certainly, there are political benefits that will accrue to Hamas, which will emerge from this looking like a reasonable interlocutor with whom the world can – and should – do business. (After all, the Israelis shopped in their marketplace.) The real change seems to be a harshening of the conditions of imprisonment for those Arab terrorists now in Israeli prisons. Until this past summer, terrorists were entitled to family visits, cell phones, library and educational privileges, and probably Cable TV and spa treatments. PM Netanyahu ended that when he suddenly realized – just this past July – that Arab murderers were living well on the Israeli shekel and Gilad Shalit had not even been afforded a visit from the Red Cross. That country club lifestyle ended; perhaps that amped up the pressure on Hamas to deal. And deal they did, and they must be enjoying their triumph.

It is certainly possible that the deal will yet fall through. Hamas in the past has raised expectations and upped the ante by asking for more prisoners at crunch time. But it seems as if they have made a reasoned decision to quit while they are ahead.

The feeling here is joy commingled with sadness, sort of like the reaction of a family whose relative survives a  terrorist attack that kills ten people. One grieves for the victims but is quietly happy that one’s relative survived.

It is a gruesome image we dare not forget in the weeks and months ahead.

     Did President Obama’s UN speech – effusive in its praise and defense of Israel and remarkable for its criticism of the Palestinians – signal a dramatic internal transformation away from his unsympathetic, unenthusiastic Israel policies towards one more attuned to the classic American friendship towards Israel and a recognition of Israel’s role as the flagship of American values in the Middle East ? Was his change a reflection more of his newfound “hatred of Haman” – the utter disregard by the Palestinians of Obama’s diplomatic requests or political needs – than of his newfound “love of Mordechai”? Or was it simply a desperate attempt to shore up his flagging support among Jewish Democrats – a base he cannot afford to lose – by embracing what has been the policy of his predecessors for generations ?

     The latter two seem more likely. Bear in mind for a moment how low the bar has been set for what is construed as Obama’s “support” for Israel. Prior presidents routinely vetoed Security Council resolutions that condemned Israel’s acts of self-defense and other such treacheries. (The infamous Carter did not veto a resolution condemning “settlement” construction.) But US vetoes of anti-Israel moves at the UN have been so routine that we have taken them for granted, and so expected that the threat itself of a veto has precluded the introduction of many such resolutions.  The Palestinian gambit to have the Security Council recognize their “statehood” was as much precipitated by their own shenanigans and miscalculations as it was by Obama’s diplomatic incompetence. Undoubtedly, Obama encouraged the Palestinians to expect a state on a platter as their natural right, made a halt to “settlement” construction a pre-condition to negotiations (the tree limb from which Abbas has not been able to climb down), and boxed Israel into a corner in which any negotiations
would cause Netanyahu’s government to fall. And Abbas and his cohorts probably assumed that Obama – an advocate of a Palestinian state in the
heartland of Israel – would never veto such a resolution and incur the ire of
the Arab world and street, contrived that it is.  Thus, the speech and the veto – if it comes to that – are damage control.

    But it will have its intended effect. Jewish Democrats, desperate for a reason to vote for the re-election of a black, leftist, Democratic president, now have it. Obama said all the right things – and if he would actually visit Israel, some of his diehard Jewish faithful would be proposing shidduchim between their own
sons and Obama’s daughters. Expect a boost in the “Jewish” polls for Obama,
although not quite to the level that he enjoyed before, when he was acting on
his natural impulses.

     Certainly it was not easy for Obama to change course, and he still does not look comfortable in Netanyahu’s presence (he didn’t even before May’s White House smack down). This is a president, after all, whose economic plan to dig America out of its hole is to dig a bigger hole – by embracing this week, yet again, higher taxes and more public union jobs. And this is a president who can offer to states – just yesterday – a waiver from compliance with the accountability provisions of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation, and claim with a straight face that this does not mean there will be no accountability for failing schools and failed teachers. Well, yes, that is exactly what it means; hence the waivers. He rarely admits error.

    So the diplomatic tap dance worked out as best as can be expected, and President Obama is to be credited for his public support for Israel in an unpopular forum. Of course, the converse would have been odd, given America’s signature as a witness on the Oslo Accords that prohibited either party from taking unilateral steps to change the political status on the ground. But, as aforementioned with the Bush education legislation, Obama is not averse to erasing the policies and values of his predecessors when it suits him. Here, he held – for what is for him – firm, and that sense of realism is welcome. An America that casts its lot with Israel is itself on surer footing.

    Israel also held firm, although one always fears what concessions PM Netanyahu is promising behind the scenes that he will be unlikely to keep when he returns to Israel. And his speech, pointed and passionate, still lacks the winning argument, the polemical punch that would mark Israel’s statecraft as unique and special. Netanyahu, true to his secular roots, cannot bring himself to base the Jewish people’s possession of the land of Israel on the Bible – on G-d’s promise to our forefathers. His references to where our ancestors “walked 4000 years ago,” or to coins found with his name on it next to the Kotel, leave me (me!) cold and unmoved, and thinking, so what ? Just because they walked there gives us as much claim to the land as the name Netanyahu on a coin gives him rights of ownership over that coin. Ancient man walked in a lot of places; no one claims that land on that basis. His is simply a losing argument that persuades no one.

     The divine source of our right to the land of Israel is the only argument with merit and durability, even if it will attract few supporters in the short term. But it has the virtue of being true – to ourselves, to our history, to believers across the world – and true to the G-d who made it to us. Perhaps someday soon there will be a Jewish prime minister who speaks the language of the Jewish people.

    Until then, we can only pray that Israel will quell the inevitable violence that will result from the Kabuki theatre at the UN, and that – here’s the real test – Obama will unequivocally support Israel’s right of self-defense despite the casualties inflicted on a suicidal population, and without demands on Israel to make itself more vulnerable. Then the negotiations to nowhere can begin, and end, and begin again.