It Is Time For A Change In Israel; A Prisoner Swap That Dwarfs The Brit/Iran Swap
When I saw this post from Scott Johnson @ PowerLine this morning, I glanced over it, and figured I would get back to it later. Hugh Hewitt just finished an interview with Mr. Johnson, and now that I read the full piece, I am quite honestly sickened at the prospect of this swap:
The country has never had a public accounting for the utter disaster that was Oslo. Its politicians seem to keep the country's citizens in the dark about the nature of its national security strategy and the actions taken to pursue it. Ariel Sharon's coalition deal to make Shimon Peres his "deputy premier" seemed to me a metaphorical expression of the problem. Symptomatic of the delusional political thinking that has brought Israel so much grief is the fact that there has as yet been no public accounting for the disaster of Oslo itself.
According both to Caroline Glick and Hillel Halkin, Israel now stands on the verge of a sickening prisoner swap that will free scores of Palestinian Arab murderers. Israeli political leaders such as Olmert and Livni and Peretz may seem retarded, but Israel's people are not stupid.
From Ms. Glick:
Today the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is in advanced stages of negotiations towards the exchange of Cpl. Gilad Schalit for up to 1,400 terrorists. Schalit was kidnapped from his base near Gaza in late June by a joint Fatah-Hamas terror cell. He has been illegally held incommunicado ever since.
Speaking Sunday of the impending deal, Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog said Israelis should be prepared to see not only small-fry terrorists like Hasalmon, but also convicted murderers set free. As Herzog put it, we should use "original thinking" regarding who we should let out of prison.
During the heyday of the peace process in the 1990s, in repeated "confidence building measures," Israel released 6,912 terrorists from prison. As time went by, it became increasingly difficult to limit the releases to those who had not actually murdered. So the governments thought "originally" and released killers whose victims were not Israelis. So it was that killers like Iyad Suwalha were sent packing.
From Mr. Hillel:
It's all over, it would seem, but the names and the numbers. Which, it now is clear, was all it was ever about in the first place.
I'm talking about the impending prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, in which Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal taken prisoner last July in an attack on his tank unit on the border of the Gaza Strip, will be swapped for over a thousand Palestinian terrorists now in Israeli jails, some of them, as the Hebrew expression goes, with "blood on their hands" — that is, guilty of the murder of Israelis. ...
... And indeed, immediately after Corporal Shalit's abduction, the government of Israel, acting as though it had learned the lesson of past prisoner exchanges, declared that it would not repeat the pattern and demanded that the Israeli soldier be released unconditionally. Threatening military action to free him, Prime Minister Olmert promised: "There will be no negotiations [with Hamas], no bargaining, no agreements."
The cynics smiled. They had heard such talk before. In the end, they said, the Olmert government would cave in, just as two decades of Israeli governments had done before it. Large numbers of Palestinian terrorists, some of them convicted killers, would be traded for Corporal Shalit's release. The negotiations might drag on for months or longer, but ultimately they would boil down to a matter of names and numbers, just as they had always done.
The cynics, needless to say, were right. Israel and Hamas, it appears, are now in the final stages of negotiating a list of the Palestinian prisoners to be let go. Reports speak of approximately 1,400 of them. Many will be minor figures, convicted of stone throwing, possession of weapons, or simply membership in terrorist organizations. Some will be political leaders. Some will be murderers.
And the message will, once again, be clear: The kidnapping of Israelis pays well. In fact, it not only pays well, it pays better than any other form of terrorist activity. No matter how often it fails, it is worth trying to carry out again and again, because the profits are lucrative when it succeeds. What other investment can give you a return of 1,400 to one?
This is Olmert's last straw. Ms. Glick is quite correct: The Israeli people are not stupid, and they will not be happy with this. If I were in Prime Minister Olmert's shoes, I would pray that the story is kept quiet as much as possible. There might be calls for his removal and new elections to be held. But As both go on to point out, the solution is not those in his administration now. They are part of the problem.
With Olmert in charge, no nation in the Middle Easy who is an enemy of Irael will take him seriously. Iran could be fueling the missiles right at this moment, and even if Olmert knew it, he would not be ready to strike back. for a nation like Israel that must fight to survive each and every day, those people deserve a person leading them that is as vehement and voracious about national security they are. Right now, Olmert is not that man.
Changes must be made. With that region as dangerous as it is right now, from Iran alone, Israel needs a strong leader. A Churchill or even if they could find another Golda Meir would do them well. But Olmert is consistently showing that he is more dove than lion, and Israel needs a lion.
Marcie
The country has never had a public accounting for the utter disaster that was Oslo. Its politicians seem to keep the country's citizens in the dark about the nature of its national security strategy and the actions taken to pursue it. Ariel Sharon's coalition deal to make Shimon Peres his "deputy premier" seemed to me a metaphorical expression of the problem. Symptomatic of the delusional political thinking that has brought Israel so much grief is the fact that there has as yet been no public accounting for the disaster of Oslo itself.
According both to Caroline Glick and Hillel Halkin, Israel now stands on the verge of a sickening prisoner swap that will free scores of Palestinian Arab murderers. Israeli political leaders such as Olmert and Livni and Peretz may seem retarded, but Israel's people are not stupid.
From Ms. Glick:
Today the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is in advanced stages of negotiations towards the exchange of Cpl. Gilad Schalit for up to 1,400 terrorists. Schalit was kidnapped from his base near Gaza in late June by a joint Fatah-Hamas terror cell. He has been illegally held incommunicado ever since.
Speaking Sunday of the impending deal, Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog said Israelis should be prepared to see not only small-fry terrorists like Hasalmon, but also convicted murderers set free. As Herzog put it, we should use "original thinking" regarding who we should let out of prison.
During the heyday of the peace process in the 1990s, in repeated "confidence building measures," Israel released 6,912 terrorists from prison. As time went by, it became increasingly difficult to limit the releases to those who had not actually murdered. So the governments thought "originally" and released killers whose victims were not Israelis. So it was that killers like Iyad Suwalha were sent packing.
From Mr. Hillel:
It's all over, it would seem, but the names and the numbers. Which, it now is clear, was all it was ever about in the first place.
I'm talking about the impending prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, in which Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal taken prisoner last July in an attack on his tank unit on the border of the Gaza Strip, will be swapped for over a thousand Palestinian terrorists now in Israeli jails, some of them, as the Hebrew expression goes, with "blood on their hands" — that is, guilty of the murder of Israelis. ...
... And indeed, immediately after Corporal Shalit's abduction, the government of Israel, acting as though it had learned the lesson of past prisoner exchanges, declared that it would not repeat the pattern and demanded that the Israeli soldier be released unconditionally. Threatening military action to free him, Prime Minister Olmert promised: "There will be no negotiations [with Hamas], no bargaining, no agreements."
The cynics smiled. They had heard such talk before. In the end, they said, the Olmert government would cave in, just as two decades of Israeli governments had done before it. Large numbers of Palestinian terrorists, some of them convicted killers, would be traded for Corporal Shalit's release. The negotiations might drag on for months or longer, but ultimately they would boil down to a matter of names and numbers, just as they had always done.
The cynics, needless to say, were right. Israel and Hamas, it appears, are now in the final stages of negotiating a list of the Palestinian prisoners to be let go. Reports speak of approximately 1,400 of them. Many will be minor figures, convicted of stone throwing, possession of weapons, or simply membership in terrorist organizations. Some will be political leaders. Some will be murderers.
And the message will, once again, be clear: The kidnapping of Israelis pays well. In fact, it not only pays well, it pays better than any other form of terrorist activity. No matter how often it fails, it is worth trying to carry out again and again, because the profits are lucrative when it succeeds. What other investment can give you a return of 1,400 to one?
This is Olmert's last straw. Ms. Glick is quite correct: The Israeli people are not stupid, and they will not be happy with this. If I were in Prime Minister Olmert's shoes, I would pray that the story is kept quiet as much as possible. There might be calls for his removal and new elections to be held. But As both go on to point out, the solution is not those in his administration now. They are part of the problem.
With Olmert in charge, no nation in the Middle Easy who is an enemy of Irael will take him seriously. Iran could be fueling the missiles right at this moment, and even if Olmert knew it, he would not be ready to strike back. for a nation like Israel that must fight to survive each and every day, those people deserve a person leading them that is as vehement and voracious about national security they are. Right now, Olmert is not that man.
Changes must be made. With that region as dangerous as it is right now, from Iran alone, Israel needs a strong leader. A Churchill or even if they could find another Golda Meir would do them well. But Olmert is consistently showing that he is more dove than lion, and Israel needs a lion.
Marcie
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 4:30 PM
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