Prisoner swap an offer we can’t refuse

Quid pro quo when our soul is at stake

By Robert Horenstein

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Prior to July, the last time I had been in Rosh Hanikra on the Israeli-Lebanese border I was 17 years old. That’s the same age Samir Kuntar was in 1979 when he shot an Israeli man, Danny Haran, at point-blank range and then killed his 4-year-old daughter Einat by smashing her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle.

This is what I was contemplating last month as I looked out over the white-chalk cliffs of Rosh Hanikra, standing tall above the sparkling blue Mediterranean. For in three short days, on July 16, Kuntar would be passing through that very place, a free man, on his way back to Lebanon as part of another lopsided prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, an exchange for which there has been no shortage of criticism from right-leaning Israelis and American Jews.

Just to cite two examples: Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens stated, “Israel has once again demonstrated to its enemies that their strategy of taking hostages works.” Pulling no punches, author Naomi Ragen called the deal a “despicable act of appeasement,” causing her to feel “deeply ashamed to be an Israeli.”

Many of the commentaries I’ve read, both in Israel and here, insist that there can be no justification for trading the corpses of 200 Arab infiltrators along with five living terrorists—including a wholly unrepentant Kuntar—for the bodies of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were killed by Hezbollah two years ago. (Similarly, in 2003, Israel freed more than 400 terrorists and returned 60 Lebanese bodies in exchange for three dead soldiers and an Israeli drug dealer.)

True, it’s hard to refute the critics’ logic. When Israel consents to grossly unequal exchanges, they argue, it creates a precedent that encourages further kidnappings, increases the chances that captured soldiers will be mistreated or murdered, strengthens terrorist groups such as Hezbollah by enhancing their support on the Arab street, and puts the Israeli public at risk by releasing recidivist prisoners who will return to perpetrating terrorist attacks at the first opportunity.

As Yoram Shachar, the brother of an Israeli policeman also murdered by Kuntar said, “The release today is the kidnapping of tomorrow.”

Surely, too, this deal will raise the price Israel will have to pay for Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped soldier who is being held by Hamas in Gaza and who is believed to be alive.

Curiously, other than the argument that this deal makes Israel appear weak—that it irreparably harms Israeli deterrence—these points, cogent though they are, reveal much more about the mentality of Israel’s Arab adversaries than they do about Israel itself. Moreover, what has been largely absent from the debate is a discussion about the unmistakable message that this prisoner exchange sends regarding the prospects for a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

If Israel was made to look weak, it’s because Hezbollah exploited fundamental values that are part of the moral fabric of Israeli society. Anyone watching the news coverage of the soldiers’ funerals—the thousands of tearful Israelis lining the roads on the way to the cemeteries or Karnit Goldwasser’s heartbreaking eulogy for her husband—should have gained a strong appreciation for what these values are all about.

While north of the border, Lebanon’s body politic—Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Christian Maronite President Michael Aoun, and “pro-American” Sunni Prime Minister Fuad Saniora—came together to welcome home a child killer turned hero, Israel was giving two of its soldiers a proper Jewish burial, ending two years of anguished uncertainty for the Goldwasser and Regev families.

Yes, Israel forfeited the strategic advantage that could have been had by refusing to negotiate with terrorists, thus ostensibly neutralizing their incentive to kidnap more Israelis. It did this to maintain its humanity. It did this to redeem two captives (pidyon shvuyim) and allow their families to live again because in Judaism life has an infinite value. It did this because Jews feel a deep-rooted mutual responsibility for one another.

As rabbi and author Daniel Gordis put it, Israel “is not a country about strategic calculus [only], but about soul.”

The problem is not simply that the Arabs have exploited this Israeli impulse to act humanely—it is that they have exploited it to perpetuate the conflict. Placing a high value on life is seen as a sign of abdication and weakness, an Achilles’ heel by virtue of which Israel can be destroyed. This same mentality accounts for Hamas and Hezbollah’s cowardly use of civilians as human shields behind which they fire missiles at Israel knowing that the IDF is extremely reluctant to counterattack (what Israel should do from a strategic point of view) when there’s a high risk of civilian casualties.

It seems to me that a country willing to sacrifice strategic gain in order to keep its soul is a country yearning for peace. So why haven’t Israel’s Arab neighbors exploited this national characteristic, not to wage war against Israel, but rather to make peace with it?

Answer that question and you’ll realize why: Sixty years after Israel’s establishment, the conflict goes on and on with no end in sight.

Robert Horenstein is the staff director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Community Relations Committee.