We are all small when we have to face the fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and grandparents and spouses whose loved ones are captives in Gaza. No one has the right to preach to them how to conduct their fight to rescue them from captivity, their own flesh and blood, our own flesh. It is indeed very possible that over the next 100 days, Israel will be forced to release terrorists from prisons, and quite a few – just like in past deals. But Israel can pursue another path. A lot depends on the effectiveness of the military pressure on Hamas.
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Having said this, something else needs to be said: It is irresponsible to say that Israel will secure their release "at any price". It is irresponsible, chiefly because those who say this actually say that their lives are more precious than the lives of his children and grandchildren and our children and grandchildren.
The ancient Jewish principle teaches us that when saying "certain and perhaps", we mean that "certain is preferable". Recent past experience teaches us that terrorists who were released in previous deals returned to terrorist activity. This is "certain". This is proven. It is certainly not "perhaps", as claimed.
The data was and remains unequivocal, and painful: The first intifada, in which 154 Israelis were murdered, was fueled by the release of the captives in the "Jibril deal" in 1985. The thousands of terrorists released in deals between 1993-1999 perpetrated terrorist attacks during the second intifada in which 1,178 Israelis were murdered and thousands were injured. Dozens of the releasees of the "Tanenbaum deal" in 2004 murdered over 40 Israelis. Those released under the Gilad Schalit deal planned hundreds of attacks, in which over a hundred Israelis were murdered, many years before October 7th.
The Schalit deal made a crucial contribution to the infrastructure of evil and wickedness that Hamas built in the strip. The group comprising future Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar that was allowed to go into Gaza planned and carried out the massacre in which about 1,300 people were murdered on Oct. 7 – a massacre that spawned a war in which 190 soldiers have fallen so far and about 13,000 civilians and soldiers have been injured.
It may be that we will have no choice; it may be that we will be pushed back into that hellish dilemma, but at least one lesson can be learned and implemented from previous deals: A significant part of the death sown here by the released murderers was caused by those who were beyond Israel's reach because they were deported abroad.
A significant part of the terror was sown by terrorists who were deported to Turkey, Lebanon, or Gaza. Israel, it turns out, has much better counterterrorism capabilities when it can monitor terrorists released to their homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Abroad and in Gaza, on the other hand, none of them could be rearrested. Not Sinwar, not Saleh al-Arouri, and not Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
If at all, then to the West Bank
So if we have to release prisoners, let's make sure that they be barred from going abroad. About half of the approximately 15,000 terrorists Israel has released since 1985 returned to terrorism and many of them were rearrested here in the West Bank. Abroad and in Gaza, on the other hand, none of them could be rearrested again.
In the next 100 days, we are therefore asked to remember that every deal made in the past spilled more fuel on the bonfire of terror and contributed its share to the next attack, murder, and kidnapping. In fact, it almost invited these acts. Therefore, even as we uphold the Jewish precept of redeeming captives that is so engraved in Jewish DNA, and despite our heart going out to the kidnapped and their families, let's hope that a rational, cold calculation will ultimately prevail when our leaders make a decision.
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