Gilad Schalit - The Journey Home

A new video I created - Gilad Schalit - The Journey Home.

I know I'm a bit late on this... This was actually created around the time of his release, but issues with the audio arose and only now did I get a chance to fix it.

Enjoy.

Europe vs Israel - Democracy and Gilad Schalit

An amazing article in the Telegraph:

One of the supreme ironies among the European moral stances has to do with their discourse on the death penalty. It is a standard trope of European contempt for the USA that it still has a death penalty, a sign of its cowboy nature and its retardation in the moral progress of nations.

And yet when that same Europe turns its gaze on the Middle East, the country they have the most contempt for is the only country in the entire region to reject capital punishment, and they have the most admiration for a country that among a widespread political culture that extensively uses torture and execution for the maintenance of public order, shows perhaps the most contempt for the lives of its own peoples and its enemies.

Normally, this would not be even worth mentioning. Most people would just roll their eyes while others complain about Zionist imperialists trying to divert attention from their oppression of the Palestinians. But if you want to understand the “hostage-for-prisoner-exchange” that just took place in Israel and the Western media’s coverage of the event, then you need to pay attention to the issue.

Israel first outlawed the death penalty in 1954, thus reversing the Mandate Law, which, in most other instances, Israel took over from the British. They based themselves both on rabbinic precedent (concerns for both respecting the image of God in man and the unattainable burden of proof) and modern liberal sentiment. In doing so, they became the first modern Western democracy to ban the death penalty, followed a decade later by Britain (1965), Sweden (1972), Canada (1976) and France (1981).

...If the Israelis had hundreds of terrorists in their prisons, in some cases serving multiple life sentences, available to trade for Gilad Shalit, a soldier kidnapped from Israeli soil by Hamas combatants five years ago, it’s because of this attitude towards human life, both their own and those of the Palestinians. And that attitude was on full display throughout this exchange, with agonising over endangering future Israelis by releasing these men contrasting with a profound commitment to getting Gilad Shalit back. Some Arabs recognised the unflattering light this shed on their own culture, while others revelled in it.

Palestine, on the other hand, represents almost the polar opposite. This is a place in which killing daughters and wives and homosexuals for shaming the family with (even suspected and loosely interpreted) inappropriate sexual behavior is a regular feature of society, where “collaborators” are summarily executed, where official statistics for executions put the PA at a rate of formal, legal execution that cedes only to China, Iran, N Korea, Yemen and Libya.
The trade of over a thousand Palestinians for one Israeli highlights the radical differences between the cultures. As Hizbullah’s Nasrullah put it after a prison exchange in 2004: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”

If a European, concerned about the nature of the aggressive Islam that has begun to crop up in his cities, citing for example Sharia zones, wanted to understand the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he might spend a moment visiting the sites of Palestinian anti-Zionists, where this profoundly perverse culture teems. But of course, that would be politically incorrect. To spend any time pointing out the problems here constitutes the highest level of politically incorrect Islamophobia.

So instead of helping Europeans understand what’s at stake, most of the media and the NGO community have spun this story as one of violations of human rights on “both sides” with a heavy focus on Israeli misdeeds. The prisoners were considered “equal,” and Israeli primarily held accountable by the Geneva Convention for the treatment of enemy combatants when, in reality, the only one protected under these conditions was Shalit, a uniformed soldier kidnapped on his own soil in non-combat situation, and the thousand Palestinian prisoners where convicted in a court, primarily of crimes related to terror attacks on civilians (an, alas, necessary redundancy in these days of sophism).

Thus, The New York Times’s Robert Mackee could speak glibly about the “joy of parents on both sides” at the return of prisoners, and the UN could voice its concern that the prisoners Israel released might be subject to illegal forced transfer. “Returning people to places other than their habitual places of residence is in contradiction to international humanitarian law.” The UN’s concern for the full exercise of free will by convicted mass murderers illustrates the problem. Humanitarian discourse has been turned on its head to protect the ugliest players in this particular game, threatened by ugly forces within their own society, all the while implying that Israel, in its haste to get its own soldier back, trampled their rights and violated humanitarian law. Not surprisingly this led Ban Ki Moon to a moment of moral vertigo where he denounced the violation of everyone’s rights.

Of course, in order to present the moral equivalence of all the “prisoners” in the swap, one has to play down the heinous nature of the crimes and personalities of the Palestinian prisoners released. BBC correspondent Jon Donnison showed the extent of ignorance among the supposedly professional news media by interviewing a man in prison for organising and abetting several suicide bombings. (Because the attacks only injured but did not kill, he did not receive life sentences.) “You are 31 years old, 10 years in prison, serving a life sentence for being a member of Hamas, I mean, how do you feel today?” BBC viewers could be excused for sympathising with a political prisoner, inhumanly incarcerated for belonging to an opposition party, free at last.

In acquiescing with a narrative in which hatred and murder are considered legitimate expressions of “resistance” to “occupation,” Western human rights activists – including many journalists – have degraded humanitarian language at the same time as they have allowed into the public sphere a discourse of genocidal hatred. They have excluded any sympathy for Israelis who defend themselves from the onslaught they have shut out from their and their audiences’ consciousness.

It may seem cost-free to Westerners, but it’s not. In misreading the nature of the threat Israel faces, in adopting a degraded language of human rights to protect the greatest enemies of human rights on the planet, in adopting a corrupted advocacy journalism that masquerades as empirically accurate, they embrace all the kinds of techniques that put them in danger when faced with the same enemy.

An Arab Israeli's "Hair Strike" for Schalit

Amazing!

Ynet:

Unusual act of solidarity: Mustafa Salim, 35, an Arab Israeli resident of the northern village of Muqaibla did not shave or cut his hair for more than five years until this week.

Salim, who stresses he is not a religious person, refused to cut his fair since Gilad Shalit was abducted into Gaza in 2006. On Tuesday, upon the completion of the prisoner swap deal and with Shalit's return home, he was finally able to shave and get a haircut.

Read the rest here.

Human Rights Watch Anti-Israel Bias - Schalit's Release

Check out this new video I made (and make sure to subscribe to the Israle Awareness YouTube Channel!)

How did the NGO Human Rights Watch handle the release of Gilad Schalit? Watch this short video to find out.

The fact that HRW has the words "Human Rights" and is an NGO should give it away - extreme anti-Israel bias and double standards and hypocrisy and no care for human rights.

A Shortlived Gain for Hamas

 JPost:

... But observers of the Palestinian scene say Hamas’s victory will likely prove ephemeral as the Palestinian public quickly forgets the achievement and the age-old debate remains unresolved among Palestinians – whether to achieve their state through negotiations, as Abbas advocates, or through armed struggle, as Hamas wants.

“Twenty days ago, Abbas gave a speech at the UN General Assembly and he was very popular. Nowadays, now one talks about that speech. No one talks about Palestine at the UN,” Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of politics at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, told The Media Line. “The same thing will happen to Hamas.

The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority ruling in the West Bank has been leading a drive to have the United Nations recognize a Palestinian state, a move its leaders say will enhance their standing and pressure Israel into peace talks. Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip four years ago, rejects Israel’s existence and insists Palestinians can defeat it militarily.

While the prisoner swap doesn’t quite fit the description of armed struggle – Hamas negotiated the terms through Egyptian and German intermediaries – analysts and PA officials say that it does demonstrate the value of persistence and the refusal to compromise. They say it undermines in eyes of the Palestinian public the advantages of a negotiated solution.

Abusada said Hamas may enjoy a second wave of public adulation when a second group of 550 prisoners is released in two months, but the impact of that will also fade away, short of a more comprehensive answer to solving the Palestinians’ problems.

Although Hamas leaders have said the prisoner swap includes promises by Israel to ease the blockade it imposed on Gaza when Hamas took over in 2007, the movement can only suggest to Palestinians patience as a timetable to military victory. Hamas has stockpiled missiles and other weaponry in anticipation of another conflict with Israel, but its last fight with the Jewish state in the 2008-2009 Cast Lead Operation ended badly for it.

More recently, Hamas has seen its popularity slip amid a failure negotiate a national unity government with Fatah this year or to improve living conditions in Gaza. Its early hopes that the Arab Spring would improve its standing have been dashed. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was cool to the Islamic movement, was ousted from power, but Bashar Assad, a key ally, is beset by popular rebellion at home.

...

What Hamas may not be able to do, however, is rebuild its organization with the released prisoners heading back to the Fatah-ruled West Bank, where Israeli and PA security forces have decimated the movement, analysts said. Their identities are already known and their movements are likely to be restricted.

Yoram Cohen, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and a supporter of the swap, said the number of prisoners being released was too small to change the balance of power between Israel and Hamas or between Hamas and the Fatah.

“The risk we are taking is on a level and a security challenge we will be able to deal with. There are 20,000 Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam fighters in Gaza, and another 200 terrorists won't make the world crash down upon us," Cohen told reporters last week, referring to the military wing of Hamas.

Hamas has also diminished the PR impact of the swap by failing to free some of the most high-profile Palestinians held by Israel and focusing on its own members at the expense of Palestinians affiliated with Fatah and other movements.

"This is not a deal," Fatah's Kadura Fares, who heads a Palestinian prisoner activist group and is a close associate of jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. Fares told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, "This agreement does not come close to respecting the principles and criteria which Hamas itself promised."

Among the celebrity prisoners still behind bars in Israel are Ahmad Sa'adat of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, jailed for his role in assassinating Minister of Tourism Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001; and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences and is regarded as many as a possible successor to Abbas as Fatah chief.

Islamists also have their complaints about the prisoner list, said Zelkovitz. Abbas Al-Sayed, who helped plan to 2002 bombing of the Park Hotel in Netanya, was not released; nor were Abdullah Barghouti, a Hamas official in Gaza responsible for dozens of murders; or Ibrahim Hamed, the head of the movement’s military wing in the West Bank.

You hear that? It's not a good deal because only 1027 terrorists and murderers are being released... Pathetic...

Gilad Schalit, Hamas Captivity vs Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons

A new video I created.  Pass it on and subscribe to the Israel Awareness YouTube channel.

October 18 Morning Links

Gilad is free!

Here are links to very good articles:

Hamas frees Gilad Schalit

Gilad Returns Home

Live Updates of How it Happened

Barak Warns Terrorists and Murderers

The Global Isolation of Hamas and their Economic Ruin

Abbas calls the prisoners "Freedom Fighters" - check out my previous post about "freedom fighters"

Artificial joy for Palestinians; real joy for Israelis; envy for Israelis from Palestinians

Why are Palestinians celebrating murder?

Jonothan S. Tobin, Commentary Magazine:

... The impending release of so many murderers is nothing to celebrate. That is, unless you are a Palestinian.

Mass rallies and celebrations are being planned in Ramallah to celebrate the freedom of those who were convicted of mass murders. Who will they be cheering? As the New York Times reports:

Those being freed include the founders of Hamas’s armed wing and militants who kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers and civilians. A mastermind of the 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria who killed 15 will walk out of prison, as will a woman who used the Internet to lure a lovesick Israeli teenager to a Palestinian city and had him murdered.

Most of the prisoners were serving life sentences, some for being involved in attacks like the 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub that killed 21 people and a suicide bombing a year later of a Netanya hotel in which 29 died.

Apologists for the Palestinians will argue those in Israeli jails were resisting the “occupation” of the country, though few will own up to the fact that as far as the prisoners are concerned, the territory of pre-June 1967 Israel is just as “occupied” as the West Bank. But even if you think the Palestinian cause is just, how can anyone justify the slaughter of innocents such as at the Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem? Even if you think Israel should withdraw back to the 1967 lines, how can any civilized person condone the Palestinian decision to treat those who committed such atrocities as heroes?

... What ought to be discussed is the upside-down ethos of Palestinian political culture in which the spilling of Jewish blood grants the killer not only absolution but also heroic status.

The world turned away in horror a decade ago when a photograph captured the moment when one of the ringleaders of a Palestinian lynch mob showed his bloodstained hands to a cheering crowd after he had helped murder an Israeli. Yet today, the Palestinian political elite, including many whom our government deems “moderates,” will not only facilitate the release of this miscreant but treat him like a conquering hero.

The prisoner swap has unfortunately reminded us of the depths of degradation to which the Palestinian political culture sank during the second intifada, as mass slaughter became not merely a tool of war but the touchstone of a people’s identity. We would have hoped the passage of years and the realization of the cost in Palestinian suffering that this terror war incurred would have sobered them up. It would be one thing if these murderers were taken back in an atmosphere that showed some recognition their crimes were nothing to emulate. But instead, the release is proving to be yet another indication nothing has changed.

Those, like the Obama administration, who repeat tired clichés about the need for Israel to take risks for peace, never seem to own up to the costs of those risks. The second intifada and the 1,000 Jewish lives lost to terrorists were the price of earlier risks previous Israeli governments took in the hope of securing peace. The celebration that will convulse Palestinian society tomorrow is sad proof that similar risks taken today will also be paid for in blood.

Rather than ask why Israel is willing to trade so many terrorists for one soldier, the world should be asking why the Palestinians are cheering the release of sociopaths.

Agreed 100%. "Resistance fighters" is the common excuse.  Mind you, Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi took to nonviolent protests (and they had a real, legitimate case - they didn't attack a country and then complain when they lost).  But ok, the Palestinians aren't doing that.  Still, they're "resistance fighters," no?

No.  Not at all.  If you really think that blowing up children eating pizza or young adults sipping coffee - innocent civilians - is "resistance fighters," then you're an insane, lunatic, morally bankrupt person. 

Or you're the U.N.

Last time I checked, Hamas doesn't give warnings when they launch rockets intentionally at schoolbuses and hospitals.  Last time I checked, Israel distributed 2 million leaflets, 100,000 phone calls, sound bombs, text messages, etc, before operations in the Gaza War, in order to minimize civilian casualties, and called off certain airstrikes on Hamas officials because of the fear that civilians would die.

Great video by a British colonel saying that the IDF did more to safeguard civilians than any army in the entire world can be found here.

"Resistance fighters" don't do that, and they don't strap explosives on 3 year olds and have them parade around town with joy.

As I quoted Alan Dershowitz in a previous post:

Contrast the pleas of the Shalit family with the plea of Zahra Maladan. Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber. At the funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children, and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times offering the following admonition to her son: "If you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Nor is Ms. Maladan alone in urging her children to become suicide murderers. Umm Nidal, who ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council, "prepared all of her sons" for martyrdom. She has ten sons, one of whom already engaged in a suicide operation, which she considered "a blessing, not a tragedy." She is now preparing to "sacrifice them all."

"Resistance fighters" don't honor the deaths of innocent civilians eating pizza at Sbarro's.

The Right Decision - 1027 Times Over

A fascinating article.

Alex Ryvchin, JPost:

It is one of the most challenging decisions a leader could ever make.

Should one man be saved even if his freedom means that his nation is put in danger?

...

The soldier occupies a revered position in Israeli society.

Almost mythical. Perhaps it is because the Jews have witnessed first hand what a soldier can achieve and what can be achieved in his absence.

The Promised Land may have been bequeathed by God but it was conquered by Joshua’s armies. And through the Holocaust, the Jews saw what horrors can occur when one is powerless to fight back. So the bond is strong. But we cannot know just how strong until times like this, when rhetoric and promise must give way to difficult actions. In agreeing to release 1,027 convicted terrorists, Israel has demonstrated the primacy of the bond in Israeli society. Nations may venerate and commemorate their soldiers, but never has a government placed so high a price on the life of a single soldier and truly repaid the sacrifice a soldier makes for his nation.

The decision to negotiate the release of Gilad Schalit also sends a powerful rebuke to critics of Israel’s military policies. Operations in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon have been condemned as escalations or disproportionate.

Yet in demonstrating how highly it values the life of its soldiers, Israel has unequivocally demonstrated that it does not commit troops to combat unless it is absolutely essential to do so.

...

The Kuntar decision did not sit comfortably with the public. In that case, there was no life to save.

But here, the decision reflects the nation’s ethics – derived as they are from the Jewish faith. As the former British Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits noted, “the value of human life is infinite and beyond measure.” Schalit’s release is an affirmation of life and a reminder of the indelible mark that ancient Jewish ethics have left on the modern Jewish State.
...

Hamas will be jubilant, Fatah will feel embarrassed and the Israeli position that the Palestinian cause will only be advanced through peaceful means has been spectacularly undermined.

The decision to release 1,027 convicted terrorists will weigh heavily on the conscience of the Israeli government. They will feel that they have failed the victims of terror and strengthened the hand of an organization committed to its destruction. That is an incredibly high price. But one which Israel, a state founded on Jewish values and dependent on its army to survive, will be all too happy to pay. In contrast, just as Lebanon celebrated the return of the murderer, Kuntar, Palestinians will embrace the return of their own criminals – and will perhaps be left slightly perplexed by why Hamas has shown that the liberty of 1,027 of its own people is equivalent to the life of one solitary Israeli soldier.

The writer is a London based lawyer and founder of The Jewish Thinker (www.jewishthinker.org), a non-profit organization promoting debate and contribution to matters affecting Jewish thought and life.

The Future Life for Terrorists Mona and Tamimi

Some good news:

Yoram Schweitzer, Ynet:

Mona was the mastermind behind the murder of teenager Ofir Rahum while Tamimi drove the Sbarro restaurant suicide bomber to his Jerusalem destination, where he murdered 15 Israelis and seriously injured many others.



Amina Mona

 In Israel, the release of the two is stirring strong emotions as they symbolize in their non-apologetic demeanor a strong sense of disgust and well-founded desire that they serve the rest of their lives in prison for their murderous activity. According to the prisoner swap deal, both will be deported: Mona to Gaza and Tamimi to Jordan.

As part of a project I conducted in Israeli prisons, I have held lengthy conversations with the two. Apart from being a young and intelligent woman, Mona turned out to be a manipulative woman with a larger ego than the entire Palestinian problem she claims to represent.


During our meetings, her mood swings could be easily identifiable. Alongside her outrageous statements defending her right to murder her enemies, including an innocent teenager who was lured by her romantic gestures, she still tried to convince me that she was not the monster that Israelis claim her to be.


Mona's problem is that it isn’t only Israelis who view her as a monster. Her fellow inmates also think she is. She controlled the prisoners in her ward with an iron fist as if she were Al Capone. Several inmates who refused to obey her orders suffered heavy punishments. Some were bitten by her while others suffered serious burns inflicted by boiling wax because they dared challenge her leadership.


Her infamous cruelty did not go unnoticed. Many Fatah members including her accomplice found it hard to defend her actions to me. Hamas even vowed to "sort things out" with her upon her release.


Even if it is no comfort to the Rahum family and the people of Israel, Mona may initially be received as a hero in Hamas-controlled Gaza, but her fate may not turn out to be as bright. She obviously won't enjoy much comfort in light of her abusive methods in prison.

Chilling composure

Ahlam Tamimi was always proud of the fact that she was the first female Hamas combatant. She planted an explosive charge she had made inside a bottle and placed it on a supermarket shelf. Since she had a press card, she was granted free access to roam Jerusalem and collected information on possible targets for Hamas.




Ahlam Tamimi

 She personally led the suicide bomber to the location that she had singled out – the Sbarro restaurant – because she said there were "many radical Jews there".


She spoke to me while maintaining a chilling and provoking composure, which characterizes her entire attitude. The only concern she expressed in our meetings, during which she defiantly described her story, pertained to a possible deportation to Jordan, as was eventually decided upon in this deal.


In contrast to Mona, she is expected to join Hamas' propaganda machine because of her persuasive rhetoric ability. She may even turn into Hamas' Leila Khaled (a Fatah plane hijacker who became a leading voice of the Palestinian cause).


Mona, Tamimi, and Kahira al-Saadi – another female prisoner and mother of four who was sentenced to life in prison for her role in suicide bombings – are viewed as heroes in the Arab press.


However, they may carry the burden of other women who were tainted while serving time in prison, as is common in the traditional societies they come from and to which they will return. It is also likely that they will learn just how wide the gap is between their heroic public image and the daily reality of their lives.


Perhaps we can find some solace in the fact that the damage their release will cause will be limited to the symbolic-emotional sphere while the security risk they will possess after being released will be miniscule to non-existent.


The writer is head of a terrorism project at the Institute of National Security Studies and interviewed dozens of security prisoners held in Israel over the years.

Alan Dershowitz: Israel-Hamas Prisoner Swap

Alan Dershowitz, Huffington Post:

The Israeli government has agreed to release hundreds of properly convicted Palestinian terrorists in exchange for one illegally kidnapped Israeli soldier. This decision, understandable as it is emotionally, dramatically illustrates why terrorism works. By agreeing to this exchange, Israel has once again shown its commitment to saving the life of even one kidnapped soldier, regardless of the cost. And the cost here is extremely high, because some of the released terrorists will almost certainly try to kill again.

Leaders of terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, fully understand this cruel arithmetic of death. As Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, put it: "We are going to win because they love life and we love death." Democratic societies that value the life of each citizen are more vulnerable to emotional blackmail than societies that are steeped in the culture of death. Terrorists understand what history has shown: that democratic societies, regardless of what they say about not negotiating with terrorists, will, in the end, submit to emotional blackmail. They will release their terrorist prisoners in order to obtain the release of their own kidnapped or hijacked citizens.

Accordingly, the threat of deterrence against terrorists is weak, because every terrorist knows that regardless of the prison sentence he receives, there is a high likelihood that he will be released well before he has served it. This not only encourages more terrorism, but it also incentivizes kidnappings and hijackings that provide the terrorist with hostages to exchange for captured terrorists.

... Israelis know Gilad Shalit. He is everyone's son. They do not know those who may someday be killed by the released terrorists. They are faceless and nameless statistics -- at least for now. The pleas of the Shalit family resonate with every Israeli who loves their children.

Contrast the pleas of the Shalit family with the plea of Zahra Maladan. Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber. At the funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children, and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times offering the following admonition to her son: "If you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Nor is Ms. Maladan alone in urging her children to become suicide murderers. Umm Nidal, who ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council, "prepared all of her sons" for martyrdom. She has ten sons, one of whom already engaged in a suicide operation, which she considered "a blessing, not a tragedy." She is now preparing to "sacrifice them all."

It is impossible, of course, to generalize about cultures... Democratic leaders, on the other hand, urge their citizens to act in the interests of life and who see death as a necessary evil in fighting against even greater evils.

While the preference for life over death may appear to be a weakness in the ability of democracies to fight against terrorism, in the end it is a strength. It is a strength because it signals a democracy's commitment to value the life of every single one of its citizens. Israeli and American soldiers go into battle knowing that their countries will do everything in their power to rescue them, even if it means taking extraordinary risks. Nations that are committed to such humanistic values tend to have superior armies, as the United States and Israel do.

An important goal of terrorists is to force democracies to surrender their humanistic values. Israel's values include never leaving a soldier behind, whether he is alive, as Shalit is, or dead, as have been other soldiers whose bodies have been exchanged for prisoners. Israel, by agreeing to exchange hundreds of terrorists for one soldier, has shown the world that it will not compromise on its value system which proclaims that "he who saves one human being, it is as if he has saved the world."

Alan Dershowitz's latest book is the Trials of Zion. An earlier version of this article was published in Newsmax.

Read the full article here.

Ramallah lyncher to be freed

The Ramallah lynch in 2000 - besides being a clear example of Palestinian Apartheid where a Jew can't travel to Ramallah without being brutally murdered - was a horrific and disgusting incident, whose very details sends shockwaves into the reader.

Now, one of the lynchers will be freed.

Ynet:

Abed Alaziz Salaha, who was photographed in the horrific photo with his hands covered with blood in what has become the symbol of the second intifada, was sentenced to life in prison but is expected to be released on Tuesday.

The pain is stronger today," Michael told Ynet. "Not because of the deal itself but because of the way it is carried out. It is not a deal but a major loss. It is a twisted deal. You don't release at any cost. There is a price. You cannot give it all."

On the one hand, the bereaved brother says, the family is happy for the parents and siblings who will see their son Gilad Shalit come home. "On the other hand, our family is angry that nobody cared about our sensitivity. No one (in the government) experienced our pain," he said.



Michael does not feel any pity for the families of the Palestinian prisoners. "They are all the devil's children. I don’t feel sorry for them and not for the tears of their mothers. A mother that sends her child to blow up?!"

The Ramallah lynch took place on October 12, 2000, when a mob of Palestinians murdered two IDF soldiers, Vadim Norzich and Yossi Avrahami, and mutilated their bodies.

The lynch occurred at the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada and despite attempts by the Palestinian Authority to erase any documentation of the brutal murder, the horrific images reached every corner of the world and sent shockwaves in Israel.

Salaha, 30, from the village of Dir Jarid near Ramallah, was arrested in 2001 and admitted that he was part of the mob that stormed the police station, and that he strangled one of the soldiers while the others beat him.

When he saw that his hands were covered with the soldiers' blood, he went to the window to proudly show his hands to the mob below.

This would be like America releasing members of the Ku Klux Klan who lynched blacks during the early/mid 1900's.  How can you just let that go?  It's a crime against humanity.

(Here, I am showing one argument about the Shalit deal, or at least that certain prisoners shouldn't be released)

Shalit has been informed about the deal

Ha'aretz:

Gilad Shalit, the Israel Defense Forces soldier who has been held largely incommunicado in the Gaza Strip for more than five years, has been told that he will be freed as part of a prisoner swap deal, a Palestinian militant leader said Wednesday.

"Of course, we informed Shalit yesterday about reaching a deal on releasing him," Abu Attaya, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Gaza, told the German Press-Agency dpa.

The PRC is one of the three groups holding Shalit.

Abu Attaya did not say how Shalit reacted.

We don't need a Palestinian terrorist spokesman to know what he thought.  It obviously went something like this:

I greatly deplore this motion to free me on behalf of Israel.  The generosity, warmth, and kindness that I received as a prisoner in Gaza has been deeply profound, and will not be forgotten.  True, very few details about my detainment were announced, nor has the Red Cross been allowed to visit me, which violates international law.

True, if I was a Palestinian in an Israeli prison, I'd be allowed to receive an education, T.V., phone, throw parties, be visited by the Red Cross and other organizations, and all other aspects of a 4 star hotel would be met.  Indeed, it is quite astonishing how Palestinian prisoners - many of whom have killed Israelis personally, others who have attempted, and still others who facilitated - are launching a hunger strike that their conditions were downgraded to a 3 star hotel (but still fitting international law criteria), in order to persaude Hamas to swiften my release, and since it doesn't quite make sense to give the murderer of 50 people a 4 star hotel life.

Yes, Moussab Hassan Yousef was able to come to this realization.  But still, Israel has to ruin everything!  Why can't they just let me stay captive?

It obviously went something like that.

Gilad Schalit and the Sea Turtle

Interesting article in Aish:

A couple of years ago I remember seeing an incredible contrast on YouTube. A very large and very old leatherback sea turtle (which is on the endangered species list) had been caught in a fisherman’s net off the coast of Gaza. The beautiful creature was hauled ashore and surrounded by a large crowd of Gazans. One of the men in the crowd explained to the reporter how the meat of the turtle would feed Gazan children, who were suffering due to the Israeli occupation, and the blood would help cure various ailments. The turtle was dragged behind a truck, flipped on its back and then slaughtered.

Further up the Mediterranean coast in Israel, a much younger and smaller sea turtle had been injured by a boat and lost one of its limbs. The turtle was rescued by some Israelis and then taken to a special turtle sanctuary where it was operated on, nurtured back to health and then released back into the sea.

The contrast couldn’t have been more extreme.

When I heard about the impending exchange of Gilad Shalit for over a thousand Palestinians prisoners, many with “blood on their hands,” I was reminded of those two turtles.
To me those two turtles represented a microcosm of the values of Israel and the Jewish people versus the enemies that surround us.

Read the rest here.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef backs Schalit deal

JPost:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received strong backing for the Gilad Schalit deal Tuesday night from Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

The rabbi was one of the first Israelis briefed about the deal when Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited him on Sunday.

Yosef hosted Schalit’s father Noam in a meeting Tuesday night that was described as emotional.

“We believe there will be a majority,” Shas chairman Eli Yishai said. “This is good news for all the people of Israel. It’s important to the rabbi, who strongly supports it. He asked the ministers to fulfill the commandment to redeem captives by voting for the deal.”

Rabbi Yosef, a great Halachik scholar, is a strong supporter of a peaceful two state solution, arguing that the Israeli-Palestinain conflict takes lives, and is therefore categorized as Pikuach Nefesh, or danger of life.  Hence, it is appropriate to make lengthy concessions as long as they result in peace.  For that reason, he strongly condemned the intifada that followed the Oslo Accords, and the unilateral disengagement from Gaza.

With Rabbi Yosef's blessing, many can be somewhat more assured that the released terrorists will not be able to significantly (or at all) harm Israelis.  But again, time will tell.

Welcome home Gilad!

Gilad Schalit is returning home!  Check out these links for more info.

• The deal between Israel and Hamas


• Excitement at the Schalit tent


• Op-Ed against the deal


• Schalit and the Arab Spring


• Celebrating and Sukkot connection


• MK's split over deal, majority supports the deal


• Palestinians celebrate release of 1000 terrorists and murderers

Excerpt from last article:

Abu Attaya, spokesman of the Popular Resistance Committees, whose fighters joined Hamas in the capture of Shalit, said militants would kidnap more Israeli soldiers until all Palestinian prisoners are freed.

"The coming weeks and month will witness more responses and more, similar operations. We will continue the same path to kidnap Zionist soldiers in order to clear all prisons," the masked spokesman said, clutching an AK 47 assault rifle.
"Today the resistance talks," an activist cried over the loudspeaker of one mosque. "Today the enemy submitted to our demands and that was just the start."

This deal has its goods and its bads.  The good being that Gilad Schalit is coming home.  The bad being that 1000 terrorists are now free to kidnap more soldiers and plant bombs and committ terrorist acts.  Hopefully, Israel's security will prevent these attacks.  This is a tough time period, and it is impossible to predict what will come next.