Jubilant murderers sprung in the Schalit swap – it was a foregone conclusion that they’d murder again
The bamboozlers who gave us Oslo and its deformed derivative Disengagement have never expressed the slightest contrition and never begged the nation’s forgiveness – not even now when Gazan rockets threaten Israel’s heartland. The same goes for their craven accomplices, who ran with the pack and derided nonconformist compatriots who dared protest. But while the promoters of folly bask in self-proclaimed infallibility, they’re uncannily quick to blame others for their sins.
This is hypocrisy most foul and it’s not limited to territorial surrenders and the chimera of attaining peace and acceptance by rewarding belligerence.
Take, for example, the inflammatory issue of swap deals with terrorists and how it’s tied to the abduction and execution of three innocent boys on their way home from school. To hear our talking heads and swaggering former security chiefs, this heartrending saga started with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s 2011 decision to trade 1,027 duly convicted Hamas murderers and mass-murder masterminds for hostage Gilad Schalit, a.k.a. “the child of us all.”
It’s as if precedents weren’t already set and as if the Schalit kidnapping wasn’t in itself the result of previous cowardly surrenders to extortion. Worse yet is the fact that the very ones who spearheaded the campaign to do the deal with Hamas now pin the blame for what they actively advocated on the man they had anyway always viscerally opposed. He was to blame when he didn’t want to do the deal and he’s to blame for having done the deal.
They conducted a colossal pro-deal crusade and it would have taken nerves of super-fortified steel to defy it. Politicians on the whole – especially the sort inclined to heed the vox populi, imbecilic as it may be – are unlikely to outbrave the orchestrated outcry. Netanyahu tried but finally gave in. And when he did, the brainwashed nation stupidly celebrated and heaped profuse praise on what was essentially capitulation.
The fatal shooting of Baruch Mizrahi hadn’t yet occurred but it was a foregone conclusion that the released murders would murder again. Nevertheless, throngs of surreally ecstatic Israelis lined the roadways to get a glimpse of their highly questionable hero, Gilad. In time he became a celebrity. His father, Noam, had the unmitigated temerity to run for the Knesset (on the Labor list) for no other achievement than hoarsely demanding Hamas be paid the full asking price.
And hot on the revelation that it was Ziad Awad – a murderer released for his son’s sake – who murdered Mizrahi, Noam Schalit brazenly argued that “we didn’t demand the prisoner release and we weren’t the ones who put together the list of which prisoners were to be freed.” Yeah, right! It all happened because Martians made a ruckus for reasons understood only on Mars. Little green extraterrestrials were the ones who twisted Netanyahu’s arm and he buckled due to his own inexcusable caprice. Ergo, all’s indisputably Netanyahu’s fault!
Who can forget the billboards that greeted us on every road junction, replete with jumbo photos of swap-endorsing ex-Shin Bet head honchos? How on earth can our misguided masses forget Ya’acov Perry, Ami Ayalon, Carmi Gillon, Danny Yatom and other know-it-alls who willingly served the PR firms that advised the Schalits on how to defeat Netanyahu. How confidently they pontificated to us lesser intellects that, as Perry put it, “Israel is strong enough both militarily and in intelligence-gathering capabilities to handle released murderers with blood on their hands.”
Those of us, including the writer of these lines, who throughout remained disobligingly unconvinced were denigrated and portrayed as humanity’s hardhearted enemies. Schmaltz became trendy and the trendsetters laid it on shamelessly thick. Crooner Aviv Geffen produced a Ma’ariv op-ed in which he called Gilad a “butterfly of wars.” Then, addressing Netanyahu, he socked it to him: “what fun it is that Avner is at your side.” Avner is Netanyahu’s younger son.
Far-Left icon Aviv fashionably favored what would weaken Israel. Thus this Dayan-clan scion asked: “what if Avner, not Gilad, were the bargaining chip?” Geffen avoided mentioning quite whose “bargaining chip” Gilad is, as if Netanyahu were the one who held Gilad captive.
“It’s owed us to sit some hot afternoon, see Gilad return and shed the heavy tear stuck in our eye… There’s no price for one living soul, for one worrying mother,” draft-dodger Aviv dramatically declared.
To be sure, Geffen wasn’t the only showbiz hotshot out to score publicity points. Shlomo Artzi’s pride-and-joy, Ben, also pursues a musical career and makes no bones about having skipped that formative Israeli rite of passage – the IDF stint. In June 2010 Ben participated in a cross-country mega-march organized by the Schalits and performed in that top-draw hyper-hyped 12-day happening. Like Geffen, he too dabbled in self-expression via op-eds. In a Yediot Aharonot piece, Artzi Jr. asserted that the Schalits “appeal to that place in our hearts where there’s no debate about cost and effect.”
Bottom line, we should numb our minds and clamor for submission in the name of melodramatic mawkishness.
But our singing sensations only vocalized the lyrics dictated by the opinion-molding elite. They were merely the handy playthings of cynical and powerful manipulators. Yediot, for instance, drummed up support for the Schalits’ spectacle, appealing in banner page-one headlines to compassionate (if unthinking) Israelis to join the march for Gilad.
*Other news outlets too abandoned the business of reporting the news and switched to manufacturing them.Yediot, though, outdid all the others. It even boldly featured a hand-written logo – “help me” – seemingly scrawled by Gilad. And the masses succumbed to the ploys. Big time!
But then Yediot’s front page began to spin the reverse sentiment. Who’s to blame for Mizrahi’s slaying? Bibi, of course! How do we know it? Because the headlines of the mass-circulation Bibi-bashing tabloid say so.
Yediot‘s revised narrative depicted the Schalit’s swap as “a disastrous decision.” Its omniscient analysts informed their presumably amnesiac readers that “Netanyahu didn’t withstand the pressure of public opinion… despite warnings that letting loose over a thousand terrorists would promote more abductions… a PM without red lines will find himself squeezed over and over.”
Get it? The pernicious pattern was patented by Netanyahu and he’s therefore to blame for Mizrahi’s murder and for the tragic fate of the three nabbed schoolboys – just like he was to blame for Schalit’s prolonged ordeal.
Heaven forefend that the choreographers of the free-Schalit-at-any-price pageants beat their own breasts, never mind actually apologize.
Heaven forefend that they acknowledge who first lost his nerve in a hostage showdown. That was none other than Yitzhak Rabin, when he served as defense minister years before he won the Nobel Peace Prize for inflicting Oslo upon us. Back in antediluvian 1985, Rabin agreed to let out 1,150 convicted terrorists – including some of the then-worst mass-murderers in Israel’s prisons (like Kozo Okamoto, perpetrator of 1972’s infamous airport massacre). In return, Israel was to get three soldiers abducted and held by terror linchpin Ahmed Jibril.
Until then Israelis expected their governments to courageously choose between future detriment and immediate sacrifice. It was never a painless call to make – not when dozens of children were held in Ma’alot’s schoolhouse, not when entire families were cornered in their homes, not when guests were trapped in Tel Aviv’s Savoy Hotel, not when Sabena passengers were hijacked or other air-travelers were taken to Entebbe (where Netanyahu’s own brother fell), not when Olympic athletes were attacked in Munich or when a bus-load of holiday-makers was commandeered on the Coastal Highway.
Israeli leaders and the general public were steadfast in their resolve to resist facile solutions. At the time, even the international community – which already then lost no opportunity to demonize Israel – grudgingly admired Israeli pluck.
We were unique in an otherwise backbone-deficient world until Yitzhak Rabin encountered Miriam Groff of Holon. She was mother to Private Yoskeh, captured in September 1982.
Miriam made Rabin’s life a misery. She hounded him, organized demonstrations, confrontations and provocations – anything. Finally the national unity government under Shimon Peres contracted the ignominious transaction that liberated Yoskeh in May 1985, but flung open the floodgates to a torrent that still engulfs us.
Groff legitimized failure of nerve and increased enemy leverage by helping it to emotionally sway softhearted Jews, who – unlike Arabs – traditionally value saving lives above all else.
In their book Intifada, Ehud Ya’ari and the late Ze’ev Schiff determined that “over a third of all freed Jibril-deal convicts renewed terrorist activity within a year. The rest joined shortly after the First Intifada’s eruption… In time Jibril bragged, justly, that his deal sowed the intifada’s seeds.”
The upheaval Yoskeh’s mom triggered caused Israelis to shun the territories and conditioned psyches for Oslo, which subsequently brought us thousands of casualties, exploding buses, suicide bombers, the unilateral flight from Lebanon, another intifada, Operation Defensive Shield, Oslo’s derivative Disengagement, rocket barrages from Gaza, the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defense and, mostly recently, Operation Protective Edge.
Notorious Hamas progenitor Ahmed Yassin was first released under the Jibril deal. Yassin had “no blood on his hands” then, but before his 1989 re-arrest he founded Hamas and commissioned the abduction/murder of two Israeli soldiers (who unlike Yoskeh were expendable).
After his release, another Jibril alumnus, Jihad al-Amarin, founded the (Fatah-affiliated) al-Aksa Brigades’ Gazan branch and killed six soldiers – also apparently less vital national assets than Yoskeh.
All too many Israelis failed to survive other ensuing gratuitous terrorist releases. Miriam secured Yoskeh’s freedom at a cost too awful to tally.
Though distasteful, the undeniable truth is that distraught parents can become potent weapons in the abductors’ psychological warfare arsenal. Groff came across as grotesquely shrill, yet the dovish media avidly abetted her, just as it cheered the Schalits – who were ostensibly more decorous, though not really so. Perhaps diminished societal taboos tampered with our perceptions.
The Schalits’ Miriam-Groff-follow-up act indeed unleashed a calamity of Jibril-fiasco proportions, boosted the temptation to snatch hostages, reduced Israeli justice to utter mockery and taught terrorists that they can butcher Jews with impunity. Any of us might become their future victims.
Ilan Sa’adon and Avi Sasportas (slain on Yassin’s instructions) also had devoted parents. Asher Zaguri, Ron Lavi, Moshe Peled, Matan Biderman, Rotem Shani and Ala Kabishi, whose blood stained al-Amarin’s hands, had adoring mothers and fathers. They too served their nation in uniform. Almost no one today remembers their names and the hypocrisy-mongers playing us for suckers certainly won’t jog dormant memories.
That leaves the widowed Hadas Mizrahi’s insight as the only operative option: “impose the death penalty and make sure there won’t be any more deals like these.” In other words, enemies have to be defeated rather than indulged.
Bucking the Trend ... 
Only two words spell danger be where ” Shimon Peres ” There is more blood on his hands than anyone else. Only hell can be gauranteed for him & all his ilk.
Straight talk is a true gift. Thank you, Sarah.
Yediot Aharonot ??? Perhaps eliminate the “Y” and change the “e” to an ” i ”
Let the final three letters remain as they are- as in ” not ”
Splendid and brilliant review of past Israeli history. One of your best.
Print a million copies and drop from planes all over Israel. A better use of paper than dropping messages over Gaza.
When Gaza starts to look like a “parking lot” those who want to kill Jews and destroy Israel will get the message soon enough.
The world will blame Israel regardless of what Israel does to avoid spilling the blood of the innocent.
Cancer Doctors understand. You get it all out or it just comes back again and again.
Well said, David.
The writer of these lines is doing a FANTASTIC job !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oslo is DEAD…it always had been THE paradigm of what has gone wrong in Israels policy in regard to the Arabs !
I remember a piece of dialogue from an old American western. Being encircled by mad red skins during the night, one of the whites said to his buddy: “Wake me up, when I am dead.”
It would be better, to wake up earlier….
Perhaps because Israel was for so long the bible, but no power, it learned to elevate words over deeds. The proverb “It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission” is taken to extreme. Assassinations can be ordered without a twinge, but there can never be a solution like “impose the death penalty and make sure there won’t be any more deals like these.” The death penalty is ruled out, a priori, as barbaric, like the nations.
The Athenian “Life above all else” therefore rules over the Spartan “A casualty of war, unfortunate.”, and like Hamas, buy Gilad’s father a house.
When Russia was the Soviet Union, Hezbollah kidnapped a diplomat in Lebanon. The Rus quietly took two of the headman’s brothers and kept them as “guests of the palace”. They were not mistreated, why should they be? The kidnappers got the message. They let the diplomat go. Israel can’t do that. They can arrest and hold people without charge – but they cannot kidnap “like our enemies”.
Finally, and not really apropos except to the truth of the thesis, Israel insists Jerusalem will never be divided – yet will not let Jews pray on the Mount. Why? To keep it safe for the Wakf? While waiting for the Messiah? Next year in Al-Quds? Ok, that’s typical Jewish snark but isn’t it about time we stop privileging words over deeds?Theoretics over reality? We have a state now, not just a set of rules for then…when…maybe.
Sarah,I will try to be as brief as I possibly can.
For at least the last 1700 years the Jews in Europe were abused & murdered by the Church & the ruling aristocracies of Europe.They were constantly fed slander & lies about themselves & the rest of the Jewish people.Jews were told that they were evil & criminal,that they were barely human & unfit to live in civilized European societies,they were constantly abused by the powers that be in Europe,both mentally & physically.As bad as this was the flip-side was just as bad or worse,many Jews believed these Blood libels they were told about themselves.
These Jews wanted to escape from their hateful situation as Jews,but where would they Go?What could they change to?They wanted with all of their heart to be first rate people like all of the people they lived among….they wanted to be assimilated as worthwhile Europeans.
This was difficult,if they no longer wanted to be despised Jews, most did not want to jump out of the Jewish frying pan & into the Christian fire!In the 19th century they found a way out of both camps,they would become secular Humanists! In the East some became Bolshevik Communists,others became Labor Zionists(Communists lite) the great majority remained traditional Jews.In Western Europe many joined the fashionable intelligentsia,they became Fabian Socialists,with a thin veneer of Jewishness!They were Statists & social engineers.They would become the new Jews,secular Israelis.These people took over the Zionist movement after the passing of Herzel turning it into a fashionable club for successful & assimilated western Jews.The traditional & much poorer Zionist Jews in eastern Europe were represented by the more conservative Revisionist Zionists led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky & his adherents were pushed out of power by the early Labor Zionists.Because of the Balfour Declaration & the Jewish Fabian connection to power centers in Britain, the Labor Zionists took control of Jewish affairs in Mandated Palestine,Jabotinsky’s Revisionists were kept out of power during this period.The Labor Zionists,with Ben Gurion as their leader, took control of the national Jewish infrastructure in Palestine.They pushed all of their own people into the new state’s various institutions.they gained almost total control,through government agencies,over Israeli society.They became the elite establishment after 1948 & controlled the government & the media ever since that time! Today they still control the Media as well as most of the other sources of information available to the general public.There has been an undeclared struggle going on in Israel for many years between the Socialist Establishment & traditional Jews.Between Tel Aviv & Judea/Samaria.Between the European Socialist Israelis & the real Jews.
Many of the problems the modern state has are the result of wooly headed & doctrinaire policies forced on Israel by the Socialists(Assimilated Western European Jews).The nation has come to grief because of policies which the Socialist Left has forced upon Israeli society.
Today the traditional,real Jews are growing stronger & the Socialists are growing weaker!
This current conflict with Hamas,with most of the country under attack, has squeezed the Left into a situation that they may never recover from.Because of the harm done to Israel by the Arabs,harm attributable to Leftwing policies,the Socialist Left may well become totally discredited!
PS: They are now in a position similar to America’s Isolationists the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941!
It matters not if your recounting of History is somewhat inaccurate, biased and doctrinaire. Stop with the labels! In the final analysis, we are all JEWS! That’s what we do; we have viewpoints, ideologies, beliefs, and we argue them and we jockey for position. But…do you want to be the one standing at the gates of self-destruction choosing who goes left and who right? We need to survive as a people, at all costs, no matter our philosophies, beliefs or ideals. Who are you to decide who are the “real Jews”? That’s what a Democracy allows for: politics and a jockeying for position of power. If you can’t handle that, get out of the way. Those long-time, orthodox inhabitants of the area now known as “Israel”, believe it should not have been proclaimed thusly. They are still waiting upon Messhiach. Undoubtedly, they consider themselves the “real Jews”. Give us “real Jews” a break, and direct your precious animas against the real enemy, and they are legion.
You want a break,here it is.
1) I resent you’re implying that I am some sort of a radical anti-Zionist,I am a traditional Jew of conservative leanings.I have a great respect for the Modern Orthodox who live in towns in Judea-Samaria.
2) When the remnants of Europe’s Jews came into Israel after WW2 there were 2 types who came.The vast majority were ordinary Jews who were at last returning home,but a minority were Assimilated European Jews who had largely given up on Judaism.They were adherents of left wing European ideology,men similar to Kissinger & Soros.Most of them were of the Left wing Fabian Socialist persuasion & were antagonistic to the more conservative Jews in Israel,These individuals were more loyal to Europe then they were to Jewish Israel,they felt that they were Europeans who were exiled from Socialist Europe,where their sentiment remained.
3)This is where it gets interesting.The Fabians of western Europe were not wild eyed revolutionaries like Trotsky & Lenin,They represented the wealthy upper classes of 20TH Century Europe,they were the ground troops of the universalist movement in Europe(Soros has connections to the Bank Of England & Kissinger is a Rockefeller lackey).Shimon Perez is a high profile example of this group.He has never met a European rear end that he didn’t want to kiss!
4)This elite group of nominally Jewish statists identify with the Central Bankers & Financial Oligarchs of the Western Industrial World.They are the Israeli link to the wealthy elites in Brussels(EU),the FED.in NY( where Stanley Fischer Just became a big-shot) & the Bank of International Settlement in Switzerland.These leftist Jewish Exiles from Europe who are of the statist persuasion are the real establishment in Israel.They own the politicians,they own the upper echelon of the armed forces,they own the media & they own the public education system in Israel,they call the shots from behind the curtains.How do they manage to do all this?they do it by laying out huge amounts of money to buy or squeeze out everyone they are opposed to.Politicians are bought,Generals are bought,the media is bought.The ordinary Jew belongs to a particularist Jewish culture.The left are European oriented Internationalists,the conflict is basic!
5) The Fabian left is to Israel what the Obama regime in Washington is to to the United States,2 sets of elites which are basically at odds with their respective citizenry.The Leftists are the people who brought us Oslo,retreat from Lebanon & I believe the withdrawal from Gaza!
It seem our politicians are more interested in talking and making empty threats instead of protecting us, as well as securing our state from future killings and kidnappings.
The only way is for us is to draw a strategy and take firm action in implementing it with a minimum of talk.
My MANIFESTO (for a safe Israel and preventing future killings ands bombing of Jews)
1. Outlaw Hamas
2. Death penalty for Arab terrorists and kidnappers
3. Allow immediate lifting of housing FREEZE and allow construction in Judea and Samaria. We have 10,000 housing application which are waiting for approvals)
4. For each killed Jew, build a new village or town in Judea and Samaria—named after the dead Jews.
5. In response to each attack or rockets against Jews, take back land from the PLO in Judea, Samara and Gaza and allow Jews to build in those areas without RESTRICTIONS.( This should include Hebron, the cradle of our country.)
6. Loyalty oath for Israelis especially Knesset members, whoever does not take the oath can not get Israeli citizenship, no welfare , no voting rights, no benefits .
7. To be Israeli, one must also serve in the army or social services to qualify.
8. Property of terrorists and their families must be confiscated and sold to Jews—the money used to compensate victims of terrorism.
9. Outlaw foreign funds for NGO and other anti-Israeli organizations and expel journalists with anti-Israeli agenda.
10. Confiscate money sent to pay for terrorists and their families.
11. Expel the worst of the terrorist leadership and other disloyal traitors to Free Gaza Palestinian Republic.
12. Declare Oslo DEAD and due to Arab violations.
13. Annex area C
14. immediately implement the MANIFESTO if you want to stop terrorists and rockets from Free Gaza Palestinian Republic.
I’ll sign this Manifesto anytime.
Shalom.yes,but also shouldn’t Hamas also have to pay Israel
$50,000 for each Iron Dome Defensive Missile.
Or Charge Hamas’Backers Iran.