A Life for Exchange

What price too high to pay?  In Israel, the evidence is clear and has always been so, that there is no price too dear to rescue one of their own from the talons of those who seek to destroy Jewish life.  When the world has turned a deaf ear, a blind eye, a heedless sensibility and refusal to stand alongside Jews in their time of trials, serenely aloof while they are destroyed, Jews must themselves defend themselves.

Which is where the State of Israel comes in.  A homeland for those whose others' homes were meant as temporary abodes with few guarantees of affection in the process.  Abduct a Jew and other Jews see the necessity paramount in rescue; one for all and all for one.  The rescue is beyond symbolic, although there is that, too.  To demonstrate to those whose humanity is not affected by Jewish duress that Jews will themselves muster the care denied them.

When Arab Palestinians captured an Israeli soldier and kept him hostage for years, despite the desperate pleas received from countless sources for his return, it was well understood that his life would be maintained as a bargaining tool.  To exact a price for his return, one that would require the release from imprisonment of hordes of those dedicated to the destruction of the State that the soldier represented.

So Gilad Shalit was finally released to the custody of the State of Israel and the arms of his grieving parents.  And the price was steep, as it always is.  Even the dead bodies of Israelis are worth commensurately huge sacrifices for their return and respectful burial in the soil of Israel.  That very soil that is their heritage but which Arab nations claim to have been taken from Islam, an Islam that converted Judaic holy sites to those of Islam.

As the anniversary of Gilad Shalit's release drew nigh, calls went out as they often do, for abductions of other Israelis, to be held ransom for the return of Arab prisoners.  "The release of prisoners is a must for all the Palestinian people.  The Occupation only understands the language of force.  Resistance forced them to release the prisoners."

What Palestinian Arabs characterize as 'the occupation' is the state of Israel forced to militarily protect itself from suicide bombings, and from rockets lobbed across the border from Gaza into Israel, malefactors entering Israel from the West Bank with the intention of doing harm.  What the Palestinians really mean by 'the occupation', is the reality to them of land consecrated to Islam being 'occupied' by Jews.

And the prisoners, what of them?  Israel handed over in excess of one thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one young man, a member of the Israel armed forces.  Many of those released in exchange for Gilad Shalit were involved in terrorism against Israel.  Some of the released were welcomed back in the West Bank and Gaza as celebrities, including those who succeeded in murdering Jews.

Each murder of a Jew was considered by the Arabs targeting them as a triumph for their cause.  And their cause was clear enough; to destroy the Jewish state and reclaim the land it stands upon for Islam.  Even a Palestinian woman serving 16 life terms for her part in the suicide bombing death of sixteen Israelis, upon her release, stated she regretted nothing.

When it originally appeared that her mission to destroy Jewish lives was responsible for only one death, she was dismayed.  But as news of the death count kept mounting, she took heart and was glad.  "As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers (on a bus she was on) were applauding ... Allah be praised; it was great!"

How does one deal with such people with such degenerate, hateful values?