It’s Always A Sophie’s Choice for Israel

The worst is this: retired security “experts” demanding to be heard over the other panel members on the endless Israeli talk shows on TV, berating and insulting anyone who suggests that if we are going to agree to a prisoner for hostage exchange, at least let it be a one-and-done deal, so that we get all of our hostages back at once. This expert will shout down any so thinking souls, saying: “Hamas doesn’t even know where all the hostages are located. How can we realistically demand a deal for all the hostages?” Free PR for the terrorists. When challenged, the experts double-down and insist that their opinion is to be accepted without question. The same Hamas who knows where every single packet of cigarettes in the Gaza Strip is located so as to tax them, does not know where their most valuable asset—Jews alive or dead—is located. It happens before these hostage deals. The experts are carted out to help convince the Israeli populace that we have no choice. There is a shitty deal in the works but we have no choice but to accept it. It’s the best that we can expect to get.

At this point it is hard to understand why the powers that be do not articulate the basic truth that every Israeli knows. Hamas will never willingly give up all of the hostages. Especially now, when it is a shadow of its former self—the expert should be saying—you cannot expect Hamas to give up the only leverage it has left. In the past, that leverage would be held for a future hostage deal that they knew would appear at some point in the future. Now, the leverage is their only guarantee for survival.

What does that mean? First and foremost it means that on the great day of deliverance, some will be left behind. Who might they be? It will go something like this:

• Israel will receive a list of fifty to sixty names of living hostages.
• Israel will be forced to choose from the list thirty to be released.

Somewhere in the bowels of some government ministry there will be a committee deciding who is for life, who is for death, who will see the light of day and who will remain in darkness. Who is more wretched and deserving of pity, or who is stronger, and more likely to survive continued captivity?

Israel should refuse to make this choice. We should have refused to do it in the previous cases too. We should deal just with numbers. If the agreement is thirty Israeli hostages for a couple of thousand terrorists then that’s it. They send us thirty and we send them their thousands. No names involved. No Sophie’s Choice.