What About Gilad Shalit (Q&A Friday #108)?

21 Oct, 2011 by John Hawkins

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Question: Nary a mention of Gilad Shalit? And the 1000-1 prisoner swap…that Israel likely agreed to in order to make a cultural and moral statement between them and Hamas (or they just went insane)? — baoxian

Answer: Israel’s hostage swaps are counter-productive. All they’re really doing is rewarding the Palestinians for kidnapping Israelis by releasing terrorists who’ll then turn right around and try to murder more Jews.

In a perfect world, what the Israelis would have done is kill Palestinians until Gilad Shalit was released. Whether they executed prisoners, assassinated Palestinian government officials, or just carpet bombed block after block of civilian apartments to the ground wouldn’t make much difference.

Make enough Palestinians dead and you’ll be surprised at how reasonable they’ll become.

However, the Israelis are so small, so isolated, and so civilized that they wouldn’t do anything like that — which is a shame.

When you’re dealing with genocidal savages who count on your being much better people than they are as part of a war strategy, civilization can be a noose around your neck. At the end of the day, the only way you can maintain your enlightened society is if you’re willing to use as much violence as necessary against people who are trying to take it away from you.

Rewarding the Palestinians for kidnapping Israelis may be politically popular, but it’s bad policy.