Prisoner exchange is not a new event in Jewish history.  From the 1940s on, Israel exchanged Palestinian prisoners and POWs from Arab armies in exchange for Israeli soldiers and civilians taken captive during the war.

In the ancient world, in Numbers 21:1, Israel did not negotiate with the enemy but went to battle against her respective enemies in order to save prisoners.

A seminal case occurred in the early 13th century. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg (1215–1293) was taken captive when he was 70 years old by Emperor Rudolf I, who demanded an exorbitant sum for the rabbi’s release.  This act was done in peacetime, and the rabbis and leaders of the Jewish communities in that generation were the rabbi’s students.  They were absolutely prepared to raise the sum necessary to free their teacher, even though it would spell financial disaster for the community.

Notwithstanding,  the renowned rabbi would not permit the ransom to be paid, for he understood that such an act would only encourage the enemies of Israel to imprison other rabbis in the future and demand huge sums for their release.

Fast-forward, and Israel continually faces the intractable issue regarding Israeli hostages.  Since its inception in 1988, Hamas is absolutely clear about its total opposition to Zionism and Israel.  Hamas constantly celebrates the killing of Jews.

According to Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, the “rule is that in times of war one does not submit to any of the enemies’ demands.”  For as soon as one gives in to them, they will gain confidence and increase their efforts to strike again and again. 

In fact, “[a]ny concession is seen as a sign of weakness and merely leads to more attacks and more attempts to take hostages.”

What’s more, as a result of [Israel’s] willingness to free large numbers of prisoners for one or two Israeli hostages, the terrorists ... figure that even if they do get caught, they most likely will be freed eventually in a prisoner exchange deal.

It should also be noted that many of the terrorists who have been released by Israel in the past simply returned to their terrorist activities, murdering more Israelis. Therefore, as a result of our receiving one Israeli hostage, scores of other innocent Israelis have been murdered.

Presently, the chair of the Israeli Otzma Yehudit party has “stated that that any such swap ‘will bring us to disaster,’ pointing to the 2011 deal to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners — including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, thought to be the mastermind of the October 7 massacre [emphasis mine] — in exchange for captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.”

The Shalit prison exchange began on June 15, 2006 when Hamas, together with the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees and the Jaysh al-Islam, carried out an assault on the Kerem Shalom border crossing in Israel, taking Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Corporal Gilad Shalit hostage in the process. The abductors threatened ... to execute Shalit if their demands were not met.

In October 2009 Israel released twenty female prisoners in return for a sign of life of Shalit. Eventually, in October 2011, Israel and Hamas struck a deal to release Shalit in exchange for 1,027 prisoners, 454 of whom were described to have had ‘blood on their hands.’

And true to form, “according to Al-Magor, an organization for Israeli terror victims, ‘eighty percent of all terrorists released in the last three decades, either as a gesture of good faith to the Palestinians or as part of prisoner-exchange deals, have returned to terrorist activities.’  Israel’s intelligence agencies claim that forty-five percent of those released in previous prisoner-exchange deals returned to terrorist activity, and the former head of Mossad argues that the ... deal alone resulted in the murder of 231 Israelis by released prisoners.”

Equally troubling is the fact that Qatar is playing negotiator in the recent negotiations concerning the Israeli hostages.  That is like having the fox enter the chicken coop and asking to sit down for an amicable dinner.

Con Coughlin explains how Qatar is the Master Double Dealer.

The hundreds of millions of dollars the Qataris have given Hamas during the past decade have been instrumental in helping the terrorist group to develop the infrastructure that enabled it to carry out its murderous assault on Israel in the first place.

Qatar would like the world to believe that it is acting as an honest broker with its efforts to secure the release of the Gaza captives. But the reality is that it deserves to be condemned by the West as a state that sponsors global terrorism, so long as it maintains its indefensible support for Hamas.

And the idea that Palestinians would act as civilized people has been quashed:

• A public opinion poll published on November 14 showed that 75% of Palestinians support Hamas’s murder spree, including rape and beheadings, as opposed to only 13% who disapprove.
• Surprisingly, the poll found that support for Hamas and its “military operation” is even higher in the West Bank, where Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is based, than in the Gaza Strip.
• If such a large number of Palestinians in the West Bank support the murder of Israelis and Hamas, it is safe to assume that a new “Palestinian state” would be controlled by Hamas or another genocidal, antisemitic terror group.
• Another, less surprising result of the poll is that 80% of the Palestinians reject both the “one-state” and “two-state” solutions, and instead demand all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — in short, the entire State of Israel within any borders.

The issue that is rarely mentioned is the role of the International Criminal Court.  Where is the world court that should be arresting Hamas, Hezb’allah, and other jihadist terrorists who have brought murder, misery, and mayhem to the world at large?  These terrorist groups have committed numerous crimes against humanity in addition to a myriad of war crimes.

Lieutenant Colonel (P) Stephen E. Schemenauer summed it up in 2016 when, in speaking of ISIS, he asserted that

[a]s the most lethal and well-funded terrorist group in the world, the Islamic State represents an unprecedented threat to international peace and security.

Unfortunately, the international criminal justice system suffers from an institutional gap that allows the Islamic State’s members to operate with seeming impunity.

[The Islamic State’s] violent extremist ideology, its terrorist acts, its continued gross systematic and widespread attacks directed against civilians, abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, . . . its eradication of cultural heritage and trafficking of cultural property ... its recruitment and training of foreign terrorist fighters whose threat affects all regions and Member States ... constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security[.]

—Statement in United Nations (U.N.) Resolution 22491

In essence, “the mechanisms typically relied upon to dispense justice in the international criminal arena are ill-equipped to handle the current threat, resulting in an institutional gap that must be filled.  Meanwhile, the Islamic State continues to develop its network, build its resources, and conduct attacks with increasing frequency and lethality all over the world, and the death toll continues to mount.”

Indifference, anti-Semitism, cowardice, and many self-serving financial deals result in a worldwide unraveling of law and order. 

There is complete destruction of a valorous moral compass.  After all, Hamas’s ally CAIR has operated with impunity in America for 30 years.

And the devil stands back and smiles.  And the babies get beheaded.  And the women get raped.  And the mothers weep for their children who see horrors no one should encounter.

And the enemy gets a reprieve.

And some in the world wonder when the madness will end.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

Image via Pexels.