The problem starts with the ridiculous crowns we claimed for ourselves and with the hypocrisy, emptiness, and blindness characterizing them. … Who isn’t against terror and for Shalit’s release? But that same sobbing society did not for a moment ask itself, with honesty and with courage, why Shalit was captured. It did not for a moment say to itself, with courage and with honesty, that if it continued along the same path there will be many more Gilad Shalits, dead or captured. In successive elections it voted, again and again, for centrist and right-wing governments, the kind that guarantee that Shalit will not be the last. It tied yellow ribbons and supported all of the black flags. And no one ever told it, with courage and with honesty: Shalit is the unavoidable price of a state that chooses to live by the sword forever.
—Gideon Levy, from his op-ed in Haaretz, “Shalit Is Returning to a State in Psychosis”
A stark contrast to the perspective of Yossi Klein Halevi and the quotation we posted from his latest piece on Gilad Shalit’s release and the trading of prisoners with Hamas. Both should be read.
Photo by Erin Nekervis/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
For more than a year the Shalits have lived in a tent near the prime minister’s office. When I walked nearby I would avoid the protest encampment, ashamed to be opposing the campaign. This past Israeli Independence Day, though, I saw a crowd gathered around the tent, and wandered over. “GILAD IS STILL ALIVE,” banners reminded: It’s not too late to save him. Inside the tent, Noam and Aviva were sitting with family and friends, singing the old Zionist songs. I wanted to shake Noam’s hand, tell him to be strong, but I resisted the urge. I didn’t deserve the privilege of comforting him.
I wanted to tell Noam what we shared. As it happens, my son served in the same tank unit as Gilad, two years after he was kidnapped. I wanted to tell Noam that that was the real reason I couldn’t bear thinking about his family. That in opposing the mass release of terrorists for Gilad, it was my son I was betraying.
—Yossi Klein Halevi, from “Everyone’s Son” in Tablet
This beautifully written essay is poignant, well-reasoned, and honest. And perhaps that’s what makes me so uncomfortable about this necessary read. Yossi Klein Halevi, whom On Being recently interviewed during our trip to Israel and the West Bank, puts you inside the difficult mindset of those Israelis who are frightened about giving ground to Hamas and Hezbollah, even at the expense of their own families, and yet lauds the decision of a benevolent state and its “hard leaders” to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli, Galid Shalit.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
