And it was never a matter of simply determining to do “everything“, because “everything” can include impossibly dreadful outcomes. (If Hamas had said in 2011 that Shalit’s life would require our side to kill X, whatever or whoever X is, would we have said “OK, we’re ready to do everything“? Of course not, Someone in power felt the price was reasonable, and went ahead with making the deal.)
Another Catastrophic Outcome of the 2011 Shalit Deal
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We said back then that negotiating with terrorists is fundamentally wrong and referred to the classic text on this subject. Readers might want to refer to an earlier post of ours [“27-Jul-13: To defeat the terrorists, what one thing must a government never do?“] for an extract from that famous book:
“A government that seeks the defeat of the terrorists must refuse to release convicted terrorists from prisons… Releasing imprisoned terrorists emboldens them and their colleagues… By nurturing the belief that their demands are likely to be met in the future, you encourage terrorist blackmail of the very kind that you want to stop. Only the most unrelenting refusal to ever give in to such blackmail can prevent this.” [“Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists”, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York 1995 at page 144]
We pointed out then that the writer of those words was Binyamin Netanyahu. Twenty years have passed since he became famous for his clear-headed thesis. Twenty years during which he was called upon to deal, as prime minister, with the precise issues on which he had created the road-map and the rule-book.
Sadly, he not only failed to be true to his own guidance, but egregiously abandoned the critical principle of explaining yourself and your 180 degree reversals to the people who are going to be called upon to pay the actual price, and whose electoral support was indispensable to his political power and standing.
For the record [details here], we have made effort after effort to elicit a response on this and other closely-related matters from his office, with no success at all.
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