Despite all our fears the Shalit saga had a happy ending, so now we should be able to return to our normal routine.
I wonder though, if anything is ever normal or routine in Israel.
Admittedly, much of the exuberant hue and cry that accompanied Gilad Shalit's release has died down; the news media coverage is more subdued and other topics, old and new, are gradually claiming more prime-time.
Notwithstanding the return to normalcy, mundane details concerning Gilad are still newsworthy items. After all, we are all curious to know how he is adjusting. Soon Gilad will be ready for debriefing and later still he will be officially released from active army service.
No doubt his parents, Noam and Aviva will be glad to return to anonymity, to being two ordinary citizens again.
Prior to Gilad's kidnapping Noam held a senior position in the marketing department of the Iscar metal working tools company at the Tefen Industrial Park in Western Galilee. Throughout the Gilad Shalit campaign, Iscar's chairman Eitan Wertheimer discretely but solidly supported the Shalit family.
It should be noted that in May 2006, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett , purchased an 80% stake in Iscar for US$4 billion. Buffett too, firmly supported the Shalit family in the long struggle to bring their son home
Wertheimer provided the Shalit family with an apartment in Jerusalem, funded the family members' personal needs, including food, and helped finance the campaign.
Gilad is home, recuperating well and probably prefers anonymity to fame. However, there's always a sequel, an inevitable postscript to almost every incident of this kind.
Last week I wrote that everyone is happy that Gilad has returned home, but some people regret the high price we had to pay for his release.
"No decent person can fail to be moved by the return of Gilad Shalit to Israel. Few eyes will have been dry at his reunion with his family. Yet it has to be said that ultimately, this deal represents a triumph of heart over head and sentimentality over realism.
The Shalit family did what many of us hope we would have done in similar circumstances – fought a tenacious and brilliant campaign to sustain public pressure on the government to secure their son’s release.
It was, however, emotional blackmail – and the Israel government should have resisted it. Shalit came to be regarded as every Israeli’s son.
Tragically, however, in the years to come Israel may come to realise that it paid for the life of Gilad Shalit with the blood of further murdered Israelis and the lifelong torment of their families." Wrote Melanie Phillips in the Daily Telegraph
Past experience has taught us that a high percentage of released Palestinian prisoners kill again.
Yoram Schweitzer dealt with the repeat offender factor in an article he wrote for the Institute for National Strategic Studies I periodical - “Insight,”
Relating specifically to the Palestinian prisoners being released now he says,
“Some 120 convicted security prisoners were released to their homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Some of the released are older and have spent long periods of time in prison; even if they rejoin their various organisations it is unclear if they will ever be directly involved again in terrorist activity. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that among those released there will be some who will be willing and even volunteer in their organisations to act on behalf of freeing those still behind bars.”
Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston claims that the Palestinian terrorists released in the current deal were directly responsible for the deaths of 599 Israelis. "However," he adds, " had we waited longer for a deal, Gilad Shalit might well have made it 600."
Burston gave his own summary of prisoner exchange deals.
"In Israel's nine prisoner exchanges with Arab enemies, dating back to the first, 54 years ago, Israel has freed 13,509 prisoners in order to win the release of a total of 16 soldiers."
Miki Goldwasser the mother of IDF reserve soldier Ehud Goldwasser, abducted and killed by Hezbollah in 2006 is one of a number of bereaved relatives who supported the current prisoner exchange deal.
Referring to the lopsided ratio she said, "They did not win, and they know it. They were humiliated precisely because so many terrorists were released for only one soldier."
Israeli Arab journalist and documentary film maker Khaled Abu Toameh wrote in Hudson New York pointing out some of the deal's negative repercussions.
"The deal is a severe blow to Abbas who, at least in public, says he remains committed to a non-violent and peaceful solution with Israel. In light of Hamas's success to force Israel to free a large number of prisoners, Abbas and his team in Ramallah now look like incompetent and weak leaders who have failed to extract significant concessions from Israel at the negotiating table.
Like the withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, the prisoner swap has sent the same message not only to the Palestinians, but to the rest of the Arab world: that violence and kidnappings are the only language that Israel understands, and that the violent struggle against Israel must continue because negotiations do not lead to anything.
Sadly, it is hard to find anyone on the Palestinian side who sees the exchange deal as a sign of Israeli flexibility. On the contrary - Israel's concessions are almost always interpreted as a sign of weakness that eventually leads to more violence."
Following the first stage of the prisoner exchange the slogan "We Want More Shalits!" and similar cries were chanted in Gaza and Ramallah.
Already moves are afoot to introduce legislation intended to regulate the prisoner exchange rate in future deals. Even before the bill is tabled legislators doubt its feasibility. If the Knesset decides to limit governments and their negotiators to the suggested one for one prisoner exchange rate it’s quite likely that when the next prisoner swap takes place the government in power will find a way to pay the price demanded.
There is another way to counter Palestinian terrorist extortion.
Eight year years ago investigative reporter Sara Leibovich-Dar exhumed an old IDF procedure in an article she published in Haaretz.. It was an instruction for officers and the men in their command concerning action to be taken in kidnapping situations. The 'Hannibal Procedure.' was a well-kept army secret - an order that said the abduction of soldiers by enemy forces should be thwarted even if this entails shooting the abductees. Though now officially abolished, the implications of this controversial procedure still haunt many."
In the summer of 1986, three senior officers met at Northern Command headquarters and drew up one of the most controversial operational orders in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. The three were the head of Northern Command at the time, Major General Yossi Peled (now a Likud party Knesset member), the command's operations officer, Colonel Gabi Ashkenazi (former IDF chief of staff) and the command's intelligence officer, Colonel Yaakov Amidror (at present Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror the programme director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs.) The order they formulated had to do with the rules for opening fire in cases in which soldiers were being abducted: "During abduction, the major mission is to rescue our soldiers from the abductors even at the price of harming or wounding our soldiers. Light-arms fire is to be used in order to bring the abductors to the ground or to stop them. If the vehicle or the abductors do not stop, single-shot (sniper) fire should be aimed at them, deliberately, in order to hit the abductors, even if this means hitting our soldiers. In any event, everything will be done to stop the vehicle and not allow it to escape."
When I first heard about the Hannibal Procedure I wondered what the Carthaginian general had to do with the IDF procedure for opening fire.
Initially it was an oral procedure. Only later when it was written in official ordinances the IDF computer gave the order a random, though particularly exotic, code name: "Hannibal." Field commanders apprised their soldiers about the underlying meaning of the "Hannibal procedure": From the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.
The order generated a furor within the IDF. At least one battalion commander refused to transmit it to his soldiers, arguing that it was flagrantly illegal, and in a number of units lively debates took place about the morality of the order.
A number of enlisted and permanent army personnel said they would refuse to open fire on their fellow soldiers
A religious soldier put the question to his rabbi and was told to refuse to obey the order. Other soldiers asked journalists and Knesset members to do what they could to get the order changed or rescinded. Indeed, later it was revised. It now states that soldiers should fire only at the wheels of the vehicle in which soldiers are being abducted, but without risking the lives of the abducted soldiers.
I believe it was Israel High Court Judge Edmond Levy who coined the term “flagrantly illegal” regarding certain military commands. The IDF’s legal department was never asked to examine the legal implications of the ‘Hannibal Procedure.’ Today new regulations, procedures and orders are scrutinised by the IDF’s legal department. Our soldiers can claim an order is “flagrantly illegal” whenever they have good reason to doubt its legality.
Have a good weekend.
Beni 27th of October, 2011.
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