What prisoner swap?
Bookworm on Jul 16 2008 at 4:05 pm | Filed under: Israel, Media matters
I’ve been moving around the internet a bit looking at stories about the way in which Israel turned a brutal, mass murderer over in exchange for two bodies. What’s fascinating is that the stories keep calling it a “prisoner swap,” as if there’s parity in the exchange. Prisoner swap, after all, implies that Israel gave prisoners and Israel got prisoners — living ones. Instead, all that Israel got were two bodies, and it’s still unclear to me whether they were dead all along, in which case Hezbollah engaged in a massive and extraordinarily successful bluff, or whether the poor boys were killed (and, I bet, tortured) during their captivity.
Here are some examples of this “prisoner swap” language, including one from an Israeli paper:
From the British Telegraph: Israel and Hizbollah complete controversial prisoner exchange
From Israel’s YNet news (although I think the prisoner swap might be a heading that simply refers to the whole history of news stories about this sordid transaction): Prisoner Exchange
From the Spiegel: Israel’s Delicate Prisoner Swap with Hezbollah (although it has the alternative caption of “two coffins for a murderer”)
The New York Times, which always gets ambiguous when it comes to Israel reporting, says “Israel frees prisoners in deal with Hezbollah.”
The Christian Science Monitor says that “Despite delays, prisoner swap leaves Hezbollah emboldened.”
The UK Times Online at least puts sarcastic quotations around the word “prisoner”: Israel and Hezbollah “prisoner” exchange.
And so on.
Interestingly, only the Guardian had the reportorial honesty to call this what it was: Killer released in Israeli bodies swap.
In a way, and for once, the MSM is using story captions that favor Israel. When one reads the Guardian’s caption, one realizes what a terrible deal Israel made. It’s terrible not just because of this particular deal. It’s also terrible because of the precedent it sets. Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah have now lost all incentive to keep prisoners alive. Dead Jewish bodies have suddenly become an incredibly valuable commodity.
Think of it: Israel used to have a policy that it would not ransom hostages so that there would be no incentive to take hostages. Then, it started ransoming hostages, so there was an incentive for the terrorists to take them, but a concurrent burden on the terrorists to keep them alive. Now, the whole game has changed: the terrorists can kidnap and kill, and still get ransom.
Israel used to win because she was tough, smart and principled. She’s going to lose now — and lose on a scope inconceivable even with the flames of the Holocaust still burned on our retinas — because she’s become indescribably stupid.
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5 Responses to “What prisoner swap?”
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I cannot even begin to imagine what Olmert was thinking. Throughout his leadership he has steadily strengthened the hand of Hezbollah and Israel’s enemies. The released butcher of the 4 year old and her father has been greeted as a hero in Lebanon and welcomed in a warm reception by the Lebanese president. It is truly a f#$#@d up society that greets cold blooded executioners of children as heroes.
Book, I get too depressed reading your hopeless predictions for Israel. Imagine if you were blogging before the 6 Day’s War or during the War of Independence- because things didn’t look too bright then either. Yes, Olmert is an idiot. I cannot even fathom what even remotely possible upside they were thinking could come out of this. This exchange is pure negative for Israel, except for this one glimmer. This act was so stupid that even Lefties in Israel see it as such. The reaction in Israel from all quarters has been negative. Hopefully this will help the population to wake up again.
Despite this stupid act, I really don’t see the Israeli people as ready to roll over and commit suicide yet.
It’s not the people I worry about, 1Lulu — it’s their leaders. If Olmert isn’t out of office soon, well, who knows what other acts of stupidity he’ll commit. But of course, he’s the leader Israelis elected. Either they know something about him and the situation that I don’t, or the long years of turmoil have ideological strife have impaired their ability to select a Winston Churchill for their times.
I was under the impression that Olmert was the Likud part’s chosen successor to Sharon. Sharon had gotten a majority government in Israel’s parliamentary system by combining with Likud or whatever party name they were calling it back then.
When Sharon died, the party MPs that the Israelis had elected now selected Olmert as the leader.
In Parliamentary systems, Book, the people don’t ever, ever, get to choose what leader they will have as PM.
And the British didn’t select Winston Churchill either. When they had a choice of Labour or Conservative, they chose Labour and thus it automatically kicked Churchill out of the PM slot.
Dead Jewish bodies have suddenly become an incredibly valuable commodity.
Certainly it is valuable to Olmert. The lives that will be killed by Palestinians in the future? Not so much to the Olmerts of the world.
Israelis continue to elect Socialists (Leftists) to run the governemnt. The Socialists (Leftists) continue to act as though the Islamists are rational and can be dealt with. ” … she’s become indescribably stupid.” is an apt description of what is going on in Isreal.
If Israelis won’t wake up to the foundational problems of their Leftist elected officials, things will continue to worsen. Olmert should have been bounced out of office years ago. That he wasn’t speaks volumes to me about Israeli electoral foolishness.