Shalit Deal Redux?

Convicted terrorists on their way to freedom 
in the 2011 Shalit Deal [Image Source]

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"

George Santayana, Spanish philosopher, in 1905.

It's clear that Israel's leaders and media have been determined to forget the price we have been paying these past nine years for the infamous Shalit Deal. 

Numerous of its 1,027 releasees resumed their bloody activities, murdered additional Israelis and are currently re-imprisoned. Their precise numbers are unpublicized and unknown because that is the way this government wants it.

One releasee, Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre in which my child perished, lives free in Amman where she actively incites to terror and is a fugitive from the US Department of Justice.

Israel's government and media studiously avoid any mention of her.

All this evasion and silence are contributing to another likely disastrous prisoner release. Today we learn that hundreds of convicted terrorists will probably exit Israel's prisons in coming days in yet another lopsided swap reminiscent of the Shalit Deal ["MK warns emerging prisoner swap with Hamas will free hundreds of terrorists", Times of Israel, December 14, 2020]

The prospective release is, predictably, presented by the media as a gift, an opportunity that Hamas is handing us because of its COVID-triggered unrest. Will Israel's public swallow the same malarkey it did in 2011?

The scenario is all too familiar: PM Netanyahu is grappling with his own internal political woes just as he was in the summer of 2011 when thousands took to the streets to join the "social justice protests" over price rises and falling standards of living. 

The Shalit Deal was the candy he tossed the public. It worked like a charm - his popularity soared.

Will Israelis sit by and hand Netanyahu the same lifeline as it did then? Will his cabinet once again sit idly by as convicted terrorist murderers walk free to murder more of our loved ones? 

We can only hope that enough ethical, rational compatriots will heed Santayana's warning and stop the madness.