Netanyahu's disastrous deal (Hint: nothing to do with submarines)

Malki cuddling her youngest and very disabled sister

Today our angel Malki would have been 31 years old.

I actually used to call her "malach'l" (מלאכ'ל) at times because of its similarity to her name and because in Yiddish the word means angel which she was in every sense of the word.

My husband and I only go to Malki's grave twice a year: on her yahrzeit of course, but also on her birthday to mark a day that we always celebrated together as we still do for every family member's birthday. The siblings trek out to our home. We share a meal together including a decadently-creamy cake and candles, and the classic repertoire of  birthday songs and my yanking of the birthday-child's arms high in the air as we all chant "Are you one, are you two....?"

Overshadowing the celebrations these past sixteen years is our grief for Malki and the constant realization anew that our yearning for her will be eternal.

Overlaying that pain for the past five years is our intense pining for justice.  Prime minister Netanyahu snatched that from us when he released 1,027 terrorists in the Shalit Deal.

Malki's self confessed and convicted killer, the mass murderer Ahlam Tamimi who had been entenced to 16 life terms, was among those 1,027. Since 2011, Tamimi has exploited her freedom to incite other Muslims to terrorism. She does this with ease and skill from her home base in Amman, Jordan where she hosts a weekly TV program, as well as via Facebook and Twitter and in speeches she gives at venues throughout the Arab world.

There is no need to delve into submarine deals to reveal the selfish, narcissistic motivations that color Mr. Netanyahu's every move. The now infamous Shalit Deal does an exemplary job of that, causing so much agony to so many of our fellow citizens that it is hard to fathom how the man sleeps at night.

Aside from the many families of the murdered who, like us, endured the travesty of justice the deal unleashed, there are fresh victims who have lost loved ones to terror attacks perpetrated by some of those released Shalit Deal murderers.

I snapped this at Malki's grave yesterday

In June 2015, Malachi Rosenfeld was the sixth Israeli to be killed in attacks carried out or planned by Palestinians released under the deal since April 2014.

One of the alleged cell members, Ahmad Najjar, a Hamas operative who was said to have orchestrated and funded the shooting attack from Jordan, has yet to be apprehended, the security service said. Before being released in the Shalit prisoner exchange, Najjar spent eight years in an Israeli prison for his involvement in previous terror attacks that killed three Israelis... Najjar... is a reminder of the cost Israel has paid for Shalit’s freedom, a scenario that critics of the deal predicted would unfold... ["Palestinians freed in Shalit deal killed 6 Israelis since 2014", Times of Israel, July 20, 2015]

In June 2016, former cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser said:

In an era in which there is the experience of a total lack of trust in the political system, I have no doubt that an event like the release of Gilad Shalit has a kind of effect of reestablishing trust..." [Haaretz]

adding that the deal was

a bucket of cold water of sorts on the fire [of the social justice protests of 2011] [Haaretz]

You'll find more such critiques of the deal by then-cabinet members at that same source. Please keep the outrageous Shalit Deal in your thoughts this week to honor our Malki's memory.

(Note: I intended to post this yesterday on Malki's birthday, November 27. But my daughter Chaya's health issues precluded that - details about that in my next post.)