A lesson from History

The ancient Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BCE – 17 CE) reminds his readers in every age that “in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”
The ancient Roman philosopher/statesman Cicero (106-43 BCE) tells the story of consul Marcus Atilius Regulus who was taken prisoner by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. (Consuls were the chief civil and military officers in the Roman Republic. To get an idea of someone with equal status and authority combine General Eisenhower in 1944 with President Eisenhower in 1954.) The Carthaginians thought this provided them a great opportunity—one consul could be exchanged for hundreds of prisoners. So Regulus was sent back to Rome on parole, sworn to return if Carthage’s prisoners of war were not released. He came to the senate and stated his mission; but he then advised against the deal; for they were young men and officers who would make war on Rome, while he was only one man, already bowed with age. In the end Rome kept the prisoners, and Regulus returned to captivity in Carthage.
What do we learn from this? If nothing else it’s that before the exchange of prisoners the prudent thing is to win the war. Giving back over a thousand Palestinians, a goodly number with Jewish civilian blood on their hands, in exchange for one kidnapped Israeli soldier was inopportune. Doesn’t anyone over there read history? The Regulus story may be in the preserve of a few fussy scholars but ask this—during the First World War, how many prisoners were exchanged (answer: None before the Armistice). During World War II did we send back any Germans, Italians or Japanese in exchange for American POWs? (Hint: “No”.)
I know the rationale. Israel makes a commitment to the families of its conscripts (pretty much all age appropriate Israelis minus those in Yeshivas) to bring them back—alive if possible, if not, at least for burial. I understand. But when are they brought back, that’s the question. Three years ago Israel gave up a multiple murderer, Samir Kuntar who in 1979 killed a police officer then took a 28-year-old man and his 4-year-old daughter hostage. He shot the father dead in front of his little girl and then smashed her head in, killing her. Kuntar was sentenced to 542 years in prison. But in 2008 Israel arranged a swap. It received the cadavers of 1st Sgt. Ehud "Udi" Goldwasser and Sgt. 1st Class Eldad Regev in exchange for this sadistic murder who upon his return to Lebanon was hailed as a hero by Hezbollah. And now the returning heroes of Hamas have been greeted in Gaza with cries from the crowd to kidnap more Israelis, to get back more prisoners. Sergeants Goldwasser and Regev were spared what Gilad Shalit may soon suffer. Can you imagine the young man’s anguish when the first of the terrorists released to get him back blows up a pizzeria, or a bus, or a Seder, or a pedestrian mall?
Israel prides itself on the return of conscripts but has forgotten the other part of the social contract, the part that says we will protect the civilians of Israel from terrorists. Israel, any government, must remember to do no harm to its population. It’s bad enough that despite seeking peace Israel has been in a state of perpetual war for its entire existence; it’s worse that it gives enemies fresh soldiers to make war on it. Hamas is strengthened; Israel has handed it potentially returning terrorists or if not them, has encouraged another generation to take the risk. After all, if they are captured before or after their assaults on civilians, all they have to do is wait a few years in jail and then come home to a hero’s welcome.
This edition of the Jewish Voce & Herald is due out on November 11, 2011, 11/11/11 for you numerologists. On November 11, 1918 at 11:00 AM, the First World War came to an end and then prisoners were exchanged, no longer a danger to the countries that had held them in captivity. I’m glad that Shalit is home, but the price was too high. Wait until after victory. Remember the lesson of Regulus, that honorable man.

Have you read the November 9 New Yorker article on Gaza yet? Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is the centerpiece, used as a metaphor by each side. For Israelis he represents the inhumane lawlessness of Hamas in Gaza, for Palestinian Arabs, he’s but one man isolated from his family, like all of Gaza is from the whole world. To me his kidnapping is another example of Arab response to nobody taking their case seriously. Yassir Arafat would order the hijacking of a commercial airplane. Now it’s Shalit upon whom all of Israel, and through Israel all the world, is focused. Hamas wants for his return fourteen hundred individuals, four hundred and fifty of whom have been convicted of terrorist killings. One Jew is equivalent to 1,400 Arabs? I’m surprised they admit it. The chief “negotiator” between Hamas and Israel is Osama Mozini, a professor of education at the Islamic University. The New Yorker reporter “asked him why he could not be more flexible in his negotiations for Shalit.”

Mozini began reciting the names of Gazan prisoners. Hassan Salameh, is serving forty-eight consecutive life sentences for recruiting suicide bombers. Walid Anjes helped plan the bombing of at least three devastating attacks. He has twenty-six life sentences. Abdel Hadi Suleiman Ghneim’s name came up. According to Mozini all he was doing was riding in a bus when he grabbed the steering wheel and took it over a cliff. (Mozini laughed at this point, apparently seeing the humor in the situation.) Sixteen people died, many others were wounded—including Ghneim who received a life sentence for every person who died on the bus. “These punishments struck Mozini as ludicrous.”

With such people Israel is supposed to negotiate? With Hamas whose charter maintains that “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad”? The last time Israel bargained with kidnappers, it turned over a mass murderer and received in compensation the corpses of two Israeli soldiers. Israeli families, wanted their sons back for a decent Jewish burial, but from an objective viewpoint it’s lunacy to trade murderers for the bodies of people murdered. It can only encourage more cross-border kidnappings. Relatives of Palestinian prisoners have gone on record that more Israelis should be kidnapped to exchange for those in Israel’s jails. “Just outside Rafah, the smuggling capital of Gaza,” reports the New Yorker, “there is a billboard with a portrait of Shalit, behind bars, juxtaposed with a photograph of a masked Hamas fighter. The Arabic text declares, ‘Your prisoner will not have safety and security until our prisoners have safety and security.’”

In fact, the Arabs who say, as does Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas’s Deputy Foreign Minister “We are all Shalits” are right. They are prisoners, but not of Israel, but of their own rage. Rockets raining down on Israeli towns, suicide bombers blowing up pizzerias are actions met with incarceration. Israel is also prisoner of Arab extremists. It’s like the cancer patient whose disease is being treated as chronic. It’s not too bad today, but what will tomorrow’s test results indicate? When will the next plane explode, the next suicide murderer detonate himself killing innocents who are merely riding a bus or crossing a street. To the bomber there are no innocents. Like Shalit everyone in Israel, whether citizen or tourist is part of the occupiers who must be driven into the sea and if the world will not provide us with warplanes and tanks, we’ll do it our way.

The paranoids who control the Muslim world in their grip with their grudges, imposing their fundamentalist religious beliefs, would rather die than concede that Allah has returned Israel to the Jews. They talk of al-Nakba, the calamity. But the real calamity is war and grudges and kidnappings and rockets and suicide bombings all for nothing, for nothing except more blood, Jewish and Arab. Tom Friedman was right in last week’s Times. Nobody over there wants peace; it’s all a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As Yousuf, the Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister says, “we are all Shalits,” to which I add, “caught in a world of madness unimagined even by Kafka.”