This week marks five years since that awful night when Hamas militants killed two Israeli Armored Corps soldiers, whose names have faded with time, and also abducted Gilad Shalit to the God-forsaken Gaza Strip. On the first Shabbat after the event, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the ministers and military brass gathered at his house that he would never succumb to extortion, even if it cost him his job. But when his leadership of the Second Lebanon war turned out to be a failure, Olmert started kissing up to everyone around him, including Hamas, and within a short period the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released reached 1000 or more. Since then, alas what has befallen us? Retired Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi laid Israel bare and naked when he irresponsibly announced that we have no idea where Shalit is being held. Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin failed to deliver pertinent intelligence. Israel has not dared make Hamas leaders pay the price, either by striking a painful balance of deterrence or by making Gaza's rulers' lives hell. They walk freely in public while Shalit rots in the dark. Only once did Israel appear close to getting its just desserts: during Operation Cast Lead. Olmert and Yoav Galant recommended not stopping until Israel achieved its objective, while Ehud Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi -- still friends at the time -- rushed to end the operation. We have no leadership and no Shalit. No other country in the world would conduct negotiations at a ratio of 1000 to 1 rather than use power and pressure to get what it wants. No other country would be silent in the face of the shameful conduct of the Red Cross--which has not raised a ruckus over Palestinian refusal to let them meet Shalit. Even the worst Arab regimes--like the Syrians who kidnapped Uri Ilan, the Israeli soldier who killed himself in Syrian prison in 1955--allowed the Red Cross to meet their prisoners. Israel agreed to release a thousand prisoners. This was a blunder, but it cannot be undone, and now Germany and France have come along offering to send billions of Euros to Hamas' coffers if they only deign to accept the aforementioned conditions--the release of a thousand terrorists if only they let Shalit go. Benjamin Netanyahu is apparently willing to accept this deal and that is why he keeps silent. Our hearts are heavy over the fate of the young man, over his family's suffering, over most of the public's lack of mental fortitude, and over Israel's pathetic mind-set. Woe my country, my homeland.
There is no other country where citizens delude themselves that next time--after the publication of a classified report by a committee headed by Meir Shamgar--things will be different. There is no other national entity that holds the fate of a single individual so dear, and this is one of the nicer things that can be said about the Jewish state.
