In The Aftermath Of The Exchange

Points To Ponder On The Shalit Deal

Israelis willingly endangered themselves in order to return captured soldier Gilad Shalit to his parents. While between 75–80 percent of Israelis expressed their support for the exchange over 60% thought that the exchange would increase the incentives for future terror attacks.

They are surely right about the latter. Sixty percent of released terrorists resume terrorist attacks. Since 2002 182 Israelis have been killed in terror attacks carried out or planned by previously released terrorists. The terrorists exchanged for Gilad Shalit include the masterminds of some of the grisliest terror attacks in memory — the suicide bombings on Seder night in Netanya and at the Sbarro pizza parlor — and their skills and knowledge have only been honed during their imprisonment.

By supporting the prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit despite the obvious dangers it poses Israelis were acting in accord with familiar patterns. Psychological research shows that most human beings are willing to incur far greater costs to save one “identifiable” human being from immediate peril than they would be to secure the safety of what psychologists term “statistical lives.” For over five years the Israeli media made sure that Gilad and his parents would be “identifiable” human beings with saturation coverage of his plight and his parents’ campaign for his release. (In the process the images of other “identifiable” human beings — victims of terrorist attacks and their families — were largely suppressed.) The faceless and as-yet unknown Jews who might be killed in future terror attacks are just “statistical lives.”

Israelis opted to rejoice in Gilad Shalit’s return and to worry about the consequences later. Now that the exchange has been made there is no other choice. But it behooves us to take immediate measures to minimize those future consequences. The first step would be a Knesset law mandating the death penalty for those participating in terror attacks resulting in death. No future terrorist should brazenly boast that he or she will soon be released and live to engage in terror again as did Ahlam Tamimi who disguised herself as a Jewish student while accompanying the Sbarro suicide bomber. At the very least imposition of the death penalty would dramatically release the number of terrorists available for future exchanges.