Truth and Righteousness and Honor is above Life sometimes. To Live is not the ultimate End, it don’t justify all means, even despicable means to reach the End of making sure a soldier may live is not righteous. The soldier may finally walk home, but his life will have no honor everytime he look into the eyes of any victim's families! In order to earn a cheap foreign publicity, short fame for forging a world-wide anticipating agreement between hamas and Israel, you make many beavered families the Saddest Sukkot of their life! "Bringing a son home" is not the ultimate aim in life, making sure every son of yours whether at home or behind enemies lines also live in righteous and die in honor is every Father of the State's aim. Teaching your sons how to live well, they have to learn how to die to Self, you got to teach them how to “Die to Live”, not “Live to Die”!

hmmm, Maybe Abu Mazen should kidnap Bibi and his bouncer ; ) There Is No other option

This is an Israeli general? How sad

IS happening in the world: as if the unwashed, uneducated, clueless Masses are asking themselves ''What's wrong with this picture''? Unfortunately they come to the wrong conclusion, as the so called revolutionaries always do. It is the Islamic onslaught on our collective breathing-space that's causing this nausea and impression that suddenly everything is wrong with everything. Pour some cold water and breathe deeply!

You write and I quote: "why not implement these same leadership skills in breaking the diplomatic stalemate and creating a (crucial, even if painful) agreement between us and our neighbors? " What do you really mean ? Withdrawal from the so called "occupied teritories" ? Creation of a third state, a Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan ? I profoundly regret the vandalizing of Rabin's memorial, because he was a man with a firm vision. Today we would consider his ideology as situated at the right of Likud. He was opposed to negotiations with the PLO. He was opposed to the creation of a third state, a Palestinian state, that he considered as a time bomb, as well for Jordan as for Israel. He believed that the Palestinian issue should find its solution in a peace deal with Jordan, and in Jordan’s existing borders.(Quoted from an interview from Prime Minister Rabin in 1977.) Being pushed later in his back, he did things against his own believes. The question remains: has Rabin been assassinated because he was too "left", or could it be that he has been assassinated because he was too "right" ?

Make no mistake dont believe the statistics most are silently against the release Most will turn their tv and raidos off rather than to see or hear the media festival showing triiumphant murders smiling and rejoicing .Israel ows a huge apology to the western world now fighting these same people I wonder what the average American soldier feels ashe/she fights terrorists in Agfhanistan and IRaq.

They are the same Hamas.

That is like saying the Arabs can take pride in the 1967 war.

Thank you for taking time to share your sound thoughts with us. We of all people have reason to be hopeful and we choose hope, not despair!

Land for Peace?

- no palestinian state - no return to the '67 "borders" - a united jerusalem as the capital of israel - an israeli military presence in the jordan valley

now that hamas knows that for each soldier they kidnap they will get at least 1000 prisioners in return. If our leaders were REAL leaders this "deal" could have been done a few years ago.................... About family Shalit. Noam is not very nice - in fact I find him to be very arrogant and nasty. When he needs the press he knows how to use them. When they want to be part of the "festival" (which family shalit has created) they are being pushed aside. The Shalit's are VERY SELFISH people........... I would not want to be in their position but I certainly would behave in a different way.

With all the support the "Pals" have garnered, regardless of their genocidal stance, ersatz history, and lies, and the pussyfooting around Iraq's nuclear ambitions (not to mention it's desire to annihilate Israel) it is the western world that owes an apology to Israel. The average American soldier (who I deeply respect) should question Washington about it's newly revealed contact with the Muslim Brotherhood.

This lunatic deal is certainly making "an autumn of hope" for Israel's deadly enemies. Every one of Israel's worst foes is praising this lunatic deal: Hamas, Fatah, Ahmadinejad...Every single one of them. Leave it to brain dead Israeli leftists to view unleashing 1,027 terrorists against Israel as a good thing.

because if this guy was an IDF general Israel is doomed

Thank you, Dan Kaplan, for completing and reinforcing my previous talkback #5. LET TRUTH PREVAIL !!!