Redemption of captives
We'll have to pay dearly to get our soldiers back
In a white room at the Tel Hashomer Medical Center, lies silently a man who is said to be the inspiration for several well known expressions in the Israel Defense Forces: "There is no turning back without completing the mission," and "a soldier is never abandoned in the battlefield."
Had the man awakened from his slumber, he would most likely have had something to say.
The IDF's history is strewn with cases of heroic operations carried out under the harshest, sometimes almost impossible conditions in order to abide by the pledge: "There is no turning back without completing the mission." Israeli history has also recorded some astonishing rescue missions of wounded and dead soldiers in order to uphold the pledge of "a soldier is never abandoned in the battlefield."
Ariel Sharon himself, the man lying in the hospital bed at the medical center, occasionally tried to carry out daring operations in an attempt to bring back captive soldiers.
When his subordinate, Yitzhak Gibli fell captive in Jordanian hands, for example, Sharon and Rehavam Ze'evi (Gandhi) dressed a group of IDF soldiers in UN uniforms, named the operation Gil, (the Hebrew acronym for Free Yitzhak Gibli), and set out to abduct Jordanian officers under the guise of the UN.
The operation was stopped at the very last moment by the political echelons, and Gibli was only returned to Israel after prolonged negotiations.
As seen here, there were heroic operations, almost mythological, but there were also massive failures, particularly the concessions by the political and military echelons.
Sensitive to our soldiers' destiny
What can be done? Israel has always been overly sensitive to the fate of its soldiers and its children, and our surrounding enemies certainly know how to pluck at these nerve strings. Since the Sinai Campaign in 1956 we have always returned thousands of captives and prisoners in exchange for one, two or three of our own captives.
Some say this is the source of our strength, some will say the opposite. Some say that in the final count, we shall always come out the losers. Opponents will say that soldiers fight better when they know the State of Israel would do everything in its power to return them should they fall captive.
In such a situation we shouldn't envy the families of the captives and abducted soldiers, nor the prime minister for that matter.
All the families' tears lead to Jerusalem, and the prime minister, any prime minister has to consider the wellbeing of the families, who are weeping, and rightfully so, in front of him, and who are prepared to return the Western Wall in exchange for their sons, as opposed to the wellbeing of the State, which calls upon the PM to stand firm and not surrender.
In recent years the cost of prisoners has soared. Now, even in exchange for basic information (whether captives are dead or alive) we are called upon to pay a heavy price. All prime ministers' fuses become short in such instances.
'You sent them, bring them back'
As previously noted, there is no need to envy the prime minister, the defense minister or the chief of staff who face the families who tell them simply: "You sent our sons there, you bring them back."
There were several cases in which Israel was forced to pay an outrageous cost: Following the Litani Campaign some 80 of the cruelest murderers were returned, captives with "blood on their hands," in exchange for a soldier who simply went out to pick fruit. We returned three of our soldiers in exchange for 1,150 arch terrorists and murderers in the infamous Jibril Deal.
There was a major public outcry after the prisoner exchange deal for Elhanan Tenenbaum and the bodies of the three soldiers who were abducted by Hizbullah in 2000.
So what do we do? We wrack our brains, deliberate, try (unsuccessfully) not to be affected by the families' tears. We try (unsuccessfully) not just to see the national interest (extortion, weakness), and we also remember what it says in the Mishnah about the redemption of captives. This tells secular persons such as ourselves that this difficult question was already debated generations ago and no solution was found.
We must say, and this it is the truth: Even this difficult matter has no magical solution, and we shall have to pay, probably very dearly. What can we do, we're just human beings.
