Gary Cooperberg, July 15, 2008

Aside from the pain of seeing two coffins rather than live soldiers, there should also be a reassessment of the deal made to free our soldiers. It is one thing for us to return terrorist bodies for the bodies of our soldiers, but it is outrageous to consider trading live murderers for dead soldiers. It must be assumed that those who made this morbid deal had hoped that our soldiers were still alive. Now that we know otherwise it is our obligation to limit the exchange only to dead Arabs.

Had we any sense of decency the very least we would do is demand the return of Gilad Shalit alive before turning murderers loose. We would do even better to suggest that they will get their murderer in the same condition as we get Shalit. Otherwise we are encouraging the abductors to murder Shalit and all Jewish captives. Why should they keep them alive if they can get what they want even if they are dead? We have a moral obligation to the lives of our captives and that of future captives. If there is to be any hope to get them back alive it is only by refusing to exchange live murderers for dead soldiers.

It amazes me to listen to our leaders talk about morality as they agree to turn murderers loose. They claim that we have an obligation to return our soldiers home at any price. But they are liars. We have the ability to get all of our soldiers back if we had the stomach to do so. We have far more Arab captives in our jails then they have Jewish captives. We should announce that ten of these murderers will be executed every day until our captives are returned unharmed. And if any harm comes to our soldiers, we will execute all of our prisoners found guilty of terrorist acts. After the first ten are shot it is likely that our captives will be returned. This is true morality, but our leaders wouldn’t recognize it if they tripped over it.

Treating Arab murderers with kid gloves in our prisons while Jewish captives are tortured and murdered only encourages terror. Rather than acting on an alleged "higher morality", in fact we are being extremely immoral. Our sages have taught us that, "to be merciful unto the cruel will eventually lead to being cruel unto the merciful." This is true Jewish morality. Let us stop acting with false morality and begin to implement genuine Jewish morality. "When someone comes to murder you, rise up first and kill him". The concept of turning the other cheek is not to be found in the Jewish Bible.

Gary Cooperberg, a resident of the Jewish community in Hebron, Israel, is the founder and director of Project Shofar.

Copyright © 2008 Gary Cooperberg