The ‘Raging Sense of injustice’ Over the Innocents-For-Criminals Deal

We’ve now had the second week in which Israel received a handful — three this time — of its hostages, while Hamas in exchange took delivery of ninety Palestinian prisoners, including a number who were guilty of murdering Israelis. The Israeli government had been under terrific pressure from two sources to make the lopsided deal. One was the Biden administration, that wanted to be able to claim, on its way out, that it had brought about a ceasefire which, we are expected to believe, was a great achievement. The other pressure came from the families of those hostages, desperate for their release, who have engaged in nonstop demonstrations calling for their release “whatever it took” at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.

More on the injustice of this swap can be found here.

Imagine waking up to the news that Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the brutal killers of British soldier Lee Rigby, were being released from prison. Picture the outrage as the British public remembers the images of Rigby being hacked to death on a Woolwich street in broad daylight, his killers unapologetic and defiant even during their trial. Imagine, too, if Axel Rudakubana – the teenage terrorist who stabbed three young girls to death during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class – walked free, boasting about his satisfaction with the murders. These scenarios are unthinkable. Yet, in Israel, they are a grim reality.

This is a deal that ensures the cycle of bloodshed will continue

This week, with the encouragement of the world, Israel continued to release dozens of Palestinian terrorists, many of whom are guilty of atrocities that defy comprehension. Among the prisoners on the release list are 424 perpetrators of suicide bombings, shooting sprees, and stabbings – men and women responsible for the deaths of countless civilians. These are not abstract statistics; they are people like Bilal Abu Ghanem, who murdered three Israelis in a 2015 Jerusalem bus attack and injured 15 others, and Khalil Yosef Ali Jabrin, then 16 years old, who stabbed to death Ari Fuld, a 40-year old father of four, outside a shopping mall in 2018.

The profound emotional weight of this deal is embodied in the harrowing story of Tal Hartuv, with whom I spoke this week. Tal endured a brutal attack by two Palestinian terrorists armed with machetes in 2010. Left for dead, she survived by feigning death, all while witnessing the horrific murder of her friend Kristine beside her. The perpetrators of this unspeakable crime were sentenced to prison, yet Tal tells me she now confronts the agonising reality that they may soon be released as part of this exchange. ‘I’m so glad these hostages are home,’ she says, ‘but on the other hand I can also hold this raging sense of injustice.’…

It is a terrible deal, yet one the government of Israel felt it had to make, persuaded by the anguish not only of the hostage families, but of millions of people in Israel unrelated to the hostages who were convinced that as a matter of morality the Israeli government had to make any possible deal that would bring the hostages home, even one as lopsided as this, where a few dozen hostages — possibly 50 of the 98 whom Hamas was believed to hold are still alive — are to be traded for 1,900 prisoners, one-quarter of whom were convicted of murder.

The danger now is that many of those freed prisoners will return to their acts of terrorism. A number of the most dangerous ones will be required to live outside Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. But how will the Israelis be able to monitor their movements, to make sure they do not manage to re-infiltrate those areas in order to carry out terrorist attacks? In 2011, Israel freed 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get back a single soldier, Gilad Shalit. Eighty-two percent of those 1,027 released prisoners went right back to committing terrorist attacks. One of those set free was Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack.

How many of those 1,900 prisoners now to be freed under the ceasefire deal will return to terrorism? And how many Israelis will be murdered as a result? But the anguished people of Israel had wanted their hostages back now, no matter what the hypothetical cost might be in the future. The deal leaves one with “a raging sense of injustice,” but who among us would have chosen to leave those hostages in their cruel captivity, when they could be released in a deal that dismays, but for which there was at the time, before President Trump took office, no alternative?