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Former IDF Prosecutor: "This Is Not a Prisoner Exchange"

(Jerusalem Post) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, who served in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps for 19 years, this week described the fundamental inequality of releasing convicted murderers, some serving life sentences, for innocent civilians. "This cannot be referred to as a prisoner exchange. On the one hand, you have a genocidal terrorist organization, and on the other side, you have a democratic country. That's not a prisoner exchange deal. It is extortion by a terrorist organization. There is no equality that can be drawn between the two sides." "By 2014, 50% of those released in Judea and Samaria [in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal] almost immediately returned to terrorism....The Palestinians celebrate 41 separate incidences where Palestinian prisoners have been released since 1998. Some of these were as part of the Oslo Accords, others were in exchange for hostages or bodies, and some are features of 'goodwill' from Israel for a variety of reasons such as before Ramadan." "It's a cycle that feeds itself. If we keep releasing terrorists in exchange for hostages, they will keep taking hostages because there is a reward for their actions....[We're] feeding the flames of desire to kidnap more people because it brings about good results for the terrorists....All these major deals have caused wide-scale destruction and murder. The Shalit deal led to the October 7 massacre. Already by November 2012, [freed Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar was meeting with Qassem Solemanei in Tehran and planning October 7."
2025-01-19 00:00:00
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