Open letter to Abu Zayd, Abd al-Rahman, and Mahmud
Hamas people
Those who hold Eyal, Gil-Ad, and Naftali
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Respected
The battle between us is not balanced. The relationship is not equivalent. Or in spoken Hebrew: it is not forces.
It's not strength, because you know that the moment we hear the trembling voice of one of the boys talking about his longing for us or about his medical condition, our hearts will melt. We will be torn apart and your demands will start to sound rational. Yes, even to the biggest cynics among us.
What's the logic in this? What logic are we working by? How can it be that for an eleventh-grade boy we are seriously talking to you about the release of thousands of terrorists who are murdering children, women, and infants? How can we accept the fact that for five years you have not allowed anyone, including the Red Cross, to check on the condition of the previous hostage, Gilad Shalit, or the two soldiers who may be dying in Lebanon, while your prisoners are being treated sanely here?
Apparently we don't work with cold logic, with a rational course of action, there is some unclear Jewish impulse within us that causes us to act as we do. It's hard for us to explain this to you unless the phrase "Whoever saves one soul from Israel is as if there were a whole world" means something to you. This impulse is embedded in us, it is built-in, perhaps this operation of tens of thousands of Jews who died over the generations for being Jews created this strange norm among us that Jews are not left behind no matter what.
What is clear is that you know this. Otherwise, how could you explain to yourself the release of your murderers in exchange for three bodies that were being held in a freezer by Hezbollah, or the release of the greatest child murderers in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit, who apparently never harmed a cat?
You know that most of our heads of state were ousted or resigned following the Second Lebanon War, in which 44 civilians and 119 soldiers were killed. In Lebanon, on the other hand, over 1,100 civilians and hundreds more Hezbollah members were killed, which did not prevent Hezbollah leaders from feeling victorious and most of the country's Jewish citizens from feeling humiliated. That's how we are.
We remember the victims of the Yom Kippur War well. We talk about it in almost every forum, every year. By the way, does anyone here talk about the Iraq-Iran war in which over a million Arabs died, some of them by chemical means? Or do you remember the exact number of those killed, mainly children, in the civil wars in Syria, Egypt, and Libya?
Therefore, we are not asking you to release Eyal, Naftali, and Gil-Ad for 300 soldiers. Not even for 600. We know that this is not current. In the end, we will give you the thousand-something you ask for, and also the arch-murderer Barghouti. We are only asking that you tell us that they are fine, healthy, that you will take good care of them, and that we will not hear them for another three years saying in a shaky voice on a blurry tape that they miss their father, their mother, and their little sister.
The article was previously published on the Kirov website, with the release of the Gilad Shalit tape. In a chilling way, it has become topical again.
