It’s almost impossible to think about anything else; today Gilad Shalit
is coming home.
Gilad Shalit was a good looking almost nineteen year old teen age soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when he was captured – kidnapped, really — by Hamas militants in Israel on June 25, 2006 in a cross-border raid near the Kerem Shalom crossing at the Gaza Strip. Since that time Shalit has been held as a prisoner and a hostage by Hamas at an unknown location in the Gaza Strip.
For five and a half years, Hamas has refused to allow any communication with Shalit, even from his parents, and has also refused to allow the Red Cross to visit Shalit to determine that he is being well cared for. Now, after years of on-again, off –again negotiations, the caretaker Egyptian government brokered a deal between Hamas and the government of Israel to trade 1027 Palestinian prisoners to Hamas in exchange for Shalit’s safe return home.
It has been impossible to be an Israeli Jew and not feel the tragedy of Shalit’s capture. In Israel, a country that prides itself on social intimacy in which every stranger feels free to comment on everyone else’s personal life, Israelis have embraced the Shalit family and have viewed Gilad as if he was their own son.
And that’s what had made the debate about how to handle the issue of negotiating for his release all the more painful. In the words of my friend and teacher Donniel Hartman, “Israelis have been at a loss… to find the space between our moral responsibility to Gilad Shalit and our moral responsibility to the security of the country and its citizens.”
Israelis view Hamas as a terrorist organization and Israel’s policy (like that of the United States) is never to negotiate with terrorists. On the other hand, the idea of an Israeli soldier, kidnapped and held as a live hostage, is so excruciatingly painful that many Israelis believed that he should be returned at any price.
Now that a deal has been cut for Shalit’s return home – a deal that will send 1027 alleged and real perpetrators of violence against Israel back to Gaza – it seems clear that Israel has come to the decision that the life of one Israeli is truly of infinite value, that in the words of the mishna “saving one life is like saving a whole world.” It is profoundly moving to me that a powerful Israel is willing to take significant risks, and even to go beyond the common wisdom, and place its moral values at the heart of its decision-making.
To me Shalit is more than just an abducted soldier; he is the physical symbol of a country helplessly held hostage by violence and war and unable to find a way out. As Gilad comes home I can only pray that he and his family find peace, and that peace will embrace Israel as well.
The Rabbi Is In 