Compassion for Gilad Shalit Is Commendable But Easy

The year ends with Israel obsessively focusing on the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit. He has been held by Hamas for over three years and, with the help of Israel's sensationalist media, the entire country seems to be in a fury over the boy's continued captivity.

The Israeli government has been working virtually nonstop to decide if Israel should trade 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit.  The public strongly supports the exchange even though some in the intelligence community and elsewhere warn that exchanging prisoners for a captured hostage will produce the further nabbing of Israeli soldiers or even civilians.

Nonetheless, most Israelis are willing to pay the price.  In fact, in demanding the release of a thousand prisoners, Hamas is not making as excessive a demand as it might seem.  Israel holds 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have not even been charged.  Some, like some of those teenage prisoners in Guantanamo, are only dimly aware of what they are accused of.

Israelis deserve credit for caring so deeply about one captured soldier.  Gilad Shalit puts a face on the war Israelis and Palestinians have waged for decades.  As the Bush administration understood when it suppressed photographs of soldiers' caskets at Dover Air Force Base, reminding the public of the human costs of war is, intrinsically, an anti-war act.  It is easier to support a war if one ignores the actual young people who must fight it.

The troubling aspect of Israel's obsession with exchanging Shalit for prisoners is that it devotes infinitely less energy to ending the conflict with the Palestinians.

Suppose, in addition or instead of prisoner exchanges with Hamas, Israel liftied the blockade of Gaza which punishes not suspected terrorists but innocent Palestinians.  Israel has inflicted collective punishment on the people of Gaza since Hamas took over their government.  Collective punishment is, in addition to being inhumane, a crime against international law.  Palestinian kids in Gaza are as innocent as Israeli kids in Haifa or Tel Aviv.  Kids are kids.  But, in Gaza it's kids that suffer. (See the left side of ANERA chart). 

So why doesn't the United States insist that Israel broaden its negotiations with Hamas - currently it is negotiating only over the prisoner exchange - to extend to other humanitarian issues?  In exchange for a permanent and complete end of terrorism, Israel should agree to lift the blockade. 

This would not constitute Israel's recognition of Hamas or Hamas's recognition of Israel.  The two sides can continue to reject each other until such time (hopefully soon) when negotiations to achieve a "final status" agreement begins.

Gilad Shalit demonstrates the human face of this war.  But there are many, many more.  The siege against the people of Gaza should end along with any and all attacks on Israel (in fact, the attacks on southern Israel have stopped).

Those whose concern extends only to soldier Shalit, and not to children in Gaza who are, by definition, even more innocent, are just hypocrites. After all, it's easy to extend one's compassion only to one's own. Compassion on the cheap is not compassion at all.