Be of good heart, ~8000 Palestinian rock throwing terrorists still sit in Israeli prisons, mostly convicted, some in public trials. Also the kill ratio is 20-30 to 1 during revenge bombing and since multimillion dollar weapons systems are used, each and every Palestinian death is of a terrorist, terrorist supporter or terrorist to be. There are plans to build the first Arab town in Israel since 1948 where Palestinians can be concentrated for their and Israel's protection and control.

There is another way to do this math.
With between 5,000 and 6,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails, Israel has released less than 20% of her prisoners.
Palestine has released 100% of hers.
100% to 20% is a good deal, especially if it can then be used to claim the moral gain ground.
There's been a lot of killing over there, a lot of dispossession and families ruined.
Who was Ahlam Tamimi anyway? We know what she did. Has anyone asked why?

It never ceases to amaze me how Palestinian and Israeli "victims" constantly receive the limelight, the focus and all the incessant analysis, despite the relatively low casualty rates on a world scale. It's a pity that not even a significant proportion of this attention is diverted to the daily massacres in Syria, the ongoing torture, executions and arrests in Iran, the ongoing oppression in occupied Tibet and the ongoing oppression and genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
One wonders about the real agenda of those responsible for this misdirected focus.

It is wonderful the value that Israel places on the life of a single Jewish soldier. However, that does not of itself make Israel moral. True morality would be shown if they afforded they same value to non Jewish lives.
For instance, the lives of the 400 odd children killed during Operation Cast Lead. Perhaps the thousand or so civilians killed in Lebanon by the IDF a couple of years ago would have appreciated Israel valuing their lives as much as they clearly value the life of Gilad Shalit.

Rhys, why direct your comments against only one country? If there any country that is actually "moral" in a state of war, especially if civilian casualties result?

Bempec says "Rhys, why direct your comments against only one country?"

Because this article was about only one country and was holding that particular country up as a superior moral example.

There are many countries around the world that have worse human rights records than Israel and if there are articles about them I will comment on them. However, those countries are generally not allied with Australia, and nor are they held up by their supporters as being of superior moral character.

An example of a country that has behaved better during times of conflict is the UK. They were subjected to numerous bombings by the IRA. However, they did not retaliate by carrying out wholesale bombings of Catholic neighbourhoods in the guise of killing terrorists.

Rhys, I appreciate your balanced reply. Whilst I agree with the general tenor of your argument, I have reservations about "the moral ground"
1.The USA is one of our allies. I cannot see that their actions in Iraq can avoid the blanket that you placed over "our allies".
2.I believe that in general you are correct about the UK in Northern Ireland, although in the contemporary history of that conflict, there were extreme actions perpetrated by the Brits. In the case of Israel, I do wonder if the "moral" standards are very screwed up under the threat of their survival being at stake, year after year.The tragedy of the conflict I guess is no different to other conflicts: The inability of each side to see each other as equal human beings, and to accept that each casualty is a catastrophe, regardless of whether the victim is Israeli or Palestinian.

Bempec,
I speak out just as bitterly against my government for my part in murdering millions of Vietnamese and and have spoken out against my government, its puppets and allies murdering millions of people in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon, Dominica, Panama, Libya, etc., etc., etc.
I still speak out whenever US supplied or paid for bullets and bombs are murdering people as in Palestine.
Tuesday night I'll be standing vigil for my comrade Scott Olsen, wounded last week by a bullet paid for my tax dollars.

There is no 'maths' behind the Shalit prisoner swap nor is there any morality. This is a straight forward political decision and it should be recalled that Shalit is no ordinary prisoner but a prisoner of war.

As already commented one might compare the kill ratio as in the Gaza War of 2008 the figures were 1,400 predominately civilians murdered in Gaza versus 8 predominately soldiers in Israel. How moral is that?

It is well known that Israel periodically round up all Palestinian boys and men from the ages of 14 to 60, no charges laid against them, no right to legal representation more often than not tortured and left in jails to rot. These Palestinian boy and men are picked up for the sole purpose of swapping. If Shalit had been a Palestinian picked up by Israeli forces there would be no negotiations today as the Palestinian Shalit would be either dead or so traumatized by the torture he had to endure at the hands of the Israelis he would be like a vegetable.

But let us look at the decision to swap Shalit something that Netanyahu could have done years ago and examine the question why now? The swap has boosted Hamas' fortunes amongst the Palestinian civilians and consequently a political blow to Abbas and Fatah of the PLO. This was Netanyahu's punishment of Abbas for introducing a resolution at the UN General Assembly for the UN to recognize the Republic of Palestine within the borders of June 4 1967.

So you see there was absolutely nothing about regaining the high moral ground and everything to do with Netanyahu's desire to punish perhaps the most malleable bargaining partner that Israel could ever dream of negotiating peace with.

Ullis, it is interesting that we know the statistics down to the finest details of Palestinians incarcerated in Israel, but either we do not know the equivalent details concerning oppression in Syria, Iran, Chechnya, Tibet, Sri Lanka or are disinterested.

Halduell,

"Who was Ahlam Tamimi anyway? We know what she did. Has anyone asked why?"

Are you implying that random killing of diners in a restaurant is justifiable?

----

Now Tamimi and others of her ilk are free to do their thing again, yet I justify Israel's doing what it HAD to do - there was no other choice.

Why?

Because Gilad Shalit was a conscript. He was kidnapped by the state of Israel to begin with, only to be later kidnapped again by a second kidnapper. The onus is on a kidnapper to bring back home the souls they've taken, at any cost whatsoever, even of their own destruction.

Had Shalit been a professional soldier, I would have viewed things differently and would not agree with the price of Tamimi's release. I hope Israel will learn its lesson and abolish conscription, the sooner the better, before the next conscript is kidnapped by Hamas.

'It is worth remembering that had she lived, Malki Roth would now be the same age as Gilad Shalit, a very young woman with dreams and a future still intact.'

Morality? Really when every Israeli Jewish child like Gilad and Malki, if still alive, would include in their dreams and future the wonderfully character forming activity of learning to kill and repress Palestinians.

Israel is one of the few countries in the world that requires it's children to undertake compulsory Military Training.

Defence is a wonderful excuse for aggression, when the purpose of that defence is aimed at securing settlements on stolen occupied lands.

Manny and Geoffery come here preaching morality ... a twisted morality... that supports militarising children to protect stolen land. Oh so moral.

You have an interesting point, Imajulianutter, about militarising children to protect stolen land - however, conscription in Israel, evil as it is, did not start in 1967, but was there since Israel's inception, in 1948.

Some kids are perverts indeed, but that's not the norm. The majority of Israeli children, likely including Gilad and Malki, hold no dreams of the kind you mentioned - they would rather commence higher education at the age of 18, or have fun, or support their family, but they cannot, they are victims and go to the army only because the other options are to go to jail or to break a leg.

The problem is that people like Tamimi make no distinction and are happy to kill all Israeli children indiscriminately.

This has to be one of the most warped discussions of morality I’ve ever come across! What sort of twisted morality demands that murderers be released from prison and tries to justify terrorism on the grounds of ‘why’ they did it? If someone had blown up a peak-hour bus in Melbourne or Sydney, no matter how sympathetic their cause may have been, would you be suggesting they should be released from prison? Would you be defending someone who’d walked into a restaurant and opened fire on the diners if they’d called themselves a ‘freedom fighter’ against the white ‘occupation’ of Australia? It shouldn’t matter what your political stance is regarding the Middle East – any person with any moral fibre should be appalled that even one murderer has had to be released from prison to secure the release of a hostage. If you cannot tell right from wrong in such clear-cut cases of murder, what hope is there of you telling right from wrong when things are a little more grey?!

When addressing questions of morality one usually turns to our religious leaders. In this case of this article it is hard to ignore the echo of Rabbi Yaacov Perrin's words “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail”. It was uttered at the funeral in Israel of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli terrorist responsible for slaughtering 29 Muslims while they were at prayer and wounding another 125.

Most of us outside this conflict would see deep flaws with describing the latest prisoner swap as a moral decision, especially given the brutality on both sides, yet we can understand why the authors, given their obviously deep connections to the issue would view it in such a singular fashion.

For an outsider the stark omission in the article is the mention of the Israeli pledge to 'never leave a soldier behind'. The government obviously recognises, even if the authors do not, the power of this pledge as a morale boosting, unifying ethic within the IDF. This is especially important given the odious work of occupying and subjugating a people. It is difficult not to see a calculation having been made that the empowering of the enemy through this deal was to a large measure annulled by re-empowering its military.

One can only view with utter disgust the Sbarro pizza restaurant bombing mentioned in the article. The location and most particularly the time of day was designed purely to target families. A poster asked why was it done and while it is understandable that many Jewish people would find this question insulting I feel for the rest of us it is an appropriate response.

From my reading it would appear the attack was in response to a missile strike on the Hamas Ministry of Information building a month earlier. It targeted Jamal Mansour who was a Hamas spokesperson whose primary role within the organisation was responsibility for information and public relations. Eight civilians including two children aged 8 and 10 were killed in the attack.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/mansour.html

Cont'

Cont'

What is unfathomable to the rest of us is why, knowing the anguish of losing children to the enemy why you would then go and target them. What is equally disturbing to an outsider was the glorification of the Sbarro Pizza shop bombing by students at the West Bank An-Najah Univeristy where in the one year celebration of the Second Intifada “The exhibit’s main attraction was a room-sized re-enactment of the bombing at Sbarro. The installation featured broken furniture splattered with fake blood and human body parts. To his credit Yasser Arafat acted to shut it down though one wonders why the teachers allowed it to go up in the first place.

One wonders too at the comments of Samuel Hacohen, a teacher at a Jerusalem college, who declared the terrorist Baruch Goldstein the "greatest Jew alive, not in one way but in every way" and said that he was "the only one who could do it, the only one who was 100 percent perfect.". One must also credit the Israeli government for eventually shutting down the shrine at his grave site. It that had become a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Jews, some of whom who danced and sang in celebration of his deeds.

While the selective sense of morality from both sides, including the authors of this article, is in many ways understandable I think it is the duty of the rest of us to take a wider view and not get caught up in the hatreds, recriminations and rhetoric of the issue, amply illustrated by some of the posts here, since it is obvious that without us this will never be solved.

As a slight aside any discussion of moral fibre should include the appalling decision of Australia to vote against Palestine becoming a member of UNESCO. We were one of the few nations who did so and we should be ashamed.

To Yuyutsu and Montgomery can I point out that I did not try to justify the bombing of a pizza parlor.
But I repeat, why did Ahlam Tamimi do what she did?
Unless we ask that question and listen to the answer, we are condemning ourselves and our children to doing it all again someday.

Great comments Montgomery! I also have no time for people who try to justify murder. Also, I am rather puzzled by Yuyutsu's strange comments about Israeli conscription. Children are not being conscripted in Israel. They are conscripted at the age of 18, no different to many other countries. Yuyutsu may be also interested to learn that conscription exists in Algeria, Angola, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Iran, North and South Korea, Russia, Kuwait, Singapore and Turkey, amongst others.
Perhaps Israelis and Palestinians suffer from the same disease: They cannot see each other as equal human beings. I suppose that this is often consequence of war, especially in such a chronic conflict. Its upto us as outsiders not to see this conflict as 2-dimensional.

"conscription exists in Algeria, Angola, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Iran, North and South Korea, Russia, Kuwait, Singapore and Turkey, amongst others."

Yes, and I condemn all the above countries in the same way as I condemn Israel.

Just as it is inconceivable to justify the murder of innocent diners or bus-travelers, so it is inconceivable to justify the incarceration and enslavement of innocent people who committed no crime without their consent, let alone subjecting them to the extra risk of being injured or dying in battle which ordinary imprisoned criminals do not suffer, and let alone children whose only "crime" is to be born in a certain place and reaching the age of 18 in relative health.

I am myself a victim of conscription, I still occasionally suffer nightmares as a result, and one of the main reasons that I immigrated to Australia is that here we do not have that barbaric practice.

Algeria, Angola, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Israel, North and South Korea, Russia, Kuwait, Singapore and Turkey, ...

Now isn't that impressive.

Let's list a few who don't

England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Canada, USA, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand... oh look ... they are all liberal democracies.