Israel got back the corpses of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev today. They were never prisoners. They had died in the attack. The IDF reported initially that the soldiers had been carried off, but had likely been mortally wounded if they were alive. It is reported that the bodies were mutilated.

In return Israel released the Lebanese terrorist who had snuck into Israel and killed a father in his home and crushed his four year old daughter’s skull with a rifle butt. The mother, hiding under the bed trying to save the baby, smothered the baby in her terror. The murderer was Samir Kuntar, who returned to Lebanon and was celebrated with parades, vowing to murder little children and their parents again at first opportunity. Four other Lebanese criminals, all the Lebanese corpses from the Lebanon War of 2006 were released with him…for the bodies of two men who probably would not have wanted to be the reason that many other Israelis will die.

But supposing Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev had survived and had actually been held as prisoners, and been returned alive? Would the exchange have been right then? No. This was an obvious capitulation, where Hizbullah got the better end of the deal by far, even if the soldiers had been returned alive. Lebanon/Hizbullah profited greatly from murder, deception, and military aggression. Consequently it is obvious that all a Muslim needs to do is kill a Jew and take the body, and they can have anything they ask for, even the lives of other Jews.

If this had been the first time that Israel ever made a prisoner exchange to its own detriment, and consequently weakened Israel’s position, made a mockery of its military and political strategies and put more Israelis in danger for future Arab attacks, it would be a shameful surrender. However, this is only one of many such exchanges, although perhaps the worst. It shows the craven disregard that Israeli leaders have for their own nation. And what does it say of Israelis who now apparently believe that now is all there is? Save one life now…who cares how many die later?

A family cries to return their loved one at all costs, no matter how many others will die because of it. What loyalty or regard for others in that demand? Yet they do that because they are grieving a difficult loss, and out of loyalty to their missing soldiers they need to call for their return and not forget them. But at any price? Should national policy and security be ruled by the grief and loyalty of individual families, without regard to the future well-being of the rest of the nation?

But of course the Israeli government did not agree to this disgraceful exchange out of pity for the families of the soldiers or hope of saving two lives. This deal was negotiated by the UN in the hopes that many more Arab murderers would be released from Israeli prisons.

Did the Israeli government care about the pain and grief of the woman who was left without her husband and children because of Samir Kuntar, or the other families whose family members were killed and maimed by the men who were set free? Was Israeli president Peres (the traitor who despises history because it would shed light on him) filled with compassion when he pardoned Samir Kuntar? No. The government betrayed these people for political ends.

The government betrayed future Israeli lives for political considerations as well. How many lives for a payoff? How many lives for a yeshiva? How many lives to get rid of an inconvenient truth?

A prisoner, unless he can be rescued, should not be redeemed at the expense of the nation. It is better to lose a prisoner now than to suffer more kidnappings and murders later and to capitulate needlessly to an enemy.