27-Jul-13: To defeat the terrorists, what one thing must a government never do?

[The text below is excerpted from a longer post we published here just six days ago ["21-Jul-13: In the debate over whether Israel should free convicted terrorists, one key argument is mostly ignored"]. Tonight's news and the public letter from Israel's prime minister in which he shares with us the burden of having to "make decisions that go against public opinion – when the matter is important for the country" make it imperative, in our view, that the backstory is better understood.] 

What he said then when untested.
Compare to what he says now when it
really counts.

What appears to have happened is that the political echelon has taken upon itself to usurp decisions properly and constitutionally made by the judiciary - and not for the first time. Yet we are able to see no acknowledgement by any of the relevant sectors of society - not the media, not the opposition, not the NGO sector - that this is what has happened.

Why has such an extraordinary decision, one that brutally overturns basic notions of justice, met with such thundering silence? 

The answer cannot be that there is no other way. We are certain there is another way, and we have strong support from the acknowledged leading thinker in the field of how to deal with the terrorists. 

“A government that seeks the defeat of the terrorists must refuse to release convicted terrorists from prisons… Releasing imprisoned terrorists emboldens them and their colleagues… By nurturing the belief that their demands are likely to be met in the future, you encourage terrorist blackmail of the very kind that you want to stop. Only the most unrelenting refusal to ever give in to such blackmail can prevent this.” [“Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists”, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York 1995 at page 144]

The writer of those words is a younger Binyamin Netanyahu. Eighteen years later, and as prime minister, he is facing precisely the test about which he wrote in his best-selling book. But 18 years is a long time - actually a lifetime if you think about murdered fifteen year olds like our daughter Malki. 

And 18 years later, he is no longer the thinker, writer and strategist he was then...

A year ago, we called on Netanyahu to 

honor the principles of justice and decency on which our nation is based and remember the innocent victims whose loved ones are – yet again – experiencing unfathomable pain as a result of your choices.

The result, you already know. 

A year later it appears the victims of the terrorists are, again, being disgracefully disenfranchised by the politicians.

Unquote. [Click to read the whole post.]