Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon referred on Monday to unseen considerations that are far from the public eye as the main catalyst for Israel’s decision to release imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.
Speaking at the IDF’s absorption base for new draftees at Tel Hashomer, Ya’alon said, “Releasing prisoners came as a result of choosing a bad option over a worse option… We reached the decision to avoid the worse [option]. Many strategic considerations, which may be revealed in the future, stood behind this, and hence we must go forward with a release of pre-Oslo prisoners.”
Some analysts have suggested that Israel agreed to the release as part of its efforts to secure American support in a potential military confrontation with Iran over Tehran’s expanding nuclear program.
Ya’alon said the decision was made “with a heavy heart.”
“These are murderers,” he said. “This is a challenge to justice, to law and to bereaved families, and I hear their voices.”
He added that the release also posed challenges to deterrence and security, but said those problems could be dealt with.
“We are embarking on this maneuver responsibly, with good judgement, and we’ll be able to provide an answer to security aspects… I know who these prisoners are, how many they are, what they did, [and] when they did it,” Ya’alon said.
The prisoner release is like rotting garbage, it viscerally stinks. You don’t need any knowledge or analytical ability to say rotting garbage is bad, and likewise with the prisoner release, it is an unarguably putrid event. For this reason the prisoner release is indefensible and perhaps Israel needs a more tactically able defense minister to exploit this. It is indefensible not so much from the Israeli point of view, it is indefensible from the point of view of whomever is pressuring Israel. The US can’t defend releasing terrorists and murderers nor can the EU. It is absolutely in Israel’s interest to make the prisoner release a major and public argument. It is absolutely in Israel’s interest to publicly air the perverse, evil, vicious, cruelty of these prisoners. It is absolutely in Israel’s interest to have world public opinion focused on the reality of the enemy Israel faces and not on the delusional nonsense the left spews. These observations are so obvious and basic that one must be very suspicious of what the real “hidden considerations” are.