Israel's Bid to Stop Celebrations of Palestinian Prisoners' Release Reveals the Real Aim of the War - Opinion - Haaretz.com
“He that keepeth Israel doth neither slumber nor sleep,” as the Book of Psalms put it. On Friday, police officers worked for endless hours to tamp down the joy of the female Palestinian prisoners, who were released from Israeli prisons in exchange for Israeli hostages, and their families'. According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, prisoners who violate the terms of their release and publicly celebrate are subject to a fine of 70,000 shekels ($18,700).
The terms include a ban on passing out candy, a prohibition that seems to have been overly zealously enforced by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s fine boys in the Israel Police. According to an Al Jazeera reporter, “The candies were confiscated from the home of prisoner Amani al-Hashim in Beit Hanina, whose family had planned on passing them out to well-wishers.”
It turns out that there’s no prouder form of nationalism than making “the other” miserable. So far, we haven’t been informed about the fate of the candy – whether it was shredded as statements of incitement, or whether they ended up in the bellies of those took them away.
One also wonders whether it’s kosher to sweeten your own life with the enemy’s candy. In the interim, the Ben-Gvir-style sweet revenge was carried out in full.
Omar Atshan, 17, is hugged by his mother after being released from an Israeli prison in the West Bank town of Ramallah, on Sunday, as a part of the hostage exchange deal.Credit: Nasser Nasser /AP
Mainstream Israeli media haven’t covered the release of the Palestinian women prisoners nearly at all. It would never occur to them, even for a moment, to tarnish the Jews’ feelings of happiness with the happiness of Arabs. Even news coverage has its limits and to hell with objective reporting.
Then they ask in unfathomable seriousness what the aim of the war declared on October 7 is, as if it’s not clear that the goal is revenge. Simply revenge. But the haste in launching a war with full force – and, as everyone knows, haste is from the devil – has prevented the world from pondering what happened in Israeli border communities on that apocalyptic day, about Hamas’ crimes and hearing the hair-raising stories of the orphans and wounded and those who hid in their safe rooms.
The urge for revenge has triumphed over wisdom, which isn’t the product of impulse but rather of thought. Feelings of revenge were so powerful that Israel launched an unprecedented assault on Gaza hours later. And before the world could manage to absorb the scope of the horrors in the Israeli border communities, it had already forged a connection with the stunning suffering in Gaza.
We should remember that in 2001, after the terrible terrorist attack at the Dolphinariumin Tel Aviv, the first thing that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did was to let the world see the dimensions of the crime before going on the attack against the Palestinian people. It was a bloody, heinous attack reminiscent of the man’s entire aggressive record, but it garnered global support.
If we think back to the history of recent wars, the element of revenge has had a central role in them. In the first Lebanon War in 1982, Israel set out to avenge the attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, who was seriously injured in the attack. In the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Israel went to battle after the abduction of two soldiers. In the first war, Israel paid with the lives of 655 of its soldiers; and in the second, with the lives of 165 soldiers and civilians, not to mention the dead on the other side, but after all, who’s counting?
Palestinians wave Hamas flags as they celebrate the Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank city of Nablus, on Friday.Credit: Majdi Mohammed /AP
It’s a shame that they don’t count the wars that were prevented, for example, following the abduction of three soldiers on the Lebanese border in 2000. Then too, ultimately, and after the 165 dead in the Second Lebanon War, Israel and Hezbollah came to an agreement with the same result – an exchange of prisoners.
A war that is entirely the product of blind rage, without any plans for the period after the war – and while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is excluded as a partner – is a conflict that portends another 100 years of wars at least.