Why did Israel do it?

As most of you will undoubtedly have heard by the time you read this post, Israel received two black coffins on Wednesday morning that likely (and at this writing it's not yet confirmed) contain the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev HY"D (may God avenge their blood). Israel Radio has just reported that there are celebrations and candy distribution in the Gaza Strip - which pales by comparison to what will happen in Beirut later Wednesday. Hamas released a statement Wednesday morning that said that Hezbullah has proven that Israel will release 'prisoners' with blood on their hands, and that Hezbullah and Hamas have succeeded in bringing Israel to its knees.

Many of you have asked how Israel could be going ahead with this 'trade.'

Haaretz pundit Shmuel Rosner, who is definitely on the left of the political map, thinks he knows why this happened. He argues that the 'trade' is the result of Israel's 'national psyche.'

For better or for worse, this is mostly a product of the Israeli psyche. Its force was too strong for Olmert, the struggling, soon-to-be-ousted, leader to resist—but it was also stronger than popular, commanding Ariel Sharon. Sharon once agreed to an outrageous deal in which an Israeli colonel, who also happened to be a drug dealer, returned home in exchange for the release of 450 Lebanese prisoners. [A deal I have criticized on this blog in the past. But even then, no one knew that Tenenbaum was a drug dealer until he actually was released. We were told that he was a high-ranking army officer who was being 'tortured' into revealing IDF secrets. When he was released, most of us expected him to be in a wheelchair because the stories going around the country said Hezbullah had broken his kneecaps after an escape attempt and that he could no longer walk. And none of those Lebanese prisoners was a terrorist with blood on his hands. Kuntar was supposed to be released in the second phase of that deal, but Hezbullah never supplied the goods on Ron Arad. They didn't supply them this time either, except Olmert and his 'government' are so pathetically weak that they overlooked it. CiJ]

The leaders can hardly claim that the public will not support them. The heartbreaking fate of the families tends to overwhelm more hard-to-define long-term strategic considerations.

It is no wonder that the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, was the most visible opponent of the newest deal, while the military's chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, supported it. Ashkenazi is charged with sending warriors into battle; it is his responsibility to assure every Israeli family that its sons and daughters are in good hands and that they will not be abandoned under any circumstances.

So, it is easy to distinguish between the "calculated" and the "emotional" approaches to hostage deals. The Dagans, who see mostly the downside of these deals—that they provide an incentive for more kidnappings and potentially send released prisoners back into the fray—and the Ashkenazis, who think about the families' suffering and the moral responsibility of their command.

But these are false distinctions. Israel is a society in which everyone knows everyone, in which every soldier's fate matters to every citizen. It is a society that demands that every young man and woman perform military service, a society in which a state of war is a 60-year habit, in which national solidarity is always an existential question. For such a society, looking into the eyes of the father or wife of a kidnapped soldier and telling them that the price is just too high is something no leader is able to do. So, in the case of Israel—a country with a never-ending need for public trust in the military—the "emotional" can be the most "calculated" approach of them all.

If this 'trade' is the result of the 'national psyche,' Israel is in deep trouble. This 'national psyche' is the same 'national psyche' that blurted out the following to the Israel Policy Forum on June 9, 2005 to justify turning the IDF against Gaza's Jews:

"We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies."

The speaker, of course, was the current Prime Minister, Ehud K. Olmert. Is Israel's 'national psyche' that bad? Is it that defeatist? I'd like to believe that it is not.

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