Open Letter to Defense Minister Barak: Do Not Negotiate My Release

By Moshe Feiglin

This week, I wrote an open letter to Defense Minister Barak, instructing him not to negotiate my release if I am G-d forbid abducted by terrorists. The letter has been making waves in Israel, and was quoted in Israel's major media outlets:

An open letter to Defense Minister Barak: Do not negotiate my release

To the Defense Minister of the State of Israel
Mr. Ehud Barak

Re: Instructions not to conduct negotiations for my release if I am taken captive

As an Israeli citizen, as a soldier and a reserve officer, I hereby instruct you that if, God forbid, I am ever kidnapped or taken captive by Arab terror organizations, no negotiations should be conducted to secure my release. This order is the product of a sound mind. The reasons for this instruction are as follows:

A. Twenty-five years ago, Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard took shelter from his pursuers inside the Israeli Embassy in Washington. In accordance with an order issued by the Shamir government, then-Israeli Ambassador Elyakim Rubinstein handed him directly over to US federal authorities. Since then and to this day, Jonathan has been imprisoned under disgraceful conditions. He has never had even a short vacation outside the prison walls. His health is dangerously deteriorating. Israel - for whom and in whose name Jonathan sacrificed his life, did and continues to do everything possible to ensure that Jonathan will remain in prison and die there. Despite the biting betrayal that he experienced, every time that the media raises the possibility that Jonathan will be exchanged for one arch-murderer or another, Pollard hurriedly announces his opposition to this type of swap. It is incumbent on every Israeli citizen to understand - as a free person -what our betrayed hero understands from his jail cell. We must not buy liberty for an individual in exchange for endangering the lives of the public and encouraging additional abductions.

B. After a number of visits to his prison cell I understood that in the 25 years of continued betrayal of Jonathan, Israel's government has lost the moral foundation in the name of which it sends its sons to endanger themselves and in the power of which it can also bring them home. In fact, since the betrayal of Jonathan and until this very day, Israel has not brought one captive soldier home alive.

C. The Israeli government has refrained from carrying out the simple and most obvious actions for Gilad Shalit's release. Hamas, which at first avoided admitting that it was the kidnapper, quickly understood that Israel's leaders would not endanger themselves with international arrest warrants and is no longer afraid to claim full responsibility for this act. Its thousands of detainees in Israel are getting the royal treatment and enjoy conditions no Israeli detainee can even dream of.

As a first step, Israel should have compared the arrest conditions of Hamas prisoners to those of Shalit. No visits, no information, no sunlight. All Hamas leaders should have become the targets of kidnappings and assassinations. The entire supply of money, weapons, cement, fuel and electricity from Israel to Gaza should have stopped. These basic actions, and many others which could have led to Shalit's swift release, are not being carried out because the Israeli leadership fears its own fate. The only way that Israel's leaders can please both Israeli mothers and the world is to surrender and dispatch thousands of murderers to our doorsteps.

D. Clearly, the loss of vision and leadership that engenders these wholesale releases greatly encourages our enemies. The wave of terror and kidnappings that broke out following the release of thousands of terrorists does not fit what we had known in the past by any standard. "I couldn't look the mothers in the eye," said Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin and signed the prisoner swap with the Jibril terror organization. This exchange led directly to the first intifada. This led to a mass release of terrorists in the Oslo Accord and to the suicide bomber rage that followed on its heels. The State of Israel has sunk itself inside fences and guards, but this is nothing more than a pain killer for spreading cancer.

No fence can stop rockets. The weakness of the Israeli leadership in the face of terror organizations has been well internalized by a distant and much more dangerous circle of enemy states. Why should Iran's leader be afraid if the Hamas leaders feel safe?

E. "I see Israel as a state of all its citizens," explained the most influential Israeli of this generation, former Chief Justice Aharon Barak. Israel, fleeing from its Jewish identity, has pulled the carpet out from under the moral foundation of its very existence and right to send soldiers into battle. If not for a Jewish state, then what are we doing here? Why should we send our sons to the army and not to Australia?

The inevitable result of loss of Jewish vision is loss of our ability to conduct any sort of political program. When there is no strategic goal, there cannot be tactical policies. As a result, Israel will continue to conduct itself according to the caprices of constantly-surfacing international and local pressure and media campaigns.

F. In this situation, the responsible Israeli citizen is faced with one of two choices: One - to come to terms with the process briefly described here and to wait for the coup de grace that will terminate the historic episode called 'The State of Israel'. The other option is that, like in past wars, the simple soldiers will know how to save the state from the failures of its leaders. As such, we, the civilians and the simple soldiers order that no negotiations be held for us.

G. I am pleased to report that both combat officers and soldiers have announced that they will unhesitatingly add their names to this petition. I plan to continue to send you letters from soldiers in the same spirit.

Respectfully,

Moshe Feiglin

Since I announced this initiative, I have received quite a few letters from soldiers and citizens who penned their own versions to Barak. The most touching was a letter from Yitzchak, a soldier who served with Gilad Shalit. Yitzchak wrote as follows:

"Since Gilad was abducted, I feel torn and I do not know what to do to help him. Like every Jew on earth, I pray for him and hope that he will be released soon - safe and sound.
Yet, I am dismayed at how our entire country kneels before the terror organizations every time that they succeed in capturing one of our fighters in their clutches. This situation is intolerable and we fall into this trap time and again. I am frequently forced to refuse the requests of my fellow soldiers from our company and brigade to participate in demonstrations for Gilad. I have reached the conclusion that our intellect must take precedence over our emotions, as painful as this is for me."

My letter to the Defense Minister seems to have touched a raw nerve. Many people are disgusted with Israel's defeatism and are anxious to join in this initiative. It is important to remember that since the wholesale release of terrorists in the Jibril swap 25 years ago, not one Israeli soldier has returned home alive from terrorist captivity. The terrorist release approach is not only wrong from a moral and security point of view; it also fails to produce positive results.

Statistically, 80% of Hamas terrorists return to terror and murder after their release. In other words, 16 of the 20 terrorists released by Israel in exchange for the Gilad Shalit video will once again attempt to murder Israelis. It is reasonable to assume that one of them may possibly succeed, G-d forbid. This will be just part of the true price of the video. It is merely the promo for the pictures of long lines of buses filled with gleeful murderers that we will be treated to if the entire exchange takes place, G-d forbid.

The more soldiers and citizens who write letters to the Defense Minister, the greater the chances that Israel will regain its moral balance and return to war against terror instead of surrender to its dictates.

Please fill in your name and information on the letter below, copy, paste and email it to moshe@mflikud.co.il . We will send the letters in bulk to Minister Barak.

Or print the letter out here, fill in your information and fax it to our office: 09 792 0570

or mail it to:
Manhigut Yehudit
POB 21
Ginot Shomron
44853