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Yediot Aharonot contends that, "Just as the Government relied upon our intelligence and operational capacity in order to weigh the calculated risk regarding the Shalit deal, so too may it be depended on it in order to weigh the calculated risks involved en route to a [peace] agreement."
The Jerusalem Post comments: "The exceptionally disproportionate swap for Gilad Schalit has aroused – even among its outspoken proponents – profound misgivings and attempts to find ways of preventing more of the same in the future. The Shamgar Committee was established by Defense Minister Ehud Barak to draw up policy guidelines to delimit the price of the next swap. Concurrently, there are moves in the Knesset to legislate binding ransom limitations. However, Israel’s enemies, barbaric enough to hold a helpless individual hostage for over five years, won’t minimize their demands because we now have guidelines and new laws. The whole idea of kidnapping is to force the extorted party to deviate from its laws. The only antidote is a mindset switch and a return to the kind of resolve that characterized Golda Meir’s administration and which was steadfastly adhered to despite the heavy cost."
Haaretz writes: "At the end of two difficult, exhausting years in a position that required daily friction with the settlers, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon, who on Tuesday ended his stint as commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ West Bank division, dared to state simply and clearly what many in the IDF and the defense establishment know, but refrain from saying: that the army hasn’t been effective enough in blocking ‘price tag’ attacks against Palestinians and their property, and that these acts are a form of terror. These acts, he said, ‘should not just be condemned for their inherent injustice and stupidity; they must be stopped, and their perpetrators arrested, more effectively than we have succeeded in doing thus far.’ More than ever, the IDF needs good, moral people who do not capitulate to pressure and threats. In the current political climate, the burden on such people is particularly heavy, and they deserve all praise."
Ma’ariv maintains that, "The initiative to award the Israel Prize to Uri Avneri is the equivalent to the warped logic according to which Israeli lecturers call for an academic boycott on the country."
Yisrael Hayom discusses human nature and the world economic crisis. The author notes that: "Before Wall Street it was deluded mortgage applicants who took the money without knowing how they would return it. And what about Europe? Indeed, in Europe there was no ‘piggish capitalism’, there was ‘piggish socialism’. Who was it that lived off the state with a 13th salary if not Greek civil-servants?" The author concludes that, "The European and the American leaders wouldn’t dare lash out at their own publics. Politicians cannot come out publically against the same public which elects it. They will blame the rich, or the devil knows what. No one has the guts to confess his own guilt."
[Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Erez Tadmor and Hezi Sternleicht wrote today’s articles in Yediot Aharonot, Ma’ariv and Yisrael Hayom, respectively.]