It was the news Israelis had been praying for. The world learned this week that after five long years in a Hamas dungeon, kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is finally going home.
The Netanyahu government, with the help of Egyptian and German interlocutors, hammered out a deal with Hamas. The Palestinians get 1,027 of their prisoners back, including hundreds of confirmed terrorists.
Israel gets back only one man.
But Gilad is someone the entire nation had been agonizing over ever since terrorists tunneled into Israel and seized him in 2006. He had become the Israeli everyman, his devastated parents symbols of national agony.
The Shalits’ vigil tent, erected last year on a Jerusalem boulevard not far from the prime minister’s home, is at last coming down.
We can only rejoice in Gilad’s homecoming. He and his family will no doubt need time to heal, but they have the love and support of the Jewish people to get them through it.
Israel’s long delay in concluding this deal makes sense considering the heavy price Hamas extorted. Their returned prisoners are surely eager to get back to work plotting murder and mayhem against Jews.
There is a chance Israelis will die someday because of their future actions.
But we must remember: Israel’s right-wing Cabinet signed off on the deal, as did senior members of the country’s military, intelligence and internal security communities. They would not have done so if they felt the risks outweighed the advantages of getting Gilad home.
Further, as Jerusalem Post military analyst Yaakov Katz pointed out in a cogent column this week, Israel had to make a deal before upcoming elections in Egypt brought to power a more anti-Israel government.
The Arab Spring could have turned into the Shalit family’s worst nightmare had Israel not acted now.
Katz also noted that continued unrest in Syria could result in chaos for Hamas, which is headquartered in Damascus. The terrorists, too, felt some urgency to make a deal.
Beyond all the geopolitics, perhaps most important of all, pidyon shvuyim, or redeeming the captive, is a holy dictum for Jews. And last time we checked, the Torah did not have any asterisks.
Even though freeing an army of killers potentially poses serious risks, Israel had a sacred obligation to bring Gilad home. Now it’s done, and a nation celebrates.
We join the Shalit family, Israel and all Jews around the world as we say “Shehechiyanu” and welcome Gilad Shalit back to the land of the living.