Second Thoughts on Exchange of Prisoners Serious Concern Expressed over the Long-range Consequences

Some of Israel’s leading writers, editors and military commentators are having sober second thoughts over the euphoria that swept the country last week when six prisoners of war captured by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon 14 months ago, returned home — in exchange for some 4,500 Palestinians and Lebanese held prisoner by Israel in Lebanon and in Israel. (See separate story for President Chaim Herzog’s reaction.)

These observers of the national scene, writing in major dailies, have expressed serious concern on two counts: first, the frenzied heroes’ welcome given the returned POWs was not warranted by the circumstances and could have long-range deleterious effects on the morale and fighting spirit of the Israel Defense Force; second, Israel seems to have abandoned its long-standing policy of never surrendering to terrorist "blackmail."

VICTORY FOR PLO SEEN

The prisoner exchange, given the vast disparity in numbers returned by each side, was clearly a moral and political victory for the PLO. Israel released men the PLO wanted released, among them many hard-core terrorists, and the long-range meaning of this acquiescence is yet to be determined.

"The practical damage of the repatriation extravaganza is that we ourselves encourage the other side, the PLO or whoever, to raise the ante, the price to be paid for the release of prisoners" in the future, according to veteran journalist Shalom Cohen writing in The Jerusalem Post yesterday.

Military correspondent Eitan Haber, writing in Yediot Achronot Sunday, measured the extent of the erosion of Israel’s no-surrender policy. The government’s rationale for the POW exchange was that the lives of the six soldiers were in immediate danger due to the warfare in northern Lebanon between PLO dissidents challenging Yasir Arafat’s leadership and Arafat loyalists who were holding the Israelis prisoner.

RECALLS PAST NO-SURRENDER POLICY

Haber pointed out that lives have been sacrificed time and again in the past to uphold the principle of no-surrender to blackmail. He recalled the massacre of children in Maalot when Israeli troops charged the school house where they were being held hostage by PLO gunmen rather than accede to terrorist demands; the similar incident when terrorists seized the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv; and the 1972 massacre of the Israeli Olympics team in Munich.

In 1976, Israel carried out the long distance raid to rescue hostages held by terrorists at Entebbe airport in Uganda, despite the appreciable risk to the lives of the hostages and members of the rescue team, one of the leaders of which, Yoni Netanyahu, was killed.

Haber suggested, not without irony, that the policy turnabout began under the Likud government which has consistently taken a harder line toward terrorism and the Palestinians than its predecessor Labor regimes. The "threshold of suffering" of the nation has "dangerously declined" over recent years, "The government and the army must carefully think about what they have done," Haber wrote.

ANOMALY OF PUBLIC REACTION CITED

Other commentators stressed the anomaly of the public reaction to the POW exchange. They pointed out that the capture of the six soldiers was hardly a glorious or edifying episode. The full details of how they were surrounded by a PLO unit on the front line in Lebanon in September, 1982 have never been released. But one fact is clear — they were not captured during a fight. No shots were fired.

Retired Brig. Gen. Yaacov Hasdai summed up the feelings of many observers in a newspaper column titled "Joy–But Not Honor." He urged the nation to make a careful distinction between the return of heroes and that of ordinary soldiers who had the misfortune of falling into enemy hands.

Haaretz columnist Natan Dunevitz noted bitterly that the country paid for less attention to tales of glory and heroism in battle for which the highest orders of bravery were awarded, often posthumously. The army publishes accounts but there is no national frenzy of excitement as there was when these six young men came home, he wrote.

"Champagne was poured on their heads as though they were some winning basketball team," Dunevitz continued. He recalled the for more modest celebrations that greeted the return of Yom Kippur War POWs. He disclosed that the late former Chief of Staff. Gen. Haim Laskov, had bitterly criticized even those celebrations as damaging to the very fibre of the army’s courage.

Laskov said at the time, according to Dunevitz: "Soldiers who lost their limbs because they fought back harder than these prisoners were not accorded such a welcome … Can you imagine what warping effect this can have on youngsters who might have to stand and fight sometime in the future."

MEDIA CHARGED FOR WHIPPING UP FRENZY

Inevitably, critics seek scapegoats and the Israeli media, particularly radio and television, have become the target of charges that it whipped up the popular adulation bestowed on the six returned POWs. Shalom Cohen’s piece in The Jerusalem Post, headlined "Sorry Spectacle", denounced "the wild celebration which was semi-organized and which verged on infantilism."

According to Cohen, "the effects on the national psyche, the exaggeration, synthetic self-gratification and the make-believe seen in the celebration did incalculable harm. The double-think of turning an unavoidable surrender to blackmail into a victory to be celebrated leads to dishonest obscurantism. A habitual refusal to face hard facts is not an asset for this beleaguered island. We descend to a level of a TV serial like ‘Dallas’, that of canned myth."

"Unfortunately," wrote Cohen, "an accusing finger must be pointed at the media which unleashed their professional efficiency as impressarios of pathos … the original culpit was the Broadcasting Authority …"

Haaretz faulted the media, especially Kol Israel Radio, for setting the tone. The State-owned radio decided last Thursday to cancel its regular programs for day-long coverage of the POW return. Yosef Lapid, director general of the Broadcasting Authority, rejected the criticism. Radio and television merely covered the events, they did not create or magnify them, he said.