Hostage Situation -

This entry was written before the terrible news was released, that Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah, of blessed memory, have been found brutally murdered. May the families never know such sorrow again. With the exception of the epilogue, the premises and conclusions of the piece remain unchanged.

It's never pleasant when a bad decision from the past comes back to haunt you. Knowing that you opposed that decision, and correctly predicted its terrible future consequences, is not much consolation. Many Israelis felt this trepidation during the process that culminated in the exchange of 1,027 Hamas terrorists, collectively responsible for the deaths of over 560 Israeli citizens, for one abducted Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

On June 30, 2009, Infantryman Bowe Bergdahl went missing from his base in Paktika province, Afghanistan. Members of his unit have stated their unequivocal conviction that he had deserted in order to join the Taliban. Correspondence between Bergdahl and his father, Robert Bergdahl, exhibited Bowe's sympathy for the Taliban. After five years in captivity, Bergdahl was swapped for five senior Taliban terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), two of whom were involved in the 9/11/2001 bombings. Pundits and politicians alike referenced the Shalit prisoner swap as justification for the release of five members of the jihadist tactical elite.

The latest dividend of that terrible decision was paid out two weeks ago in Israel. Naftali Frankel (, 16, from Nof Ayalon), Gilad Shaer (, 16, from Talmon), and Eyal Yifrah (, 19, from Elad,) were hiking in the Judean hills near their homes when they were kidnapped by Arab terrorists. An additional disturbing development is the violent demonstrations Arab Israelis in support of the kidnappers.

It isn't terribily difficult to connect the dots. Negotiating with terrorists is an act of weakness that emboldens barbaric enemies and weakens allies. Since the Shalit prisoner swap, attacks on Israelis have continued. Why wouldn't they? His kidnappers won an immediate tactical victory. What Netanyahu, and the west that lauded the swap, refused to see was that the terrorists won a strategic victory as well. The bar of resistance against jihadist terror and the psychological warfare of kidnapping had been significantly lowered.

Over the past few days in Israel, support for the terrorist kidnappers has emerged among Arab-Israelis in violent demonstrations against the IDF's effort to find and rescue the abducted teenagers. Anti-Zionist Balad PartyMK Hanan Zoabi, who incredibly remains in the Knesset despite regularly supporting the effort to destroy Israel, justified the kidnapping and criticized the Palestinian Authority's cooperation to locate the boys. Because of a refusal to adopt an offensive posture to eliminate our existentially threatening enemies, jihadists roar and moderate Arabs remain silent. The latter will not risk their lives for futile gestures, no matter how noble those gestures might be. It is difficult to see how a society, or a civilization for that matter, can survive while it tolerates such challenges to its survival from within.

I was present at a rally on behalf of the kidnapped Israeli teenagers at the Boca Raton Jewish Center last Monday night. I'm disappointed to say that the tone smacked of a large measure of learned helplessness and some political posturing. It didn't help that none of the speakers had bothered to learn how to pronounce Eyal's name.

At one point a presenter rattled off the names of Democratic Party politicians who made statements of support for the kidnapped boys. That presenter apparently hadn't bothered to solicit such statements from a single Florida Republican supporter of Israel, such as Allen West or Marco Rubio. The presenter also declined to mention the efforts of Sen. Rand Paul, a couple of weeks before the kidnapping, to introduce a bill in the Senate cutting off all aid to the Palestinian Authority until it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state. No, such a hack would consider it to radical to actually stop paying people who regularly and violently challenge Israel's right to exist.

Israel's Consul to Florida and Puerto Rico only went so for as to urge people to participate in a Twitter #bringbackourboys campaign. Yes, the Israeli Consul believes that an internet social media petition made up of a hashtag will get under the skin of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood's neighborhood proxy. Honestly, I was ashamed and embarassed of the utter fecklessness of these presenters. What sent me over the edge, though, was the end of the evening. Someone, perhaps a rabbi or a cantor, thought it fitting to lead the congregation in rousing renditions of "Oseh Shalom Bimromav" and "David Melekh Yisrael," songs of peace and celebration.

No, when three teenagers are lying somewhere captive, perhaps injured, perhaps starving, perhaps dead, it is not the time to talk of peace. It is not the time to sing proud songs of celebration. It is time to get angry. It is time to channel fear and outrage in deeds in the physical world. That means rallies in front of embassies and government buildings. That means telephone campaigns that at least gain the attention of government staffers. It means standing on busy street corners with banners. It might be inconvenient, it might require more than a few mouseclicks and keystrokes.

It is time to ask, why is the Palestinian Authority still getting American tax dollars? It is time to ask, how many more Israelis will be kidnapped because their government chose populism over real security. It is time to ask, why didn't the Senate even vote on the bill to defund the PA at the very time its president, Mahmoud Abbas, officially allied to share power with Hamas? It is time to support real efforts to deal effectively with our enemies, rather than demure because it might make a political conservative like Rand Paul look good.

Epilogue - 30 June 2014:

Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal, of blessed memory, have been found brutally murdered near Hebron. Now is a time of mourning for the Frankel, Shaer, and Yifrah families; may they never know such sorrow again. While Israelis and Jews around the world mark this time of sadness, the sovereign state of Israel has no such luxury; it must respond - decisively. Israel should immediately announce (a) the elimination of all restrictions on Israeli construction in the E-1 corridor adjacent to Jerusalem, (b) the authorization of three new settlements in Judea and Samaria, and (c) the resignation of Interior Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich.

Limor Livnat, Cancel the Book Law Now

Limor Livnat, Cancel the Book Law Now

by Amir Weitmann

translated by J. Michael Jaffe

Original Hebrew version inThe Marker, Opinion Section, 30.06.2014
Available at http://www.themarker.com/opinion/1.2363150

About a year ago, I urged against the passage of the Law for the Protection of Literature and Authors in Israel, ("the Book Law;" "Open skies for the book market as well," May 2, 2013, The Marker), which restricts bookstores from selling books at discounted prices and whose stated purpose is to make books more expensive.

The article was part of a long campaign of activism against the law by the Israel Freedom Movement. Already in 2010, data and projected harms were presented to the public and legislators in a position paper written by Boaz Arad, a founder of the movement, as part of a JIMS (Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies) research framework. Since then, we've warned that the law will damage Israeli culture. Unfortunately, our efforts were in vain - and the law was passed by the Knesset. It was enacted on February 6 this year – a date we declared "Remembrance Day for Israeli Literature."

We said all along that without the excessive interference of politicians in an otherwise free, thriving, and growing market, the inability of publishers and stores to freely set prices would lead to rising prices of books, which are also subject to the laws of supply and demand. We communicated our warning via every possible platform, including the Knesset, that the law would lead to a crisis in an area that has cultural, intellectual, and spiritual significance for the state and its citizens. International comparisons showed that European countries which imposed restrictions on book pricing annually published 0.8 to 1.7 titles per 1,000 citizens, while countries without such restrictions published 1.14 to 5.8 books per 1,000 citizens.

Initiators and supporters of the bill, led by Culture Minister Limor Livnat, rejected our claims and said the impact on sales would be insignificant, and that eventually authors would benefit. Livnat - with the support of powerful lobbyists, including Steimatzky, which has since become embroiled in its own operating crisis – succeeded politically. The question, of course, is whether this political success translates into success or failure for Israeli culture.

Five months after the law took effect, we can already draw preliminary conclusions: as expected, the law indeed harmed the industry. In 2012, before the law's enactment, 7,487 books were published, an historic record in Hebrew book publication and an increase of 11% compared to 2011. In 2013, immediately after the law was passed, there was a decline in new book publication.

Even more worrisome, young and new writers are the main victims of the law to benefit authors. Sales of new books and the publication of author debut books saw a significant decrease – of at least 20% - since the law took effect, due to the increased business risk associated with publishing a new book. New authors found that books of theirs readied for publication had been frozen.

We warned that the number of titles per capita would decrease and, indeed, since the law took effect, the publishers have published much fewer books, illustrating the following - long-term damage to Israeli literary creativity, both in quality and quantity. We warned of dangers to the industry's profitability and, indeed, the law's enactment was accompanied by a decline in average bookstore receipts in significant percentages compared to last year.

In addition, public libraries are withering, and finding that their limited budgets now buy fewer new books in the absence of discounts. The director of the Nahal Sorek Regional Library, for example, writes, "the Book Law raises deep concerns about the ability of libraries to continue to serve as an effective, available, timely and free agency in the matter of books, "a fact that hurts the underprivileged population, of course.

To the Minister of Culture: There is no shame in admitting a mistake. It is possible and necessary to repeal the law immediately, before it is too late.

The author is a founder of the Israeli Freedom Movement.