The great language heist (David Landau)

[Violet_Crumble]

If words are indeed a window to the soul, then perhaps one can understand - but certainly not justify - the murder of our language that took place this week.

"Udi and Eldad come home." This deliberate butchery of words and the cynical distortion of their meaning, a kind of Israeli newspeak, is an etymological-psychological symptom of the suicidal tendencies gnawing at the soul of the country, culminating in a swap of the living for the dead. The distortion also erodes the efforts of other countries to fight terror. After all, Israel was one of the leaders in that fight, once upon a time.

Of course, a line runs from the infamous Ahmed Jibril prisoner exchange to the Nasrallah deal, which will be remembered with shame in the years to come. The line also passes through the deal that led to the release of Elhanan Tennenbaum. The picture that emerges is one of a breakdown in the resolve of Israel's leadership and its ability to fend off pressure from the soldiers' families (the only ones, by the way, who are blameless in this story).

The line is not a direct one. There have been zigzags. Israel's tough stance in the Nachshon Wachsman kidnapping was a swing in the right direction, even though it ended badly. In the case of Gilad Shalit, Olmert and Barak are trying to stick to some kind of principles and not cave in entirely.

But Israel's conduct in the Regev and Goldwasser case is not just a continuation of its weakening stance or a sharp turn for the worse. It is a total break. Walking straight into the trap that Nasrallah set for him, with his eyes wide open, Olmert has scrambled together, and thereby trampled underfoot, the most basic tenets of human ethics and Jewish tradition - the sanctity of human life, which comes before all, and the principles of "respect for the dead" and "Jewish burial," which are certainly important, but on a totally different level of importance.

The moment he agreed to negotiate for the return of Regev and Goldwasser without demanding proof that they were alive, Olmert turned himself and the state into a doormat for terrorists. He has turned the sacrifice of those who died in the Second Lebanon War into a sacrifice in vain.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003237.html