Mere Rhetoric: Olmert Releasing Prisoners Now So He Won't Have To Release Them Later

We outright stole that hed from Rick Richman, who used it in an email about this story (maybe he was planning to use it in his own post about the article - we dunno, but to the guy who didn't "go to sleep" because he "has a job" go the spoils). We assume that there'll be plenty of JBloggers using this story to run "Olmert is a criminal, prisoner releases are appeasement". So what the hell - it's been almost four days since we've gotten a really good angry email from anyone who's not a Ron Paul lemming:

(1) Olmert is fundamentally right:

While the cabinet did not discuss the 250 prisoners, it did vote 16-4 to release four Jordanian prisoners who killed two IDF soldiers in 1990... Cabinet sources said Israel has assurances from the Jordanians that the four terrorists would serve an additional 18 months before King Abdullah II would consider commuting their sentences... Olmert read out letters in the cabinet from the families of the two men opposing the transfer of the Jordanians... Cabinet sources said that one of the considerations behind transferring the men was to prevent them from being included in any future prisoner release or swap - such as the gesture to be made to Abbas or a possible swap for kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit. Olmert, according to the sources, did not want Hamas to be able to "take credit" for the transfer, as Hizbullah did... in 2004.

Get angry at Hamas and the State Department. Eventually, some Israeli PM is going to have to let these thugs out of jail. It will either be in the context of a prisoner release done under duress or it will be because of diplomatic pressure to make a "good-will gesture" to some ostensibly "moderate" Palestinian leader. We don't particularly like it - we'd prefer that only Israel got to decide what happens to murderers of Israelis, which is what any other country gets to do. But we don't get to make the rules around here, and the American and Israeli electorates - to say nothing of Europe - often strongly disagree with us. The question that Olmert has to ask himself is not "how long should these murderers to stay in jail" but "how long are these murderers likely to stay in jail" - a question which is not entirely up to him, infuriating as that is. But do consider this one additional factor before writing that email: where do you think Palestinian prisoners receive better treatment? Israeli or Jordanian jails?

(2) You know how you keep reading about all of those bystanders that Israel is rounding up along with the terrorists that they're going after (typical soft Leftist anti-Israel line: "of course Israel has the right to arrest terrorists, but they're indiscriminately conducting mass arrests of innocent Palestinian"). Yeah, that's a lie:

The difficulty in finding 250 Fatah security prisoners who have been in jail for a long time but do not have "blood on their hands" is the reason the cabinet was not asked Sunday to approve the prisoner release Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced last week at the Sharm e-Sheikh summit, The Jerusalem Post has learned... It became apparent that in order to release 250 prisoners, it would be necessary to either release "minor" Fatah prisoners who were convicted for crimes such as car theft, or to change the criteria Olmert spelled out at Sharm - that no one with "blood on their hands" be released.

There's not 250 Palestinians that Israel has been holding long-term who aren't in some way murderers. That's is a fantastic society they're preparing for their little state.

References:
* Fatah prisoner release stumps Israel [JPost]

Previously:
* MR Translates Journalistic Cliche - "Compromise" Means "Israeli Surrender"
* MR Prediction: Olmert Doesn't Have The Political Capital To Meet Hamas's Terms, Pull Off The Shalit Deal
* Gilad Shalit Is Alive, Forced To Say That Hamas Is Letting Him Die (Updated: Shas Leader Calls For Direct Prisoner Talks With Hamas)