comment by Jerry Gordon

Israel could harken back to the glory days of the Entebbe rescue cited by former FARC hostage Betancourt by doing something it should have done within hours of Cpl. Shalit’s capture. It could raid his prison, rescue him and not return the Hamas terrorists. If only.

by Bert Stephens, Global View, Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2008

Liberated after six years of jungle captivity, Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt exclaimed: “I think only the Israelis can possibly pull off something like this.” If only.

Tomorrow, the Israeli government is scheduled to release five Lebanese prisoners, including a man named Samir Kuntar – more on him in a moment – in exchange for two of its kidnapped soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, and information concerning the fate of airman Ron Arad, missing since 1986. The exchange might seem semiequitable, if only the three Israelis weren’t all presumed dead.

Israel is also trying to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas and held in the Gaza Strip since June 2006. Cpl. Shalit is almost certainly alive. The asking price for his freedom, should terms ever be met, will be high: Hamas has already turned down cold an Israeli offer to release 450 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for their one hostage.

Israel’s predicament is a self-inflicted wound. In 2004, Israel released some 400 prisoners, including Hezbollah cause célèbres Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, in exchange for the remains of three Israeli soldiers and a living former army colonel named Elhanan Tannenbaum, described in press reports as a “businessman.” It later became public that Mr. Tannenbaum’s business was drug dealing.

It was clear what was coming next. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah welcomed his returning comrades by saying he was “more determined than ever” to wage war on Israel. He added that more kidnappings would be in store for Israelis unless they promptly released Kuntar. Israel refused. Sure enough, in July 2006 Regev and Goldwasser were kidnapped by Hezbollah, sparking a war in which 163 Israelis were killed.

Now Kuntar, 45, is about to be freed. In 1979, he took an Israeli family hostage in the northern coastal town of Nahariya, shot and killed father Danny Haran and dashed the skull of his 4-year-old daughter Einat against a rock with his rifle butt. Danny’s wife, Smadar, managed to hide from Kuntar in a crawl space of their apartment with two-year-old daughter Yael, whom she accidentally suffocated while trying to keep the toddler quiet. A policeman was also killed in the attack.

Kuntar was sentenced to 548 years in prison. In 1985, Palestinian terrorists seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship to win Kuntar’s release. Wheelchair-bound U.S. passenger Leon Klinghoffer was murdered along the way. Kuntar has never repented and recently vowed to continue fighting once released.

“My oath and pledge,” he wrote Sheik Nasrallah in a letter reprinted in a Palestinian newspaper, “is that my place will be at the battlefront, which is soaked in the sweat of your giving, and the blood of the most beloved among men, and that I shall continue down the path, until complete victory.” Tomorrow’s plans call for Kuntar to be flown to Beirut in a Lebanese Army helicopter, to be festively received by the heads of the Lebanese government. Such are their heroes.

Barring the surprise that Regev and Goldwasser are alive, the most Israel gets in return for this exchange is a decent burial for the soldiers, no small thing for their families. As for Arad, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has deemed Hezbollah’s 80-page report about his fate “absolutely unsatisfactory,” a point that might yet delay or abort the exchange.

But whatever happens, Israel has once again demonstrated to its enemies that their strategy of taking hostages works. Worse, it works even when those hostages are killed. If Regev and Goldwasser are dead, the situation of Cpl. Shalit – and any other Israeli who might be taken alive by Hezbollah or its ilk – becomes infinitely more precarious.

This is more than just a problem for Israel. With its July 1976 raid on Entebbe, Israel demonstrated there was an alternative to negotiating with terrorists. That didn’t mean that every hostage rescue attempt would end happily. But it did offer the possibility that, eventually, hostage takers would realize they’re in a bad business.

Instead, business has boomed. In Iraq in 2005, Germany paid $5 million for the freedom of a kidnapped aid worker. The results were predictable. As Britain’s Guardian reported last year: “Because it is known that the German government – like those of Italy and France – is willing to pay ransoms, the ‘value’ of German kidnap victims has risen in the Middle East.” The three German tourists recently kidnapped by the Kurdish PKK are only the latest “beneficiaries” of past German largess.

Maybe it’s par for the course that European governments should act this way: The notion of moral hazard is nearly as alien to them as that of national honor. It’s a different matter when Israel behaves the same way, not only because it is the prime target of attack, but because, in the face of terrorism, Israel still defines the standard of democratic courage by which the rest of the free world must, sooner or later, measure itself.

If Israel is no longer prepared to hold the line, will America be far behind?

Write to bstephens@wsj.com