"We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors, and I believe that this is not impossible." --from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's June 9, 2005, speech delivered at the Israel Policy Forum.

Prime Minister Olmert delivered this pathetic "appeasement" statement. He might be a liar and under numerous investigations, but when it comes to appeasing the enemy, he is, sadly, very consistent. This statement was a foreshadowing of the disasters which have come under his leadership in the past three years: the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, the abduction and deaths of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasswer, the failed Second Lebanon War and finally, the release of terrorist child-murderer Samir Kuntar in exchange for the already brutally murdered bodies of Regev and Goldwasser. This was the coup de grace of appeasing terrorists.

I completely oppose the actions and policies of the Israeli government and, inevitably, some of the people of Israel, as they sanctioned their leadership in carrying out this deal. When the Israeli government released Samir Kuntar, it was a defeat of enormous import for the spirit and will of the Jewish people. I hang my head in shame.

And now in pursuit of yet another Faustian deal, Hamas is demanding 1,000 prisoners for Gilad Shalit, 450 of them serving life sentences in Israeli prisons. 1,000 Arabs for one little Jew. Unreal. Despite defense officials' warning that prisoner exchanges prompt further abductions, Olmert favors the deal. Total capitulation at the feet of these bloodthirsty terrorists means more Jewish blood being spilled, more kidnappings and a higher price - more terrorists for more dead bodies. Even Pavlov's dogs got it.

Olmert clings to surrender-in-installments the way the Gazans cling to "occupation". There is not an Israeli toenail in Gaza and still they fire rockets, murder, maim. There is a cognitive dissonance in the leftist thinking of Israeli leadership - disregard what the enemy says, what the enemy does and who he kills.

What is Olmert's objective? It cannot be peace. Peace requires a desire of peace on the part of both parties. Instead, what we have here is an enemy bent on the destruction of the Jews, a second Holocaust. And Israel is giving the the executioner the rifle to bash its skull.

One only had to watch as Samir Kuntar and the other terrorists received a hero's welcome in Lebanon, with Hizbullah's smiling leader Hassan Nasrallah, whilst Israel's so called "peace partners" of the Palestinian Authority celebrated the return of the remains of the notorious female terrorist Dalal Al-Mughrabi, who caused the death of over 30 Israelis. People in the PA passed out sweets, while the Jews were mourning the return of two mutilated, tortured-beyond-words corpses and watching as the families grieved and had closure.

Of course, the immoral Olmert and the left-wing Israeli media spun it as a personal story, concentrating on the families' ability to have finality by burying their sons. And of course there was the need to say how it was a moral issue, that it's what distinguishes us from them - as if this needs to even be said.
Olmert clings to surrender-in-installments the way the Gazans cling to "occupation".

And what about Gilad Shalit, still stuck somewhere, dead or alive, in a Gaza or West Bank hell hole? Already, Hamas was empowered by what Hizbullah had accomplished, seeking a higher price for Shalit's release. When they kidnap a Jew, if the victim is not murdered, he dies of wounds, neglect, torture. The Muslims are not going to be keeping a Jew alive long. Are they going to nurse, clean and feed a Jew for weeks? Months? Years? How much more will the Israeli government humiliate themselves for Shalit?

These savages must be crushed. Any sign of weakness is their victory. The only thing savages understand is strength.

This appeasement is a bloody nightmare.

Common sense and Jewish law are clear on such matters as prisoner exchanges. The Gemera, Gittin 45a, discusses the Mishnah's statements on paying ransom: "Captives should not be redeemed for more than their value, to prevent abuses. Captives should not be helped to escape, to prevent abuses. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says [that the reason is] to prevent the ill-treatment of fellow captives."

If releasing more terrorists will cause more Jewish deaths, then it is forbidden to pay ransom for dead or live bodies. The public interest must come before the individual interest, as difficult and painful as this might be. As Caroline Glick wrote in her Jerusalem Post piece on the issue, over 187 Jews have lost their lives with the release of terrorists.

After his release, Kuntar said he was "proud" of killing Israelis, and "Allah willing, I will get the chance to kill more Israelis." Moral Olmert just signed the death warrant for more innocent Jews, letting the terrorists know that Jewish blood, Jewish body parts are cheap. Abul Kasem, an ex-Muslim author, has said that "Islam needs blood to thrive. Human blood is the life-line of Islam, violence its hallmark, and hate its foundation."

In the 1970s, Israeli leaders like the late great Golda Meir knew how to fight terrorists. After the Munich massacre she made sure to send agents out to assassinate those involved. And oddly, it was the late Yitzchak Rabin, as Prime Minister when the Entebbe hijacking happened, who authorized a commando force to be sent in to rescue the hostages. My hero, Lt. Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu (z.tz.l.), was killed in this daring rescue operation.
The suicidal Oslo Accords, along with the leftist media's continued myopia, has returned Jews to the pe-World War II ghetto mentality.

In his powerful letters, published posthumously, Netanyahu wrote to his parents: "We're sitting on a powder keg that can explode at any moment. The fuse that will ignite the keg is already burning and getting shorter and shorter all the time. A sensible person won't wait until the keg goes off, but will hasten to take steps to defend himself, knowing that the explosion is inevitable. The analogy is clear. We're heading toward war - gradually and irreversibly. The Arab world won't agree to let us live in its midst." (January 17, 1969)

Appeasement never works, Churchill knew this when confronted with Hitler, as did many of Israel's earlier Prime Ministers when fighting the PLO, as did Jonathan Netanyahu and the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was assassinated by an Arab terrorist in New York in the winter of 1990. The suicidal Oslo Accords, along with the leftist media's continued myopia, has returned Jews to the pe-World War II ghetto mentality. What's missing is the "Never Again" slogan I grew up with as a child, the JDL buttons with Jewish fist raised in defiance, the message which conveyed, "Try and kill a Jew and you will pay; we will hunt you down wherever you are. We will not be like lambs going to the slaughter."

Gold Meir is weeping.

We cannot worry about what the world thinks about us; we have to protect our own people. It's time for new leadership, a new government and a new consciousness which says: "You kill or kidnap one Jew and we will retaliate by killing hundreds of you." It's time to start killing terrorists like Kuntar, instead of leaving them alive in prison as some kind of bargaining chips, in order to let the enemy know that Jewish life sacred.

Pamela Geller is Editor and Publisher of Atlas Shrugs and former Associate Publisher of the New York Observer. Eliza Saxon has been a researcher on anti-Semitism and terrorism for over 15 years.