IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES

     The story over the freeing of the only American prisoner of war held by the Taliban filled the papers yesterday and they continue to do so today. After five long years, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is coming home, home to a family which never gave up its campaign to return him to their arms.
     Seems like an easy choice, right? Exchange him for five Taliban that we have held for a number of years and bring our boy home. Prisoner exchanges have taken place since time immemorial so why not?
     For a long time our position has been never to negotiate with terrorists. That policy has been breached before and by many countries, including those who paid the ransom to Somali pirates in order to free their citizens, but this negotiation is quite public. Does it set a terrible precedent and concern for our soldiers wherever they may be? Do they now become pawns in ongoing situations?
     This dilemma is nothing new to Israel. So many terrible times they have been forced to ransom their captured, even their dead, from Arab and Islamic terrorists. The relatives of the freed terrorists scream unto the Heavens that the murderers of their loved ones are being freed even as the relatives and friends of the freed or returned Israelis, live or dead, are returned home, are grateful for their return. Gilad Shalit is just the latest one to be returned and the wounds left by those who were never found or returned such as Ron Arad or the three boys from Lebanon never heal.
     Do we free the living, honor the dead as we repatriate their bodies, or do we honor those murdered by these terrorists and know that even as we release these excuses for human beings from their well deserved incarceration, they are planning more mayhem, more murder, more horror?
     I wore a ribbon for Gilad Shalit for many years and still have it. I remember hugging Mrs. Shalit as she sat in the tent in Jerusalem, at a loss for words to comfort this woman in such pain, and I also remember the wails of the murdered one's families crying out for the continued just punishment of the murderers. A choice that is impossible to make. A choice that is impossible to fully justify on other side. One cries with both sides.
     We can rejoice with the family of Bowe Bergdahl even as we worry over precedent set and the future plans of the terrorists who were released. An impossible choice, one that should never have to be made and yet it does and it was. Only the future will tell what the consequences are, but meanwhile, keep in mind and heart the image of a son hugging his parents after five years in captivity.