Gilad, Tarantino, and the value of our values...

I seem to be hearing the same question over and over the past couple of days - was it worth exchanging 20 Palestinian prisoners for a videotape of Gilad Shalit. Does it set the wrong precedent? 20 prisoners in exchange for a live human being is one thing, but a videotape? The reason it's so hard for me to answer this question personally is, I don't know how to measure a life. I don't know how much the life of Gilad Shalit, or myself, or any Jew for that matter is worth. All I know is, I saw a smile on Noam Shalit's face on the television for the first time in years. I saw Gilad on my computer screen, breathing, moving, alive. Is it worth it, knowing 20 terrorists who have plotted to kill us are now free on the streets, not far from where I sit at this moment? How do we measure worth?

And how do we measure justice? I just saw the Quentin Tarantino movie "Inglorious bastards", which is essentially the ultimate Jewish wish fulfillment. After 60+ years of lamenting our tragic history, Tarantino gave us a taste of vengeance, of fantasized satisfaction. And it felt good, it felt incredibly good in fact, to watch hundreds of Nazis burning and bleeding and suffering to death in an imagined history. But the question for me remains - could this fictionalized veangeful behavior be worth it?

Everything our enemies do is so disgusting, so degradable, they are less than human. They have no moral code. They are worse than animals. So how do we compare ourselves to them? How do we compare 20 criminal Palestinians to the cherished sign of life from our beloved Galid Shalit? There is no comparison, because we can never compare ourselves to our enemies. Which is why it was difficult for me, watching the Tarantino movie. On the one hand, it felt exactly right. It felt good on a physical, animal level. Eye for an eye. but in terms of pure animalistic torture and bloodshed on the level of Tarantino, could we Jews really reduce ourselves to that kind of behavior? Killing is one thing. But killing like animals is another.

It is an immensely gratifying feeling, after all these years, to see Gilad alive on my computer screen. And it is beyond gratifying to see the major Nazi players burned and shot and scalped on the cinematic screen. But I don't feel completely confident about this exchange of values - I don't like the measures of comparison. I don't want to think our enemies influence the way we value things, the way we value a human life, or our own dignity and humanity. Yes, after the videotape exchange Hamas announced they will now start kidnapping as many Israeli soldiers as they can. They may say that. But to me, that doesn't make freeing Gilad any less urgent. I value Gilad's life as much as I value my own. I think my life is endlessly significant, and Gilad's the same. The terrorists' lives don't even compare. I think what Israel did for Gilad shows how deep our values rest. So as for Tarantino and his Nazis - it's easy to feel the surface-level satisfaction of an eye for an eye. But to scalp like animals is a level that I think contradicts how much we value our own values.