Innocent and blameless

Rachel Shabi doesn't get it.

But meanwhile, the terms of the Israel-Hamas brokered prisoner swap - one Israeli, whose name the world knows, for 1027 faceless Palestinians - has generated some absurd comments on the value each side places on human life. In reports of how much Israelis care about the soldier Shalit - all true - there is somehow the inference that Palestinians don’t cherish their loved ones in the same way. But it is clearly more approachable a task to keep one soldier's name in people's hearts and in the headlines, than it is with countless thousands of Palestinian men. And the undertaking is smoothed by a media skew on the subject: taking part in a panel discussion on reporting the conflict last year, I heard a European journalist explain that Shalit was an easier pitch because he seemed innocent and blameless, while Palestinian prisoners didn’t generate the same assumptions.

Watch the video below (which I first saw on IsraelMatzav) and decide if Rachel Shabi is correct when she states that the moment of the joyous celebrations of the announcement of the prisoner exchange was a moment of "an equality borne of shared humanity."