From John Glaser at Anti-War.com:
Israel may betray its earlier promise to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in the second phase of a prisoner swap agreement that secured the release of one captive Israeli soldier.You may recall that Israel fulfilled the second half of the Shalit deal, releasing 550 prisoners, on December 18th.
That agreement has already resulted in the release of 477 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for five years. That first exchange took place in October, and Israel had agreed to release another 550 – a total of 1,027 – within two months of Shalit’s release.
But now a government-appointed panel in Israel recommended in a secret report Thursday to back out of the deal. Defense Minister Ehud Barak would not divulge details of the report but said Israel has “no choice but to overhaul the rules” now that Sgt. Gilad Schalit has been freed.
Was this perhaps an older article written by Glaser in early December and somehow released yesterday?
Nope. The quote from Ehud Barak is accurate and was made yesterday. As reported by AP:
Israel is rethinking its policy on prisoner swaps to avoid the kind of lopsided deals that saw Israel recently trade more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for a lone Israeli soldier.Glaser clearly knew that the Shalit deal was completed, because the same source that he got the Barak quote from said that Israel traded more than 1,000 prisoners for Shalit.
A government-appointed panel submitted its recommendations in a secret report Thursday and details were not divulged. But Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel has "no choice but to overhaul the rules" now that Sgt. Gilad Schalit has been freed after five years in captivity in Gaza.
Barak told Israel Radio, "We have to get off the slippery slope we ventured on 25 years ago."
Over the past three decades, Israel has carried out a series of wildly uneven prisoner swap deals. In some cases, the freed prisoners returned to violence against Israel.
The only conclusion is that Glaser simply made it up.
And since Israel haters travel in packs, his article has already been copied without any thought on other anti-Israel sites.
Glaser writes about two articles a day for the "news" section of Anti-War.com.
(h/t Arnold)
UPDATE: To his credit, one of the reposters corrected his post. And it appears that this site at least is not one of the mindless anti-Israel sites.
UPDATE 2: The Anti-War.com post has been taken down. No correction that I could find. The headline is still on the front page at the moment, linking to an error page. (update: now gone)
UPDATE 3: Anti-War did publish an apology.