I tend not to comment in print about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No matter what I might say, it will invariably alienate some as being too sympathetic to Palestinians and others as being too pro-Israeli. But the recent prisoner swap with Gilad Shalit in Israel has provoked something in me that I feel bears mentioning.

For those who haven’t been following the news, here is a summary. Over five years ago, in June 2006, an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit was abducted by Hamas agents during a raid they made into Israel. He was held by Hamas in flagrant disregard of international human rights norms, including denied access to the Red Cross when it attempted to visit him. Last week, after years of intense negotiations, Hamas and Israel reached an agreement to release Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The exchange took place on Tuesday, as Sergeant Shalit was returned home and the first wave of Palestinian prisoners were released. For both Israelis and Palestinians, it was a day filled with rejoicing.

So here is my problem: how is 1 Israeli life equal to 1,027 Palestinian lives? I tried explaining the logic behind the swap to my young son, but I couldn’t. There is no way to make sense of it. And this is not the only time such a bizarre calculus has been used in completing prisoner exchanges. As a recent blog post points out, “in Israel’s nine prisoner exchanges with Arab enemies, dating back to the first, 54 years ago, Israel has freed 13,509 prisoners in order to win the release of a total of 16 soldiers. An average of well over 800 for each one.”

But my real issue is not with the incongruent math. Nor is it with the geo-political consequences of releasing admitted terrorists and murderers or incentivizing Hamas to kidnap more Israelis, which tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are already urging Hamas to do.

Instead, as a seminarian, my problem is with what Hamas is saying about the value of human life by setting these terms. By demanding over 1000 prisoners for Shalit, the Palestinians are saying that the value of a single Palestinian is only 1/1000 of an Israeli; otherwise, it should be a 1:1 prisoner exchange. And it is this denial of the value of human life, this nihilist self-destructiveness, that legitimizes suicide bombers and terrorist attacks. This mentality makes peace talks impossible and further exacerbates extremists on both sides.

The book of Genesis, the foundation of all Abrahamic faiths, begins with the central premise that humanity was made “b’tzelem Elohim,” in the divine image. What that means is that each individual life is sacred, holy, and immeasurable. And the beauty of the Arab Spring, to me, was that it showed the Arab world that it did not need to resort to suicide bombings in order to affect radical political change. Non-violent protests in Tahrir Square which affirmed the dignity of long-suffering Egyptians, not terror strikes, led to the toppling of Mubarak.

It is my hope and prayer that Jews and Palestinians alike can re-claim this notion of the sacredness of all human life, to see themselves and each other as unique, holy vessels rather than as cogs in an endless political struggle.