The thought that the terrorist who killed his brother and is set to be released in the hostage deal will “sit in fresh air in Turkey and eat a kebab is impossible to grasp,” reporter Yair Cherki said on Channel 12 on Saturday.
“It’s known that there is an inherent injustice in this situation, but I can’t stand the fact that [his sentence] is being shortened so that it has not even been a decade since the murder, and the terrorist is already being set free,” he said.
In spite of this, Cherki emphasized that he thinks the deal to bring the hostages back is the right thing.
The television journalist recounted talking about the situation with Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi spent nearly 500 days in Hamas captivity before being released Sunday on the first day of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
“I wrote to her what I really think – at the end of the day, my brother is gone, and Romi is still alive. This is the basic and simple thing that must be done,” Cherki told Channel 12.
“We need to invest the energy we have had until now to bring back the hostages and go all in, making sure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past,” he said.
Sharkey reminisces about his brother
In an emotional Instagram post he shared around a year ago, Cherki reminisced about his brother: “Shalom was my older brother, curious and knowledgeable, and in my childhood, almost everything I knew came from him,” he wrote.
“I remember our walks together to school during our childhood when he always seemed to know everything about everything… He loved the Land of Israel deeply, loved traveling, the soil, the plants, and most of all, the people,” Cherki shared.
During his military service, Shalom overcame the challenges of being at sea and served as a combat soldier on a Dabur-class patrol boat. In his later years, he dedicated his life to education, working as a youth instructor in various settings, including the Israeli Journey program.
He was killed in a ramming attack at Jerusalem’s French Hill junction in April 2015.
The Justice Ministry published over the weekend a list of 735 terrorists who will be released as part of the government-approved hostage deal.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.