Abstract: In a lopsided prisoner exchange, the Netanyahu government agreed to release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a single life: that of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal kidnapped by Hamas in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held hostage in Gaza. There is a long line of psychological research showing that, in making decisions, human beings will incur far greater costs to save one identifiable being from immediate peril than to enact safety measures that might save many more statistical lives.