Yesterday, July 17 2008, a date that will live in ignominy, the State of Israel, led by a corrupt politician, an incomepetent Leftist wanna be, a disgraced former Prime Minister and a Haredi politico who would sell anything for a handout, capitulated to terror. By releasing Samir Kuntar for the dead bodies of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, Olmert/Livni/Barak/Yishai declared that terror pays; that Jewish lives are cheap and that Jews will not fight for their safety and right to self-determination. These are not the rantings of a right winger, but the cold observations of Shlomo Avineri and Ari Shavit. Both lean left, politically. Both are loyal Israelis, Jews and Zionists.
6 comments:
Um, every previous government has handled this kind of case in exactly the same way, right? What would have you done differently?
I had to post about this as well. I had mixed emotions about the swap. However, the one thing was that the whole world witnessed the sickness in the Lebanese celebrations. It is pretty pathetic when you have to rely on the killing of a 4 y.o. girl to claim a 'great military victory' and that is your legacy.
eric, it's pretty obvious. You first get red cross verification that the Israelis are alive. If not, then no deal. If yes, then there may still be some debate whether it's worth it. The gov't has sent a clear message to terrorists -- no need to keep Israeli prisoners/hostages alive.
Maybe this is just another formulation of what you've written:
this "deal" encourages the belief that Israel can be destroyed, which in turn drives further terror.
While I agree that the cast of characters running our government are reprehensible, as one of the other commenters pointed out, I'm not sure it would have been handled any differently by any other government. And I'm not sure that it should be. On the plus side we are no longer constrained by our super liberal laws that won't allow us to execute these vermin and are free to employ a targeted assassination.
Rabbi Daniel Gordis wrote an excellent piece about how this is one of those "wrong decisions" that we nevertheless had to make. Here's a link http://www.danielgordis.org/Site/Site_Dispatches.asp
Jeff--
While I often agree with you, I cannot imagine you looking into the eyes of Mrs Goldvasser and saying, "Sorry, you'll have to be an agunah because we can't capitulate to terror, and as such, the other side won't tell us for certain if Ehud is dead or alive."
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