It’s amazing the differences between what people believe about someone depending on your POV. As you alluded to in your previous post, Lebanon and Hezbollah are throwing a parade for a murderer being hailed as a hero, and Israel gets a couple dead bodies.
Now, when are they going to get Gilad Shalit back?
Remember these IDF soldiers were kidnapped…whether or not the kidnapping occurred as a result of Hezbollah crossing the Israeli border or whether Israel was crossing Lebanon’s boundary seems to be in dispute…but what isn’t between Israel and the surrounding Muslim nations?
Hezbollah asks for too much in return, in spite of the fact that Israeli responses to attacks tend to be disproportionate in terms of lives lost, but I generally feel that those that attack Israel with rockets and suicide bombs deserve what they get, notwithstanding Hezbollah’s human shield tactics when conducting such attacks that result in the loss of innocent life so Hezbollah can point to the dead body of a child or woman and tell their followers “See what the baby-blood drinking Jews do to our people?”…omitting the fact that Hezbollah was the one that put them in harm’s way in the first place.
And that creates a whole new wave of terrorists amongst impressionable youths that hate Israel becuase they see the results of Israeli counterattacks and they are told that “Da Joos” just murder Arabs for no reason.
I think the most important thing in terms of political tactics is that it seems to be setting a precedent of “you send us a few corpses, we’ll send you your prisoners back.” Doesn’t that sort of give Hezbollah an incentive to send in more terrorists, knowing that if they’re captured, they can just be won back by trading some bodies? Not to mention an incentive to obtain those bodies in the first place.
When you’re dead, you’re dead. I would rather have my corpse ground up into sausage and eaten by cannibals, than have my body used as a bargaining chip to free a murderer.
Just to interject a point–a couple of people have attributed beliefs to Lebanon and the Lebanese as a body. Not all Lebanese are sympathetic to Hizbullah. Remember, Hizbullah and other non-Shi’ite Lebanese (like the Sunnis and the Druze) just finished fighting gun battles in the streets of Beirut, of Tripoli and in the mountains. So while Kuntar is definitely a psychopathic piece of shit, don’t paint all Lebanese with the Kuntar-loving brush.
There’s something else I want to say, too, although I realize it’s not all that relevant to this discussion. I hear a lot of people criticize Israel’s human rights policies, and a lot of people say that Israel is “just as brutal” as the terrorists who attack it.
Yet Kuntar - a man who entered the country illegally, killed a police officer, then murdered a man and his 4 year old daughter in cold blood - was only sentenced to life in prison. As opposed to being executed.
I think that speaks volumes about Israel’s “brutal” government as compared to its neighbors. I can’t imagine that any Arab country would do anything to a Jewish invader who murdered a policeman and a 4 year old girl besides chop off his head - as they would be justified in doing, I think. That the Israelis managed to restrain themselves from executing this guy, says a lot about the culture there, I would think.
Also, for what it’s worth, so far as I can tell, Kuntar is neither Shitte nor a member of Hizbollah (according to wikipedia, he was a Druze member of the PLF).
That’s a good question (see location), I wonder if Alessan has heard anything? Last I read he was confirmed alive as of last month (through handwriting IIRC). If Israel is willing to exchange live for dead, is there any incentive to keep him alive any longer?
I notice your location. Is he a relative of yours? I certainly hope he is returned soon. I don’t understand why they didn’t exchange that scumbag for him instead of for dead bodies?
No, he is not a relative of mine, to be brutally honest, I wouldn’t know him if he bit me. However, I am a generally Pro-Israeli person who had an Israeli acquaintance explain the plight of Gilad Schalit to me and mention how there was a movement afoot to keep his name in the public eye through minor messages like my location, so I changed it. My friend kindled my interest in the situation, so I have followed new developments with interest. I actually share (what I believe would be) your position (based upon this thread) that Israel should have gotten him back instead of the remains they received. Gilad Schalit, personally, means nothing to me. What he represents is vitally important. MHO only, of course.
Yes, for the life of me, I do not understand why they blew an opportunity to get back a real, live hostage with family and friends who are actually waiting to see him again, and instead got some corpses. I really don’t get it at all, and as I said before, it really caused me to lose respect for Israel’s government. What kind of people would do such an idiotic, self-destructive, insane thing?
**Argent **-- negotiations with Hamas and Hizballah are two separate matters; all the prisoners and bodies Hizballah received (including Kuntar) as part of the deal are/were Lebanese, not Palestinian. Hamas get their marching orders from Haled Mashal, in Damascus; Hizballah are run from Iran. Two very different groups, two very separate negotiations.
And yes, there could be repercussions from one to the other – but they couldn’t be linked.
**Telemark **-- not really. Basically all that was lacking was the final, concrete proof that they were dead. For all intents and purposes, we knew they were, with a very high probability… but there was still that sliver of hope.
Even if they didn’t know until they got the bodies back, wouldn’t that be kind of a “Public Enemy” situation (the Jimmy Cagney movie?) “Here’s your son!” [Falls dead onto the ground.] If I were Israel and they pulled that shit on me, I don’t think I’d be too happy about it.
I wouldn’t be suprised if he ended up dead of mysterious causes somewhere soon.
Has it ever been formally established about who’s side of the border the Israeli soldiers were on when they were kidnapped? Both sides say they were on their side of the border.
I believe the commonly held belief is that the soldiers were a part of an Israeli border guard station or something and that they were in fact on Israeli soil when they were kidnapped (was there tunnels dug or something?).
But I have also read that Hezbollah claims that the Israeli soldiers were illegally in Lebanon, which is why they were kidnapped. Any chance that is true?
The soldiers were in the Shebaa Farms area. Which was once Syrian, and Lebanese fanatics now claim as Lebanese territory in order to provide a pretext for launching attacks against Israel. Even the UN certified that Israel had completely withdrawn from Lebanese territory while they still held Shebaa.
As a quick rule of thumb, anybody who claims that the soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory is either engaging in agenda-driven revisionist history, or simply ignorant of the facts.