WRITE YOUR LETTER: The So-called “Prisoner Exchange” between Israel and the Hizbullah

Take-A-Pen's recent Letter-Writing Call !

18 July 2008              

Let's write our letters about the so-called "prisoner exchange" between Israel and the Hizbullah;

Actually, Israel released convicted murderer Samir Kuntar and many more for returning the remains of its two abducted servicemen, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

There are many wide-spread misconceptions about this "deal", so where-ever you read about this case, Write Your Own Letter to the Editor of your paper or to a VIP, to spread the truth. If you like, use any of the points made in the opinion piece below: "Woe to the nation whose hero is Samir Kuntar!"                  

(E .M. - http://www.take-a-pen.org/ )

Woe to the nation whose hero is Samir Kuntar.

By Endre MOZES - Take-A-Pen.org

16 July 2008

Prisoner exchange? No:

Israel exchanged 5 Lebanese, among them a convicted mass-murderer, plus 190 bodies -

for the remains of its two abducted servicemen

The state and the citizens of Israel have always been devoted to the protection of their missing soldiers. Today, on 16 July 2008 Israel exchanged 5 Lebanese, among them a despicable convicted mass-murderer, Samir Kuntar, plus 190 bodies - for the remains of its two servicemen abducted by Hizbullah in 2006.

 Israeli soldiers always know that while they risk their lives to defend their citizens, their country will also do its utmost to retrieve them should they fall into the hands of the enemy. This is the tradition of Israel's deep reverence for human life and for its fallen. Both old Jewish ethics and new Israeli sense of morality support this principle, even if the price is almost unbearable. 

However, the present ‘deal' seems to be particularly irrational and painful. Though it was not absolutely certain, intelligence said clearly that the abducted soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead. To release convicted murderers for dead bodies is not only too generous but also very dangerous in more than one sense.  In the Ahmad Jibril precedence in the eighties Israel exchanged 6000 Arab fighters captured in Lebanon and released 70 convicted terrorists with blood of Israeli civilians on their hands - for freeing 5 Israeli soldier POW-s.  Within 18 months Israel counted its 31 new civilian victims at the hands of those who were among the 70 released terrorists. Furthermore, such great successes for kidnappers of Israeli soldiers in non-combatant times are the strongest motivators for them to do it again next time. No wonder that Israel's two intelligence bodies, the Mossad and the Shabbak, strongly opposed the present deal.

At the end the emotional and humanitarian urge to ease the sufferings of the families of the soldiers won again in Israel against rational thinking.  This is irrational, but at the same time is somehow also elevating.

There isn't any other symmetry in this exchange either between receiving bodies of soldiers who guarded a border to protect civilians, and handing over live terrorists who penetrated Israel to kill innocent civilians. Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were serving as ordinary IDF reserve soldiers, patrolling a border fence on Israeli sovereign territory, when they were abducted by Hizbullah on 12 July 2006 in an unprovoked cross-border attack.

On the other hand, Samir Kuntar, the foremost terrorist of the five released in the deal, is a heinous murderer, responsible for one of the most despicable terror attacks on Israel. Kuntar lead a squad of four who infiltrated Israel via the sea on 22 April 1979. At midnight they broke into the Nahariya home of the Haran family and abducted the father Danny and his three-and-half-year-old daughter Einat.  When Israeli security forces approached, Kuntar shot the father at close range while the terrified little girl looked on, then slaughtered the little girl in subhuman cruelty; by smashing her head against a rock several times with the butt of his rifle. Then he surrendered to save his own skin.

In the gunfire two Israeli policemen and three of the terror squad were killed. In the meantime the mother, Smadar, was hiding in the home's crawlspace with her two-year-old daughter Yael. Tragically, she accidently smothered her baby while stifling her cries to prevent the terrorists from discovering them. The tragedy of a whole family was complete.

This Samir Kuntar is the hero of Hezbollah, of the Palestinians and a large part of the Arab world! They have been celebrating him for years as their idol, and now have given him a hero's welcome. Similar "heroes" were the two Palestinians who murdered at point blank the 33-year-old and pregnant Tali Hatuel and her four daughters aged 3 to 11, in her car held-up at Kfar Darom.

What people can execute little girls in mafia style? What nations can have such people as their role models? Shame on such nations.  Woe to such nations.

An organization can be judged by whom it chooses to idolize and to hold up as an example for its youth. Tellingly, Samir Kuntar, a vile child-killer is the hero of Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed extremist Islamist terror organization, which worships death and destruction in the most inhuman ways, and clings to its goal of destroying Israel.

Hizbullah's leaders are war criminals, but unfortunately it hasn't been said clearly and loudly enough. Hizbullah has been the largest obstacle to any peace in the region and a threat to Lebanon's stability, not only a danger to Israel. It is continuing to smuggle arms and ammunition into Lebanon, and to rebuild its missile arsenal; it trains, equips and deploys terrorists not only throughout Lebanon, but also for international terrorism. The international community must act with determination to remove this threat.

The international community and even Israel have been at fault for mostly keeping silent about Hizbullah's war crimes. By killing 7 Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two in an unprovoked attack, along with its simultaneous bombardment of northern Israel, Hizbullah sparked Israel's Second Lebanon War which demanded the death of more than a thousand people and caused fear and suffering for millions on both sides.

Then, breaking all written and unwritten human laws, Hizbullah denied any access to the two kidnapped men, or any information about them, in order to maximize the suffering of their families and of a society where humanist considerations are stronger than its direct interest. This unlawful, pirate-like attitude of Hizbullah is a war crime and this should be emphasized in every mention of their name until they are recognized internationally as a terrorist organization.

Last but not least, blessed be the memory of the fallen Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.