While most of the world seems to have forgotten, the ostensible reason Israel went to war last year was to recover three hostages, Gilad Shalit, Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. They’re still hostages. StandWithUs, a pro-Israel PAC has started an online petition seeking their freedom. To be honest, I have absolutely no belief that the petition will do any good. However, it can’t do any harm and, if nothing more, is a reminder to the world that these three young men are still out there, held captive by the dregs of the Middle East. So, if you’d like to sign, please do so here.
UPDATE: Israel is exploring a deal with the Devil to see whether there can be any movement on getting Gilad Shalit released.
Filed under: Hezbollah, Israel, Palestinians
While most of the world seems to have forgotten, the ostensible reason Israel went to war last year was to recover three hostages, Gilad Shalit, Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
I don’t know how many Israelis were wounded/killed in action during that, nor how many civilians/Hizbollah operators/informants were killed/wounded in the Lebanon Incident.
All I know is that Israel still has a load of people they know are guilty of terrorism in their jails. I recommend that they take as much as 90% of the current human resource population that they have with confirmed terrorist convictions, and come up with a schedule for body mutilation. Say, one finger for each hour the hostages aren’t returned unharmed. And if the hostages are dead… which seems more or less likely(I’m not in the updates so I don’t know for sure), mass execute them, although you can vary the execution techniques a bit to create more psychological damage once it is shown on video tape to the world. Creativity is always useful compared to the stale and known, in terms of psychological warfare.
So instead of killing your own people and Lebanese, Israel could have just killed the ones they knew were guilty. Which do you think would have been more effective, but not only more effective but more ethical?
They still don’t have their people back, they still don’t even know their status seemingly. (I don’t at least) And yet people died… for what?
What a waste of human life in my opinion. I hate wasting human lives. If anybody needs to die, at least they should have a purpose to die for. Certainly I would not support execution of Palestinian terrorists without making full use of the human resources at Israel’s facilities.
If there was anything I’ve learned about Good and Evil, it is that the weaker you are and the more incompetent and incapable you are of taking the hard road, the more the Devil controls your heart and soul. Weakness invites evil in.
On Thursday, diplomatic sources said that in light of the current infighting in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas, the frequency of negotiations over Schalit’s release had gone down.
Please don’t negotiate with terrorists. Kill them if you wish, imprison them if you must, torture them if you so desire, but please don’t negotiate with free terrorists once they’ve taken a hostage of yours. You won’t come out of it with your soul intact, and that is a guarantee. Nor will you be able to wash the blood that they spill in the future, from your hands; not completely. I know Israel has done this before… but I think the current status quo in Gaza and the West Bank should support my arguments as they stand, concerning negotiating with terrorists over captured Israeli hostages.
I hate thugs running the world from Gaza, and I hate the corrupt bureacrats of the Western World that allow them to, perhaps even more.
I am of two minds about the utility of things like petitions in situations like this, just as a matter of political practicality. When you have something like this, it very quickly becomes a two-edged sword, and you have to decide where lies the greater good.
Put simply, if the entire nation of Israel and fifty million Americans sign this thing, then what you’ve chiefly accomplished is to have given the kidnappers a hell of a lot of power over you.
An analagous situation was when the personnel of the US embassy in Tehran were taken hostage by the Iranians in 1979. That deformed the entire foreign policy (such as it was) of the Carter administration (such as it was) and bent the whole country out of shape for a year.
Serious people don’t allow that. Serious people do not permit the fate and direction of a nation of (then) 200 million people to be bent out of shape by the fate of 44. Serious people (we refer to them as “leaders”) suck it up, make choices that are often very hard – and put the 200 million first. They say: “if you think you’re going to affect 200 million of us by kidnapping 44, realize two things. Thing one is: if we have to write off the 44 we will. We’ve done it before – in greater numbers – and we will again if needs must. Thing two is: yes, we value individual lives, and if you screw around too much we are going to come and climb down your throat wearing our track spikes.”
That’s really the only approach that works. Whining and moaning and signing petitions… well, this isn’t a college campus protest. All that stuff accomplishes is to empower the kidnappers, and the more people who sign it the more empowered they’ll feel. Why give them any power at all?