According to Israeli officials, the bodies were received in a severely-damaged state which may have lengthened the confirmation of their identities. Former IDF Medical Corps and Chief Military Rabbinate officials have noted the tragic expertise Israel has gathered in years of conflict, but remained shocked by what they saw yesterday at the Rosh HaNikra border crossing.
Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present during the transfer of the fallen soldiers yesterday, said that "the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I'll leave it at that."
Again, this is hardly a surprise. These are the same people who took a US marine colonel, Bill Buckley captive and tortured him to death in front of video cameras..after which they sent a copy to the White House.
The Israelis are apparently keeping this quiet out of consideration for the two soldiers' families. I think that's a huge mistake.
First, the Israeli people and the rest of us badly need a reminder to see exactly the kind of people we're fighting,and to understand something about the kind of people who are treating Samir Kuntar as a hero today.Seeing grisly videos like the one of Nick Berg's beheading convinced a number of people of the true nature of the jihad against us.
Finally, after, seeing what was done to Regev and Goldwasser might do a great deal to silence some of the moral relativists among us. I've already seen 'news' articles in CNN and in al-Reuters referring to Samir Kuntar as an 'alleged' murderer or as simply a 'released prisoner' and repeating the lie used by his defense at the trial, that Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat were killed by an IDF cross fire.
Aside from the fact that witnesses testified that they saw Kuntar shoot Haran in front of his daughter and then smash her skull in with his rifle butt, evidence revealed at the trial matched the bullets in Daniel with Kuntar's gun...which also had brain tissue and skin residue from little Einat still on the butt end.For those interested,The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( MOFA) has released the trial records and has them archived on its site.
After seeing what had been done to the Israeli captives,the IDF should have opened fire on Kuntar and his mates and made the trade an equal one..dead bodies for dead bodies. And they should have let the world know why.
Allowing them to walk away free after that was not 'civilization', but appalling weakness and immoral behavior.
That lapse will not come without a price in the future.
3 comments:
OLMERT GAY AVECK go away you are a total failure.
this is a total defeat for israel and the west ingeneral.
yochanan of lgf
I totally agree, Yochanon.
Of course, I'm kind of a hardliner.
My formula for getting Gilad Shalit released would be to release the Hamas prisoners..about 3 or four per day over Gaza City from a high flying IDF helicopter without parachutes until Shalit came home.
I think Hamas might actually hold out for a full day before they released him.
1. Gilad Shalit will never be released alive.
2.The IDF is going to pay dearly in the coming months for Olmert's malfeasance.
Hezbollah and Hamas both have stated publicly that taking hostages works. And look how much "fun" hezbollah had in the meantime, holding these men. Their actions demonstrate exactly what opinion they hold of the Israeli government. They know that the consequences of crossing the Israeli border, Murdering IDF soldiers, and capturing others to torture to death has no downside. They will do it again, sooner rather than later.
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