The recent deal between Israel and Hezbollah and statements by both Olmert and Nasrallah seem to strongly indicate that any prisoner swap will include Samir Kuntar, one of the most loathsome terrorists in history (despite Israeli denials.)
Kuntar, it will be remembered, murdered a father in front of his four-year old daughter before smashing her skull, among other atrocities. (And this sickening piece of human garbage is also considered a hero to Palestinian Arabs, with the “moderates” demanding his release.)
I am not wise enough to know whether it is worth trading him for Goldwasser and Regev today. I just want to point out that Nasrallah planned the kidnapping of Israelis specifically to get Kuntar in a swap, by his own statements. A prisoner swap would, as always, encourage more kidnappings in the future.
And if Israel would have had the death penalty for uberterrorists like Kuntar back in 1979, the incentive for kidnapping the two Israelis would have not existed – and the Lebanon war may never have occurred.
Kuntar is loathsome Meryl !!
G-d willing he’ll fall down the stairs and we won’t have to worry about any of this.
This is the fruit of the irrational and barbaric Israel practice of not executing vicious murderers. Not only does the failure to exact a proportionate penalty from the perp devalue the victim, but it lays you open to having him repeat the killings in the future if he gets out of prison. This is a particularly irrational way of treating a war criminal like this piece of filth, whose targeting of civilians including children, typical for a Palestinian Arab, violates the actual international laws of war and armed conflict. This is not a morally righteous practice.
I might point out that this practice gets you no synpathy from the Euros supposedly annoyed by the American practice of offing the convicted perps of a few of the most heinous crimes. They sympathize rather with the Arabs, whose legal systems have no due process or other civil rights practices and who kill prisoners on slight excuses, or none at all.
Israel should discreetly slip a small quantity of (odourless and colourless)Aflatoxin B1 into Kuntar’s food on his last day in prison.
Surprise! He spends the next six months dying of painful liver and stomach cancers, and Israel has plausible deniability. Everyone wins.