Comments on: Breaking: Samir Kuntar to be freed

By: Ben-David

Ben-David — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:02:47 +0000

Articles in the weekend papers here in Israel contrasted the media driven, highly emotional build-up of these hostage situations with earlier times – when both parents and the press bit their tongues and showed stoic restraint.

Lila: sorry, but deals like this are not part of the implicit agreement between the army and its soldier-citizens. No army can make such a guarantee – or should be expected to. The Israeli army already takes extraordinary measures to recover the bodies of fallen soldiers.

You are sending your son to the army – not to summer camp.

The sanest – and bravest – people in this whole affair are the IDF servicemen and officers who issued a publid declaration that they don’t wish such “heroics” if they are captured.

By: Maquis

Maquis — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:41:56 +0000

I don’t understand this. I’m American, retired military, and if I were taken captive by such savages, as either active military or as a civilian, I would not want my country to gut itself trying to get me back. I’d want them to bomb the hell out of my captors and I’d want the epicenter of that bombing to be the place I was most likely held captive. There are so many worse things than dying, and being captive political pawns of Philistines is much worse than death.

By: saus

saus — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:49:54 +0000

Lila, I know what you are saying but you repeat rightfully over & over that the price will be so high, the price will be high.. You are right.

We are the reason the price is so high and now it will only get even higher and we will sadly be paying more & more often. What will we say to the mothers of our young men who are kidnapped because of this? Worse, what will we say when those kidnapped are killed on the spot..

Why should our enemies keep their ill gotten prisoners alive now, and why should they ever negotiate their demands.. We will pay any price clearly no matter how high.

Diffcult day indeed, but these 2 soldiers would never have approved. If that were the case they would not have been in uniform that day on reserves patrolling our border trying to protect us. Instead their sacrifice has weakened us, sometimes we need to honor those that fell & fall for this country, not only their wives & mothers sadly. I think we have made a terrible mistake.

Mikki goldwasser is talking of holding her son in her arms, but I believe her son is dead, murdered by Hezbollah and no amount of live prisoners will bring him back regardless of where he is buried. I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid that is not the case.

By: Rahel

Rahel — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:20:37 +0000

I can only hope that Kuntar’s newfound freedom will be cut short the same way that Mughniya’s was.

By: Lila

Lila — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:47:56 +0000

It’s not a precedent, to our regret, it has happened before. We know for sure that the soldiers are dead; for living soldiers we would have had to pay a much steeper price.

Samir Kuntar was 30 years in prison. He is not the dangerous part of the deal because it’s not very likely he will become active again in terrorism (all Israeli analysts agree on that point, Roni Daniel, Chanan Kristal, Ehud Yaari). Much more problematic are the other terrorists.

For Samir Kuntar, we wouldn’t even have needed the death penalty. When the soldiers caught him on the beach, he had Eynat’s dead body still in his hands. They might have killed him on the spot. They didn’t, for whatever reasons, and he was supposed to be used as bargaining chip. But he is useless, we didn’t get anything in return until now.

Now, we will get some measure of information about Ron Arad, another painful issue.

And for Gilad Shalit, I’m afraid the price will be much higher.

This is the brutal reality we live in.

As society without shaheed ideal, we don’t have the right answer to this kind of bestiality.

Kuntar’s family is celebrating already. Disgusting, no doubt.

By: ann

ann — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:36:49 +0000

I am afraid Israel is setting a very dangerous precedent here. By releasing this cruel, baby murderer without any proof the soldiers are even still alive,they are saying in effect that a terrorist can commit the most henious crime imaginable against Israeli civilians and that at some point they still may be freed to gain release of hostages.
In another thirty years from now will the mastermind behind the Passover massacre be set freed to gain release of Israeli soldiers? Will the mastermind behind the murders of the Hatuel family be walking the streets of Gaza?
This is a very sad day for Israel and the civilized world in general. Of course,none of this would be happening now if the murderer had been executed 30 years ago like he should have been. I propose everyone who is outraged by this like I am get together and make a petition to the Israeli government. If another terrorist brutally murders Israeli children, that they be given the death penalty . And that the petition be called “Einat’s law”.

By: Lila

Lila — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:23:13 +0000

I’m very ambivalent about this deal. On the one hand, it serves as another incentive (in a too long row of incentives) for terrorists to catch Israeli soldiers and blackmail us. That’s a horrible thought and already too many people have been killed by terrorists who were freed in such deals.

On the other hand, the government can’t really reject this deal because this would push a deal concerning Shalit even further. And a state that does not keep its promise to bring the soldiers home cannot draft them the way it does. I will send my eldest boy in November to a fighting unit and I don’t send him to become a martyr. I send him to keep the state safe, and the state does its best to keep him safe.

Our society is built on the principle of mutual responsibility and pikuach nefesh. There is no black and white in such a situation.

I’m relieved the soldiers will be buried here. And I hope we will see Gilad back home soon. Although I wish it was for free – but we knew it wasn’t.

I sit in front of the TV and they show pictures of Samir Kuntar’s brother. And on the other channel Smadar Haran.

It’s a difficult, difficult day.