Friday, July 18, 2008
Credit where it's due to the Boston Globe for their editorial: A strange kind of hero
...beyond all tactical and political considerations, there is something morally repulsive in the hero's welcome given the most famous - or notorious - of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel. Samir Kuntar had been sentenced to 542 years in prison for killing four people during a raid in 1979. Kuntar executed a father, Danny Haran, in front of his 4-year-old daughter. Then he killed the little girl by smashing her head against a rock with a rifle butt.
This is the creature Nasrallah hailed as a resistance hero, the figure Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called a "huge hero who sacrificed 30 years of his life for the Palestinian issue," the celebrity that Lebanon's president and prime minister saluted as a liberated freedom fighter.
All wars are inhumane. But not all warriors lose their humanity.
Credit also to the Palestinian Arab Maan News Agency for explaining exactly the take away lesson: An-Nasser brigades support kidnapping Israeli soldiers
Gaza - Ma'an - The best course of action to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners is the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers, Abu Yousef, the military spokesman for An-Nasser Brigades, the Military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, said in a statement on Thursday.
He said that the prisoner swap between Israel and Hizbullah has shown that kidnap can be a useful bargaining tool in brokering deals to release prisoners and that it is possible to defeat the Israeli army. This goes some way to confirming several analysts predictions that the deal, executed on Wednesday, would embolden both Palestinian and Lebanese resistance fighters.
He added that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in 2006 by militants from the Gaza Strip, should not be released until it was possible to arrange a deal that satisfies the needs of the Palestinian people.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Points on the 'Prisoner' Swap.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.solomonia.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-renamedtb.cgi/15193
2 Comments
Leave a comment to: Points on the 'Prisoner' Swap
Comment Info and Policy:
1) You must have Javascript enabled in your browser in order to comment (blame the spammers). If you don't know what that is, you're probably fine.
2) HTML is on, so basic html should work. Raw links will be made auto-clickable, too, so even if you don't know html you can just paste in the link and it should work fine. Keep the "http://" in it.
3) Comments are generally unmoderated, which means I don't necessarily agree with the tone and tenor of everything posted. In fact, sometimes people post things they don't really mean just to make other people look bad. The internet is an anonymous place for the most part. That said...
4) I welcome you to post here. I'd love to have your input, agree, disagree or just offer a different data point, really. If I didn't want any participation, I'd turn off comments. Be aware, however, that this blog and the comments section exist for my entertainment. Therefore, I reserve ALL RIGHTS here, including the right to remove any or all comments on nothing more than a whim. Please don't even bother complaining. I'm the one providing the space and the free news and thought buffet. I don't owe anyone anything.
Anyone who posts here will be treated as my guest. That means I'm happy to be polite as a default, but if anyone is rude to the host they'll be unceremoniously shown the door.
It may pay to recall a famous line from the Tom Selleck magnum opus, Mr. Baseball: "Jack-san, you want Yoji's advice about the babes, you come to Yoji with respect."
5) Enjoy your stay!
Yes, and let us not forget the government it was that made, and then rationalized, this soul crushing trade.
But, also don't forget that there's an established precedent for massive military action in response to kidnapping. So we'll see if Nasrallah wants to walk into that gauntlet again.