Thursday, June 29, 2006
Steve Lipman in The Jewish Week details the history of the "most prominent" hostage taking events in the name of Palestinianism. I guess the question of "prominence" accounts for why the list looks a lot lighter than I would have expected: Abduction As A Weapon
1972: Members of the Black September terrorist group sneak into the Olympic Village in Munich and take 11 members of the Israeli delegation hostage. All 11 are killed.
1979: An Israeli soldier who was captured the previous year when he accidentally entered an area of southern Lebanon controlled by the PLO is exchanged for 76 terrorists.
1982: Three Israeli soldiers disappear in the Battle of Sultan Yakoub at the start of the War in Lebanon. Despite decades of rumors about their fate and alleged behind-the-scenes negotiations, Zvi Feldman, Zachary Baumel and Yehuda Katz are still considered missing in action.
1985: Israel trades 1,150 Palestinian prisoners for three soldiers captured in Lebanon and held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command...
You'll notice as you look at the entire list just how lopsided the exchanges are. That's because, as the terrorists so often remind us, the Israelis love life, the terrorists love death.
Maybe Israelis love life, but it is stupid to reward kidnaping this way, by granting the release of more terrorists.
IIRC, the justification for the killing of black september terrorist was that nocountry would keep them in prision. Not even Israel, aparently.
http://www.danielgordis.org/Site/Site_Dispatches.asp
Worth reading
You recall incorrectly. The killing of the Black September terrorists was due to the criminal ineptitude of the Germans, who totally screwed up the rescue operation.
Never mind. My mind totally reversed what I was reading. I interposed the Israelis and the terrorists.
The reasons given for killing the terrorists were so that the terrorist groups would never again think they could kill Israelis with impunity. Had nothing to do with being unable or unwilling to keep them in prison.
Merryl,
I understand that one of the terrorist from Munich was arrested but was set free by the Germans a few months later, after a Lufthansa plane was kinapped.
Some years latter, Israelis were making the same type of bargain.
I assume some of the more than a thousands terrorists exchanged for hostages were guilty of killing Israelis.
They did not go unpunished,since they actually spent some time in jail, but their sentences were lightened.
My point was that, in my point of view, these exchanges estimulate more kidnappings.
It is a very dificult moral dilema, but I think they should not exchange hostages for terrorists.
I guess the Israeli government's arrest of tens of senior Hamas "officials" is to make the swap a little less uneven. Instead of letting a thousand prisoners, some with blood on their hands, or with bloody intent like the psycho who tried to blow herself up at the hospital that saved her life, go free, they'll hold onto the Hamasniks until Gilad is released, and if he isn't returned alive, put them on trial for their part in the planning and execution of the attack on the army outpost.