Garbanzo Toons

Infamy

I've been angry over the past few days, much like many other people around the world, who can only wonder in despair why Israel would hand over the child killer Samir Kantar and other terrorists in exchange for the mutilated bodies of two soldiers. My local papers didn't mention Kantar's crime in their reports, nor did they mention that the soldiers' bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. At times like this I don't know what to write. But thanks to Carl in Jerusalem, I was able to find this piece by Naomi Ragen. She's a real writer and she's expressed exactly how I feel.

I was a new oleh when the PFLP and two Germans hijacked a plane full of Israelis to Entebbe. I remember well those nail-biting days, the moral dilemma of freeing dangerous terrorists for live hostages; the idea that negotiations would just lead to more hijackings. But what other choice did we have? After all, they were in Uganda, so far away .

We found a way.

I will never forget the morning of July 4, 1976, waking up to the news. Our soldiers had gone in, at great personal risk. They had saved almost everyone, and killed the terrorists. We were not helpless victims anymore, the Jews. No, we were clever, and resourceful and courageous. We showed the world how to behave.

We led the way.

I wake up this morning of July 16, 2008 with quite another feeling. Our soldiers, kidnapped on our own land, not across any international border, are brought back to us in caskets after two years of sadistic playfulness with the hearts of their families by Hezbollah terrorists, who led us to believe they were alive.

And in exchange for dead bodies, we turn over a despicable baby-killer, Sami Kuntar.

Oh, you will hear the boosters of the Israeli government sigh.

What can we do? We are civilized and they are not. We care about our soldiers and their families.

No, I'm afraid you do not. If you cared, then you would have a death penalty for people like Kuntar, so that they too can be released in caskets. And if you cared, you would be intelligent enough, seeing our soldiers brought back to us dead, to have put a bullet through Kuntar and then turned him over to his friends.

You must read the whole thing. After I read it, I wondered, and I still wonder what it's going to take for Israel, the United States, and the other beneficiaries of Western Civilization to rediscover the will and the confidence that our ancestors possessed in order to build what we have now. Have we really become so weak and unsure of ourselves that we're willing to deny to our children what we were freely given?

I hope not, because we've seen who will take over and it will be much worse than any of the pampered armchair anarchists, wealthy Marxists, and spoiled hypocritical environmentalists would ever allow themselves to imagine.

Labels: Israel, Naomi Ragen, Samir Kantar

posted by Harry @ 8:27 PM