The Worship of Child-Killers

Doc's Writing team

For two long years the families of Israeli reserve soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser have waited in agony for news. For two years they have wondered whether their sons, Eldad and Ehud, are alive or dead. For two years they have lived with the knowledge that while blood was found at the scene of their abduction, it was uncertain whether their loved-ones had received even the most basic medical treatment. This is the cruelest form of mental torture, one that Hizbullah deliberately inflicted on the families. The people of Israel have also waited for news, empathizing with the suffering of these families, sharing their impatience. Every Israeli knows it was only a matter of bad luck that these two particular soldiers were abducted, and that it could have been a family member or friend of their own. Eldad and Ehud were abducted on 12 July 2006, while checking the border fence, just as Hizbullah launched its unprovoked cross-border raid, aimed at kidnapping any Israeli they met.

Israelis also feel a sense of responsibility towards Eldad and Ehud. One of Israel's supreme values is that of caring for the young men and women who risk their lives to defend the civilian population. This principle runs deep in the Israeli psyche, stemming both from our sense of morality and solidarity, as well as our Jewish ethics. It comes from our deepest respect for human life, a respect so profound that Israel is willing to act even given the slightest hope of life.

It is in support of this supreme value that Israel decided to pay a heavy price for the return of its two sons. Hizbullah's intransigence knew no end, and it refused to compromise even at the cost of war. Rejecting the current deal would only have led to a prolongation of the suffering and would not have produced more favorable terms.

Israel agreed to release four Hizbullah members and a terrorist named Samir Kuntar.

For Hizbullah, Kuntar is a hero of the highest order. To Israelis and the rest of the civilized world, he is one of the most despicable terrorists. Kuntar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front squad that infiltrated northern Israel by sea on 21 April1979. In the middle of the night, they broke into a residential building taking Danny Haran and his four year-old daughter Anat hostage as the rest of the family hid. When they arrived at the seashore, Kuntar made little Anat watch as he shot her father at close-range, and then proceeded to kill her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Meanwhile, the mother of the family who had hidden in a closet with her two-year old toddler Yael, accidently suffocated her own child while trying to stifle her cries and prevent Kuntar from finding them. Kuntar bears responsibility for this death as well.

This is the child-killer who is being greeted with cheers and parades by Hizbullah. This is the brutal murderer whose release will be called a victory by the extremists throughout the region.

As part of the deal, Hizbullah will also receive the bodies of those killed in the Second War in Lebanon or in infiltration attacks on Israel. Among the corpses will be that of a woman, Dalal al-Maghrabi, who lead the attack on Israel that became known as the Coastal Road massacre of 1978. In that terrorist atrocity, 37 Israelis were killed. One was an American-born photographer, Gail Rubin, who was murdered while taking pictures of birds on the beach. The rest were Israeli families on an outing, whose bus was hijacked. When a confrontation with the army began, al-Maghrabi began shooting the passengers one-by-one and then firebombed the bus with the rest of the passengers still trapped inside.

This is the child-killer whose body will be accorded a hero's burial. This is the brutal murderer who will be hero-worshipped by members of Hizbullah.

Hizbullah is an Iranian sponsored extremist terrorist organization. If the past and present are any indication of the future, Hizbullah will continue to celebrate cold-blooded killers as idols of its ethos of violence. It will continue in its obsession to destroy Israel and destabilize Lebanon – as was the case two years ago when Hizbullah precipitated a war in Southern Lebanon, in blatant disregard of its impact on the local population.

Let there be no mistake - while Israel has a moral imperative to bring its soldiers home, it rejects any effort to legitimize the Hizbullah, its goals and its tactics. The international community must recognize the danger posed by Hizbullah and its extremist cohorts to the stability of the Middle East and must support the pragmatic elements in the region, who seek to make peace through dialogue and compromise.