| Submit your comments on this article |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel and Hezbollah 'prisoner' exchange |
| 2008-07-17 |
| Even after the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, had been handed over to Israel and examined by Red Cross officials yesterday, their parents clung to the hope that a mistake had been made, and that their sons would yet walk back across the border. "We will continue to hope until we can hope no more," said Tzvi Regev, the father of Sergeant Regev. The faint chance that at least one of the soldiers would be returned alive two years after they were captured by Hezbollah guerrillas pushed Israel to pay a high price for the exchange. Five Hezbollah prisoners were set free for the remains of the two soldiers, the most notorious among them Samir Qantar, who spent almost 30 years in an Israeli prison for the killing of an Israeli father and his young daughter. Israel also returned the bodies of nearly 200 Palestinian and Lebanese militants that had been killed in clashes over the past decades. Only hours after the exchange would the Regev family acknowledge that there was no more room for hope. Israeli forensic science teams confirmed what the Red Cross had already determined - that two black coffins handed over by the militant Shia group contained the corpses of Goldwasser and Regev. The kidnaps of the two soldiers set off a 34-day war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006. "It was horrible to see it," said Mr Regev, choking back tears as he described watching one of the coffins being removed from the Red Cross vehicle that had brought the remains back across the border. "We were always hoping that [Ehud] and Eldad were alive and that they would come home and we would hug them." A Regev family member added that it was impossible to watch celebrations being prepared across Lebanon, as the family readied for a funeral. In contrast to the festivities in Lebanon, a sombre mood enveloped much of Israel. Nowhere was the gravity of the day felt stronger than in the small coastal town of Nahariya, where the home of the Goldwasser family stands a few minutes' drive from the apartment building where Mr Qantar killed Danny Haran and his daughter, aged 4. The killing was for ever seared into the nation's consciousness as one of the most brutal acts of terrorism in Israel's history. In Mr Qantar's trial witnesses recalled how in the dead of night on April 22, 1979, he shot Mr Haran in front of his child, then killed the girl by smashing her skull against a rock with his rifle butt. Mr Haran's wife, Smadar, accidentally smothered her two-year-old daughter with her hand while trying to stifle her cries as she hid from the killer. He has never expressed remorse over the incident. Israel had hitherto held Mr Qantar as a bargaining chip to win new information about Ron Arad, an Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986. Under pressure from the captured soldiers' families to bring them home, Israel's Cabinet voted on Tuesday to release him in exchange for the bodies of the two captured soldiers. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #8 "You guys obviously know nothing about Jewish traditions when it comes to the dead." -if your tradition creates a vulnerability - you may want to rethink the practicality of it and discuss dispensation. |
| Posted by: Deadeye Choluck2323 aka Broadhead6 2008-07-17 22:20 |
| #7 understand the Jews' beliefs in death and burial. ... Make the area between the Litani and Beirut so radioactive it'll take a million years to cool down. But not the pertinent geography, OP (look at the map). |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-07-17 20:44 |
| #6 Old Patriot: SOLD! |
| Posted by: Hellfish 2008-07-17 20:06 |
| #5 I hope Israel tagged them with a very slow-acting poison that will take months to begin to be effective, but once it starts, is very painful and always fatal. I understand the Jews' beliefs in death and burial. I also know any Jew/Israeli captured by ANY Arab group will have a slow and painful death, with no chance for repatriation. That's why I hope Israel uses nukes the next time Hezbully begins to launch rockets at Tel Aviv. Make the area between the Litani and Beirut so radioactive it'll take a million years to cool down. It's the only way Israel can "secure" a northern border. Oh, and the area between current Israel and the Litani will become Israeli territory - a twofer. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-07-17 16:58 |
| #4 You guys obviously know nothing about Jewish traditions when it comes to the dead. |
| Posted by: Spimp White4937 2008-07-17 12:32 |
| #3 "Israel knew they were dead before the exchange." -which makes this even more incomprehensible to me. Should have exchanged Qantar's & the four other's remains for these two. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2008-07-17 12:18 |
| #2 Israel knew they were dead before the exchange. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2008-07-17 09:10 |
| #1 Damn it Israel, wake up! You must assume, anytime a Jew is taken into the possesion of the Muslims, that he (or she) is dead. As dead as those who were marched into the showers at Auschwitz! Avenge them - Avenge them all, show the muslim no mercy, but light a fire in their flesh. They have been calling you to war for many years now- it's high time that you grant them their most serious desire - give them death on a scale un-imaginable! Ask for forgiveness later - but act now. |
| Posted by: Rob06 2008-07-17 01:34 |