2008 Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap
Encyclopedia
The 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange took place on July 16, 2008 when Hezbollah transferred the coffins of two Israel
i soldiers in exchange for 5 Lebanese militants held by Israel as well as the bodies of 199 mainly Lebanese and Palestinian militants captured in Lebanon or Israel in the previous three decades.
i soldiers Ehud Goldwasser
and Eldad Regev
, in exchange for Palestine Liberation Front
militant Samir Kuntar
, who was convicted of murder in Israel and Maher Qorani, Mohammad Srour, Hussein Suleiman and Khodr Zeidan, four Hizbullah militants captured by Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel also returned the remains of about 200 Lebanese and Palestinian militants killed whose bodies had been brought to Israel and buried there. Eight of these were Hizbullah fighters killed in the recent war.
It has long been the general policy of Israel not to return to family for burial the remains of killed militants that had engaged in “hostile terrorist activity”.
The exchange deal was carried out in accordance with the Red Cross
and UN
observers. Israel Weiss
, the Israeli Chief Military Rabbi
at the time of the 2006 Lebanon War two years earlier, was present at the transfer and remarked of the bodies that Hezbollah released: "the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I'll leave it at that."
Only one month earlier, on June 1, 2008, Israel released the Lebanese prisoner Nissim Nasser, in exchange for which Hezbollah handed over a box containing the remains of Israeli soldiers killed during the 2006 war.http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Middle_East/10217887.html
In October 2007 Israel and Hizbullah agreed to exchange a civilian Hizbullah member captured in 2006 and the remains of two Hizbullah fighters killed in this war and brought to Israel for the remains of an Israeli resident who drowned and was washed ashore in Lebanon.
The swap was described as "lopsided" in news headlines in the U.S. Newsweek
reported: "Americans often find it difficult to understand how Israelis can trade hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one or two Israelis, alive or dead. Kuntar
's case points up how frustrating and difficult those calculations can be."
Criticism of the celebrations held in Lebanon as repulsive and uncivilized were ubiquitous in the U.S. and other Western media. Newsday
reported: "The reception Kuntar received has alarmed Israelis and Americans who don't understand why Lebanon declared a national holiday to honor a man convicted of killing four people in a 1979 attack, including a 4-year-old girl." In a Boston Globe article entitled "A strange kind of hero":
The New York Daily News
launched the heading "A deal with the devils", and said the injustice of the agreement was "too painful to contemplate. There he was, a terrorist guilty of inhumanity in the extreme, walking free to the cheers of comrades in arms. And there they were, two black coffins bearing the remains of Israeli soldiers, held by Hizbullah for just this purpose. To be swapped, the blameless dead for the guilty living. To be traded as chits in conscienceless extortion. To be used in vile celebration of murder. Wednesday's exchange between Israel and Hizbullah could not have been more searing."
The New York Post
wrote: "Lebanon declared a state holiday as six bloodstained terrorists - newly freed from Israeli prisons - got a red-carpet hero's welcome."
A writer for Democracy Arsenal, hosted by the National Security Network
, wrote, after describing the murders Kuntar perpetrated and the celebrations in Lebanon for him: "Not to take sides here, but when people wonder about the recalcitrance of Israeli leaders to enter peace agreements with their neighbors this revolting episode serves as a worthwhile reminder."
Canada's Calgary Herald
reported: "No words can express the revulsion the civilized world feels for the hero's welcome given Samir Kuntar by Hezbollah upon his exchange for two Israeli soldiers killed in Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon." It concludes:
Mona Charen
wrote: "What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero?"
David Pryce-Jones
wrote:
In a Baltimore Sun editorial: "Trading the remains of two dead soldiers for a notorious terrorist and four Hezbollah militants hardly seems a fair exchange. And it wasn't. The Israeli reservists, Sergeant Goldwasser and Staff Sgt. Eldad Regev, were kidnapped in an unprovoked raid and wounded. ... In contrast, Mr. Kuntar's crime was a planned operation that terrorized a young Israeli family, leaving three of its members dead."
In "A moment of moral clarity", Gil Troy
of McGill University
writes in the Montreal Gazette: "Stated angrily, 'How do you welcome a child murderer as a hero?' is the question Israelis are asking - and the rest of the civilized world should be asking, too.
The Israeli consul general to the American Southwest wrote in the Houston Chronicle
:
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i soldiers in exchange for 5 Lebanese militants held by Israel as well as the bodies of 199 mainly Lebanese and Palestinian militants captured in Lebanon or Israel in the previous three decades.
Exchange
Hezbollah released the remains of two captured IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i soldiers Ehud Goldwasser
Ehud Goldwasser
Ehud Goldwasser was an Israeli soldier who was abducted in Israel by Hezbollah along with Eldad Regev on 12 July 2006, sparking the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. His rank was First Sergeant....
and Eldad Regev
Eldad Regev
Eldad Regev was an Israeli soldier, born in Qiryat Motzkin, abducted by Hezbollah members along with Ehud Goldwasser on July 12, 2006, in Israel near the Lebanese border, sparking the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. His rank was Sergeant First Class....
, in exchange for Palestine Liberation Front
Palestine Liberation Front
The Palestine Liberation Front is a Palestinian militant group, which is designated as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union and the USA. It is presently led by Dr. Wasel Abu Yousef.-Origins:...
militant Samir Kuntar
Samir Kuntar
Samir Kuntar is a Lebanese Druze convicted murderer and former member of the Palestine Liberation Front...
, who was convicted of murder in Israel and Maher Qorani, Mohammad Srour, Hussein Suleiman and Khodr Zeidan, four Hizbullah militants captured by Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel also returned the remains of about 200 Lebanese and Palestinian militants killed whose bodies had been brought to Israel and buried there. Eight of these were Hizbullah fighters killed in the recent war.
It has long been the general policy of Israel not to return to family for burial the remains of killed militants that had engaged in “hostile terrorist activity”.
The exchange deal was carried out in accordance with the Red Cross
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide which was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human...
and UN
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
observers. Israel Weiss
Israel Weiss
Rabbi Israel Weiss , born 1949, was the Chief Military Rabbi of the Israel Defence Forces serving in the position between 2000 and 2006, with a rank of Brigadier General. His predecessor in that position was Rabbi Gad Navon....
, the Israeli Chief Military Rabbi
Military Rabbinate
The Military Rabbinate is a corps in the Israel Defense Forces that provides religious services to soldiers, primarily to Jews but also including non-Jews, and makes decisions on issues of religion and military affairs. The Military Rabbinate is headed by the Chief Military Rabbi, who is ranked a...
at the time of the 2006 Lebanon War two years earlier, was present at the transfer and remarked of the bodies that Hezbollah released: "the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I'll leave it at that."
Only one month earlier, on June 1, 2008, Israel released the Lebanese prisoner Nissim Nasser, in exchange for which Hezbollah handed over a box containing the remains of Israeli soldiers killed during the 2006 war.http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Middle_East/10217887.html
In October 2007 Israel and Hizbullah agreed to exchange a civilian Hizbullah member captured in 2006 and the remains of two Hizbullah fighters killed in this war and brought to Israel for the remains of an Israeli resident who drowned and was washed ashore in Lebanon.
Media reactions
There was a mixed reaction worldwide, many American news outlets criticising the release of Kuntar and condemning the way he was praised by the Lebanese.The swap was described as "lopsided" in news headlines in the U.S. Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
reported: "Americans often find it difficult to understand how Israelis can trade hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one or two Israelis, alive or dead. Kuntar
Samir Kuntar
Samir Kuntar is a Lebanese Druze convicted murderer and former member of the Palestine Liberation Front...
's case points up how frustrating and difficult those calculations can be."
Criticism of the celebrations held in Lebanon as repulsive and uncivilized were ubiquitous in the U.S. and other Western media. Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
reported: "The reception Kuntar received has alarmed Israelis and Americans who don't understand why Lebanon declared a national holiday to honor a man convicted of killing four people in a 1979 attack, including a 4-year-old girl." In a Boston Globe article entitled "A strange kind of hero":
But 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.
The New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
launched the heading "A deal with the devils", and said the injustice of the agreement was "too painful to contemplate. There he was, a terrorist guilty of inhumanity in the extreme, walking free to the cheers of comrades in arms. And there they were, two black coffins bearing the remains of Israeli soldiers, held by Hizbullah for just this purpose. To be swapped, the blameless dead for the guilty living. To be traded as chits in conscienceless extortion. To be used in vile celebration of murder. Wednesday's exchange between Israel and Hizbullah could not have been more searing."
The New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
wrote: "Lebanon declared a state holiday as six bloodstained terrorists - newly freed from Israeli prisons - got a red-carpet hero's welcome."
The shameful exchange ended the two-year nightmare for the parents of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who until the coffins were delivered didn't know for certain whether their sons were alive or dead. It also underscored Israel's deeply felt imperative never to abandon soldiers in the field.The Post added "this latest exchange may well imperil future Israeli hostages."
A writer for Democracy Arsenal, hosted by the National Security Network
National Security Network
The National Security Network is a non-profit foreign policy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that focuses on international relations, global affairs and national security...
, wrote, after describing the murders Kuntar perpetrated and the celebrations in Lebanon for him: "Not to take sides here, but when people wonder about the recalcitrance of Israeli leaders to enter peace agreements with their neighbors this revolting episode serves as a worthwhile reminder."
Canada's Calgary Herald
Calgary Herald
The Calgary Herald is a daily newspaper published in the Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta.- History :The paper was first published on August 31, 1883 by Andrew Armour and Thomas Braden as The Calgary Herald, Mining and Ranche Advocate and General Advertiser. It started as a weekly paper with only...
reported: "No words can express the revulsion the civilized world feels for the hero's welcome given Samir Kuntar by Hezbollah upon his exchange for two Israeli soldiers killed in Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon." It concludes:
Even sadder was Lebanon's declaration of a national holiday to celebrate Kuntar's return, along with his speech thanking God for his release. Not only is the blood of Smadar's family as red -- it has stained Lebanon's international image in the aftermath of such a shameful celebration.
Mona Charen
Mona Charen
Mona Charen is an American columnist, political analyst, and the author of two best-selling books, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First and Do-Gooders: How Liberals Harm Those They Claim to Help — and the Rest of Us . Her political stance is...
wrote: "What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero?"
David Pryce-Jones
David Pryce-Jones
David Eugene Henry Pryce-Jones FRSL is a conservative British author and commentator.- Career :He was educated at Eton and read History at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied under A.J.P...
wrote:
The Nazi S.S. killed Jewish children with a brutality similar to Kuntar's, but they did not then appear on public platforms to boast to the world of what they had done; on the contrary they kept their crimes as secret as they could, thereby acknowledging the survival somewhere in them of a guilty conscience. But here are important and supposedly responsible men who find it in themselves to embrace, encourage, and hold up as a model a man as vile as any, as though there was no such thing as conscience, and never has been. By every human standard, this is degradation, this is depravity.
In a Baltimore Sun editorial: "Trading the remains of two dead soldiers for a notorious terrorist and four Hezbollah militants hardly seems a fair exchange. And it wasn't. The Israeli reservists, Sergeant Goldwasser and Staff Sgt. Eldad Regev, were kidnapped in an unprovoked raid and wounded. ... In contrast, Mr. Kuntar's crime was a planned operation that terrorized a young Israeli family, leaving three of its members dead."
In "A moment of moral clarity", Gil Troy
Gil Troy
Gil Troy is an American academic. Troy is Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal and a Visiting Scholar affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington....
of McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
writes in the Montreal Gazette: "Stated angrily, 'How do you welcome a child murderer as a hero?' is the question Israelis are asking - and the rest of the civilized world should be asking, too.
By contrast, the massive celebrations in Lebanon for Kuntar and four other terrorists revealed not only the thuggery of Hezbollah but the descent of Lebanon itself. Rolling out the red carpet for a murderer, dispatching the country's top leaders to greet someone who crushed a 4-year-old's skull, declaring a national day of celebration, revealed just how thoroughly the Lebanese leadership had succumbed to the brutal sensibilities of Hassan Nasrallah and his Hezbollah terrorists.He concludes: "A nation that risks so much even just to bring two corpses home, a country that celebrates life not death, is not only a worthy ally - but a dangerous adversary when provoked."
The Israeli consul general to the American Southwest wrote in the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
:
The way in which Hezbollah is celebrating the return of a man whom it calls a hero because Kuntar smashed the skull of a little girl is irrelevant. To Israel, whatever is said by people whose heroes are skull smashers, who hunt women and children in order to kill them, has no bearing. What is important are Israel's values.Yarden writes that "For Hezbollah, 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," and includes that a Lebanese colleague has contacted him saying the celebrations were shameful for the Lebanese majority.
In Israel's eyes, a hero is someone who fights terror to defend civilians at the risk of his or her own life. Israel's heroes go to battle equipped with, in addition to their weapons, the reassuring knowledge that they are protecting human beings who share their beliefs and who are also prepared to pay a price in order to realize them.
External links
- Prisoner Exchange: Saying goodbye to Udi, Eldad YnetnewsYnetnewsYnetnews is the online English language Israeli news website of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most-read newspaper, and the Hebrew Israel news portal, Ynet...