Today Israel traded a convicted child-murderer for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

Meryl Yourish writes:

By now it is over. The coffins handed over across the border today contain the two bodies they were supposed to contain. The two grieving families will get the closure of their two year long nightmare.

The decision to go ahead with this exchange, with almost total certainty that we’ll be paying the price of releasing a baby killer for two bodies, was not an easy one. I wouldn’t wish to be one of the people on whose shoulders the decision fell. But it is over and done with.

Indeed it is.  Samir Kuntar is home to a heroes welcome, and two brave Israeli soldiers are home in coffins.  A murderer traded for two brave, dead men.  Long gone are questions as to why they were not released ages ago, when Israel backed away from its offensive on Lebanon.  New questions have risen, however.

The Elder of Ziyon brings up a good point, writing–

Almost absent from all the discussion about the prisoner swap is the fact that Hezbollah murdered two captured soldiers, probably way after they were captured.

Where are the human rights organizations? Where is the outcry of anger at Hezbollah’s flouting of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws? Who in the West is standing up and calling Hezbollah murderers?

It is a stark and brutal reality–Hezbollah has murdered prisoners of war.  They have murdered them in cold blood, while in captivity, and have returned their corpses.  These were soldiers, kidnapped–not even captured in combat–who were summarily executed by a terrorist organization pretending to be an army, pretending to be a political group.

Well this should show them for what they are: terrorists and thugs, murderers, criminals.  The entire organization should be laid to waste, every member tracked down and killed or captured.  If only it were so easy.

Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, spoke today on the prisoner exchange, saying:

“By virtue of this power we decided to return the boys, even with the heavy price of releasing a despicable murderer.  Nobody else will understand what every Israeli understands well: the worry over the fate of every one of our soldiers is the glue which binds us as a society, and it this which allows us to survive in an area which is surrounded by enemies and terror organizations.”

I wonder if Olmert listened to the subsequent speech of Samir Kuntar, the child-killer?  According to YNET, Kuntar returned to cries of joy, where he gave a brief speech:

“I want to congratulate all those who sacrificed for the sake of this new victory. This is the true supplement to the July victory (Second Lebanon War.) I won’t say much now, I will make do with sending well-wishes to the man responsible for the promise that was fulfilled, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and to the heroic fighters of the Islamic resistance (Hizbullah).”

The most chilling words of his speech should also be the least surprising,

He later added, “today I returned from our precious Palestine, but believe me, God willing, I promise my family and my loved ones that we shall be back, I and my friends from the Islamic resistance. I did not return from prison but to return to Palestine.”

It is honestly frightening that a man whose fame was won by smashing in the skull of a little girl whose father he had just killed in front of her would receive such a warm welcome. I can’t imagine a similar heroes welcome in the United States.  In fact, if one of our soldiers had been accused of murdering a little girl and her father, even if we did get him back in a prisoner exchange, we’d have him tried the next day.  Why has the Arab world sacrificed their moral clarity so much so that they could rejoice at the return of a killer?

Sharon Gilad writes of her,

pure, unadulterated, palpable hatred emanating from the surreal images of the Lebanese side of the border, showing the Lebanese people cheering for a despicable, vile murderer as if he were a long lost hero….One has to ask all those devoted Lebanese mothers, what is it about this homicidal maniac that makes him such a celebrity? What honor is there in bashing in the head of an innocent little girl?

What indeed?  And will they cheer him on the next time he has an opportunity to murder a family, so long as it is a family of Jews?

I imagine myself watching as the murderer of my family was set free in exchange for corpses, and I feel a terrible flood of anger, horror, regret–though I never knew these people, though I never spoke with them.

Baruch Keren, brother of Kuntar’s victim, Danny Haran said,

“When I saw our coffins I felt defeated and humiliated. If the soldiers were alive, at least one of them, I would have accepted it differently no doubt. But when you see the coffins you understand how we’ve been toyed with this whole time.

“While we tried our best to be human and let a murderer marry and study, we have created this monster and turned him into their hero. I ask the Lebanese people – is this your hero? A man who bashed the skull of a little girl? This is the murderer you are crowning a hero?”

So what has Israel done?  Have they taken the moral high ground in this exchange?  Will this lead toward some deal to bring back captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit?  According to Olmert and the Egyptians, that deal is closer than ever…but will Shalit be alive?  Certainly this seems less likely than ever.

It seems to me that Israel has given their enemies a weapon, and their enemies plan to use it in every way imaginable.

Further Reading

Meryl Yourish on Abbas sending his congratulations to the family of murderer Samir Kuntar.

The Day in Photos from the LA Times

The Elder of Ziyon on encouraging terrorists

Kain's major subjects of focus at NeoConstant are international strategy; support of Israel; the failure of the international community to stop genocide; the spread of American power and democracy; historical analysis; and current events both domestically and abroad. He writes here, Newsvine and his blog, IndiePundit.