I remember, as a child, watching old Western’s in which a prisoner exchange would go down on some dusty, old-West street.  The bad guys would line up on one side of the road, hands on their pistols, faces grim.  On the other side, the good guys, slightly outnumbered, heroic, desparate, would untie the really, really bad guy’s wrists and push him out on to the street.

The bad guys would release the captive hero.  A tumbleweed would roll into view, bouncing recklessly past the good guys, who would glance nervously, their trigger-fingers itchy, their eyes narrowed.

Inevitably something would go wrong.  The good guy would get half way before being shot, or a rookie cowboy on the good guys side would get nervous and accidently fire his pistol.  Even when the prisoner swap went well, the moral of the story was always this: the badguy will still be a badguy, and will live to fight another day, kill again, but the goodguy will too.  The moral was that shades of grey exist in this world, and while you don’t want to see the badguy set free, because you know deep down that he’ll come back worse than ever, you also want to see the goodguy safe and sound.  You want to be reassured that it wasn’t all for nothing.  It’s a tough question–one of the few real morality issues that one encountered in old Westerns.

So, to extend what was bound to be an extended metaphor further, I now take you to the modern Wild West, which just so happens to be Israel.  The Israeli government has signed a prisoner swap deal with Hizbullah, exchanging several prisoners for two Israeli soldiers who may or may not be alive.

Dead men on both sides will be exchanged if the two IDF men, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, are indeed dead. According to the Jerusalem Post:

Members of the IDF Rabbinate were exhuming the bodies of approximately 200 Hizbullah men killed in fighting with Israel from their graves in a cemetery near Safed.

What makes this deal really appalling to me, and to many in Israel and around the world, is the release of Sami Kuntar–this without the release of Israeli Gilad Shalit.

CNN writes:

Kuntar was convicted over a 1979 attack in which he shot and killed an Israeli man in front of his 4-year-old daughter, then smashed her head against a rock with his rifle butt, tossing her body into the sea.

Another daughter, 2, was accidentally smothered by her mother, who tried to keep her quiet as they hid from the attackers.

In fact, the whole capture of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser is said to have been a tactic used by Hizbullah, who apparently were expecting the half-assed Israeli invasion of Lebanon, to secure Sami Kuntar’s release.   I personally am not against prisoner swaps, or the trading of bodies as it may be–but releasing a man who dashed a four-year-old girl’s head in after killing her father in front of her…?  The man deserves worse than death, and certainly worse than freedom and a heroes welcome by Hizbullah.

Al-Jazeera has reported on the exchange with an article titled “Israel to Exhume Bodies of Martyrs Ahead of Swap” which basically gives you the Arab perspective on this exchange.  They write:

The exchange is to occur on three phases, the first of which will include the release of Lebanese detainee Samir Kintar and three others, according to the Ma’an report.

The second phase, Ma’an reported, will begin six days later and the third a few days after that. The news agency further reported that one of the Palestinian bodies slated to be returned under the second phase of the deal would be that of Dalal Mughrabi, a female resistance fighter launched a heroic operation in 1978 killing 36 Israelis. The report does not detail at which stage Hezbollah will release the two Israeli soldiers.

Interesting, this completely different take on the matter.  One man’s terrorist is another man’s resistance fighter, I suppose.  Of course, I call any man (or woman) who kills innocent people a terrorist, whether or not they happen to also be resistance fighers, or whether they buy into the destructive, poisonous notion of martyrdom–instant-heaven, as easy as instant macaroni and cheese, all it takes is one suicidal mission and you’re there, dark-eyed virgins and all.

Al-Jazeera calls Mughabri “a female resistance fighter launched a heroic operation in 1978 killing 36 Israelis.”

Let’s learn a little bit about the “heroic operation” of Ms. Mughabri….

On March 11, 1978, Mughrabi led a band of eleven terrorists who took boats from Lebanon and landed north of Tel Aviv. Upon landing, they met an American photographer, Gail Rubin. Their intended target was Tel Aviv so they asked her where they were. Once she told them, they murdered her.

They then hijacked a bus filled with families going on an outing, seemingly with the intent to take it to Tel Aviv.

An IDF unit chased the bus and finally forced it to stop, and then the shootout began. Mughrabi and her gang started shooting passengers point-blank and then they firebombed the bus itself, trapping the passengers. At least 35 were killed, including 13 children, in what became known as the Coastal Road Massacre.

But I still see no problem with returning her corpse.  Sami Kuntar, however, is another matter.  I don’t believe Israel should hand him over alive.  I think murderers should be treated as such, and Kuntar should rot in an Israeli prison until the day he dies.

[note: Sami Kuntar is also known as Samir Quntar or Samir al-Quntar]

“Trust but verify.” Those were the watchwords of President Ronald Reagan when he embarked upon the historic series of negotiations with the Soviet Union that would culminate with the START I Treaty designed to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Soviet Union. Today a tempest in a teapot has ensued over President Bush’s remarks before the Israeli Knesset comparing negotiations with hostile foreign dictators as tantamount to Neville Chamberlain’s alleged “appeasement” of Adolph Hitler at Munich in 1938. (more…)