The Candidate
';Hot on the heels of news that the Lebanese government has declared Wednesday a national holiday to celebrate the release of Samir Kuntar and the other terrorists, comes word (from more than one Lebanese blogger) that Kuntar may be running for parliament in the next elections.
Welcome to Lebanon, a country where smashing in the skull of a 4-year-old girl could actually help your election campaign.
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An Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
How about an international bounty on his head?
Is it legal to offer money for the head of a convicted child murderer?
Or maybe in some perverse way, it is PUNISHMENT to the ARAB peoples to GIVE Sammy the KUNT back to them…
After all Arafat was a GIFT to the retarded Palios…
Assad is a GIFT to the Syrians
Mr DinnerJacket has killed and tortured MORE Iranians than we could ever…
Maybe what we need to do is GIVE all arab/islamic prisoners from all countries back to their islamic/arab homelands…
Sort of LIKE a page for the Fidel Casto BOATLIFT that emptied out his jails in the ‘80
July 16th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Mind you, war crimes have rarely hurt any of your beloved Israeli leaders come to power. Having trouble thinking of a single one– Olmert perhaps is more of a crook and an inept clown than anything.
Many people in Lebanon are quite disgusted with the hero’s welcome, not only for the horrendous crime Kuntar purportedly committed but because it sure as hell wasn’t worth the shit storm (and again, war crimes) unleashed by Israel.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
“Many people in Lebanon are quite disgusted with the hero’s welcome,”
If that’s the case, then I haven’t seen it. But I’m guessing from the tone of your post that you don’t care about facts.
July 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
bottom line, good and evil are often in the eye of the beholder. a liberator to one is the oppressor to another. a murderer to one is a hero to another.
Kuntar isn’t the only prisoner being returned, and not even the main focus of the Lebanese people I’ve heard from online. Their focus is on the return of their people, period.
If they were israelis convicted of committing a crime in an ‘enemy land’, wouldn’t the israelis be happy to have them returned to Israel? would the crimes they committed in that ‘enemy land’ be crimes for which they would be punished in Israel?
I’m not condoning what these people did, nor advocating murder/crime, etc. in any way. I’m just pointing out that the main difference, between ALL of us, in any side in any conflict, is perception. If we were in the others’ shoes, we might very well be reacting the same way.
Peace, Salaam, and Shalom
Aliya
July 16th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
I sure do care about facts and was relieved to see Israel finally declassify the Kuntar file shortly before his release.
“I haven’t seen it.”
Are you in Lebanon? I suppose not. Well then… if it makes it easier for you to hate, go ahead and believe what your media reports. This is an occasion for politicians to gloat. Many other people are remembering the high price people have paid for this spectacle. I, for one, am pretty repulsed by the whole thing. That doesn’t absolve the Israeli government for a senseless, criminal war. For the families though, I wish it hadn’t ended like this (bombing the crap out of the country probably didn’t help get Goldwasser & Regev immediate medical attention if they did in fact survive the initial attack.)
July 16th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I am so sad for the Goldwasser and Regev families - I feel physically ill.
Why are 2 dead and mutilated Jews “equal” to 5 ALIVE murderers???!!! We should have welcomed Gilad Shalit home today! What is wrong with the Israeli gov’t???!!! WHY is this acceptable to the Israeli people??? I am so angry! What is wrong with my country?
July 16th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Aliya Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
bottom line, good and evil are often in the eye of the beholder. a liberator to one is the oppressor to another. a murderer to one is a hero to another.
This “liberator” as you term him, smashed a 4 year old girls skull and murdered her. You do not consider that evil?
July 16th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Interesting…
many call the israeli REACTION to the Iranian/Hezbollah invasion a war crime…
Israel, as I recall, littered q00’s of thousands of leaflets calling for civilians to evacuate. Used auto dialing servers to CALL Lebanese civilians to GET OUT..
Israel DID not TARGET civilians, whereas the 10,000 rockets that Hezbollah did fire, DID TARGET civilians…
War Crimes? bullshit… If Iran/Hamas/Syria/Hezbollah start raining rockets down on Israel it is NOT a war crime to naplam, clusterbomb those areas…
actually Israel did neither WHEN THE AREAS WERE POPULATED.
Maybe Israel should LOWER it’s behavior to that of it’s enemies…
1. NO NOTICE, Shell Gaza and or Lebanon (or whereever) the moment it is fired upon, and DO AIM AT CIVILIAN AREAS JUST LIKE THEY DO.
2. NO PRISONERS WILL GET ANY RED CROSS CONTACT
3. NO REMAINS TO BE RETURNED FOR AT LEAST 10 YEARS, AND NO ID’ing remains.
If the arabs are so happy with the return of their hero maybe from now on, maybe they should be shot to death after questioning, thus removing any chance of a hero’s welcome
July 16th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
oh, and shooting a NON-uniformed enemy combatant to death is NOT a war crime.
according to the geneva convention…..
July 16th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Aliya:
No, if soldiers fighting in western armies, including the IDF and the US army were found to have bashed in the head of a four year old child, never mind shooting unarmed civilians, they’d face a military tribunal and punishment on conviction. Unlike the “resistance fighters” of the Muslim world, we do hold to the Geneva conventions. Hezbollah doesn’t. It also could care less about the lives of the people it supposedly represents as it uses them as human shields in their mad plan to foist a radical Shiite government upon a pluralistic society.
Your attempt at drawing moral equivalence is thoroughly repugnant.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Believe it or not EDB I actually agree with you on some of your points.
For one thing, carpet bombing never succeeds on its own. It didn’t work in WWII (neither the Germans or the Allies succeeded in bombing their enemies into submission), it didn’t work in Vietnam (more bombs dropped there than in WWII), it didn’t work in the beginning of the Afghan campaign, and it sure as hell didn’t work in Lebanon.
Bombing is something you do when you want to soften up an enemy for a land invasion. Or to give your men air support. Or to take out hardened targets. But aside from the airfields there wasn’t really anything to soften up in Beirut. So there was absolutely no point to it.
But that’s about the limit of how far we agree.
What Olmert SHOULD have done, was to send in troops. Find and kill (not capture) as many members of Hizballah as possible, preferably the leadership, and LEAVE. He didn’t, because he didn’t want to get bogged down in a land war with massive casualties. Which is ridiculous given that he is the one who decided to declare war in the first place.
If you are going to start a war, then you’d better be prepared to finish it, otherwise, save everyone a lot of trouble.
But I did learn one thing from this entire tragedy/comedy. And that is, it is far worse to have an incompetent jackass in office than a competent jackass.
-ron
July 16th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
ron states:
What Olmert SHOULD have done, was to send in troops. Find and kill (not capture) as many members of Hizballah as possible, preferably the leadership, and LEAVE. He didn’t, because he didn’t want to get bogged down in a land war with massive casualties.
What Olmert should have done was carpet bomb southern lebanon and hezbollah controlled areas of beirut without allowing civilians to get out…
Ron: Which is ridiculous given that he is the one who decided to declare war in the first place.
Ron, sorry, your off base… Hezbollah/iran INVADED israel, killed IDF soldiers, kidnapped 2 and shot hundreds of rockets at civilians into israel as a smoke screen…
that was the war declaration….
Lebanon got about 1% of what it deserved…
A much better response would have been the killing of 20-50 thousand lebanese, the total destruction of beirut, the electric grid, sewage treatment plants, bridges, water pipelines (including the illegal damming of rivers flowing into israel (also a legal cause for war)
I bet if Lebanon had actually had suffered from what I just painted they would not be screaming about their great victory today…
the one lesson I have learned is simple, it is legal to hate the jews, israel, but if action is taken to murder israelis or jews then they must be killed along with any and all support they receive…
there must be a painful cost to those that support the murder of jews..
If you are going to start a war, then you’d better be prepared to finish it, otherwise, save everyone a lot of trouble.
But I did learn one thing from this entire tragedy/comedy. And that is, it is far worse to have an incompetent jackass in office than a competent jackass.
-ron
July 16th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
ron: If you are going to start a war, then you’d better be prepared to finish it, otherwise, save everyone a lot of trouble.
But I did learn one thing from this entire tragedy/comedy. And that is, it is far worse to have an incompetent jackass in office than a competent jackass.
David: Sorry I did not edit that part off of my previous post
July 16th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I agree fully with Dave, but want to add; The ignorance of the world press portrays Israel as the perpetrator of war crimes when in fact as Dave points out we are the victims of war crimes. We mourn war crimes our enemies celebrate them. This is obvious in this “prisoner” exchange.
The exchange of a Monster murderer (hero to his people) for 2 dead bodies tells our enemies to not respect the rights of future prisoners. We have put Gilad Schalit’s life in real jeopardy.
The government of Israel should have a prisoner exchange policy so we can facilitate the return of our sons and daughters. But, the policy needs to be “unless they come back alive you get nothing, and if anything happens to them your leadership will pay the price”.
Stan
July 16th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Lynne and Shira,
I was not talking about Kuntar, and have condemned his actions, you can check comments I’ve left in regards to Dave’s blogs about him and his crimes.
I was speaking in more general terms, and NOT in any way specifically or otherwise about Kuntar. and I said as much in my original comment in THIS thread.
Peace, Salaam, and Shalom
Aliya (A shia Muslim trying to see the common ground we share as HUMAN BEINGS)
July 17th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Dave,
I think what you said is damn silly. There’s a word for it, it’s called “overkill”. Bombing Lebanon into the stone age is not merely immoral, or unecessary, more importantly it wouldn’t work.
If Lebanon had suffered what you proposed, you would not merely find yourself facing the Arab world, but you could easily expect to be facing European soldiers as well. If that scenario appeals to you, well, you and I are obviously living in two different realities.
Bombing Gaza into the stone age on the other hand is perfectly acceptable as far as I am concerned.
-ron
July 17th, 2008 at 4:02 am
“Good and evil do not change.” That is the truth.
I wish more people in my country (USA) would wake up and realize what’s really going on. It’s a vain wish, I suppose.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”