Even more so, how can our gov’t put an end to kidnapping soldiers and even potentially civlians? Since we do know our enemy, we know that death is not a threatening obstacle to their activities, let alone jail (thats more of a joke than a threat, I believe). However, in lieu of instituting capital punishment in the country (something LONG overdue), why not get them where it hurts in the pocket? No millions of sheckels to the PA, cut off electricity and gas..yada yada yada??

One thing we for sure agree on — we are nearly at our wits end.

The point is that Shalit’s essentially already lost whether he’s alive or not. If not dead already he’s a walking victim who can be (and will be considering his value for releasing prisoners) snatched again by anyone at anytime once you’ve placed a value you’ll pay for his freedom. The only question is whether you endanger everyone else, firstly by giving such a high payment in return for a captured Israeli and secondly by releasing the people best trained to capture and recapture them.

I agree with both Norm and Moshe as I share their points of view, HOWEVER…I wrote this article from a parent’s perspfective, as I have 4 boys to send off to the IDF, *(one of whom will please G-d, serve in just over two years time) and I can’t help but think, what would I do if it were my kid?

I will not speak for the mothers and fathers of these missing children. To them they will always be their children. I will not speak for the guardians of the borders and the towns and the cities of Israel. I do believe that they must act with a strong but righteous hand that is used honorably. This word ‘honor’ has been used as the word under God for centuries. God on our side and on and on and on and on. There will not be an end. Horrible to think, but I think it. There will not. The Iranians will smuggle in bigger and better missiles that go farther and kill more. They have their agenda too. Their god is great also. So they say. They fight for their God and their honor.

I believe they have no honor. I believe the Vietnamese torturers had no honor. Somehow they ‘won’. Maybe it was an unjust war. Israel is not fighting an unjust war. They just need to be honorable about it and very strong.

I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of either Mr. and Mrs. Schalit or the Prime Minister in regards to what to do in this sitution. Israeli prisoners have only been repatriated in wartime - and that mainly from the Egyptians who were only slightly more humane than their Syrian allies.

Regarding soldiers being captured or taken prisioner by terrorist groups, it’s always been a death sentence - except for Elkanah Tannenbaum, who may have have “connections” that enabled him to stay alive.

Maybe Israeli solders should be issued a cyanide pill, like Mossad people are, and if they have the opportunity, to simply swallow it.
At least it prevents the suffering, including by such as Ron Arad, who actually died long ago (it was verified by Russian and other foreign diplomats who had received inside information).

That’s the sad reality of being captured. So much for the “pinchas shevi” issued every IDF recruit. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on!

As an outsider, I question the background facts embedded in the story in the spirit of a quote from the architect Mies van der Rohe: “God is in the details,”–and I seek clarity.

The average Muslim man knows he (or any other man) would have enough trouble keeping FOUR virgins happy for more than a week, let alone 72 for all eternity! This poetic analogy of heavenly reward probably has its basis in the Qur’an but, given my association with moderate Muslims most of my life in New York and elsewhere (and what I’ve heard, seen and read from a multiple of media and academic sources), it is reflected upon by only militant Muslim extremists like the Taliban and the house of Saud. Perhaps many of those who call themselves Hamas fit this description as well. However, a distinction should be kept in the minds of all of us between the Muslim extremists in the world and the other 98% who peacefully follow the dictates of Allah, as that is an important part of the peace process in the Middle East, if there is to be one. Terrorism is a religion onto itself that throughout history has had more Christian converts to its cause than Hindu or followers of Islam. The only way to ferret out their number is to make the distinction between who they are and what they pretend to be at all times.

Regarding the 350 people currently in Israeli prisons: are they ALL terrorists? History has also shown us that there isn’t a country in the world that has ever said otherwise when it served them to say so: whether the prisoners were suspected Al Qaeda via The United States today (as in Abu Graib or Guantanamo); the communist Viet-Cong via the US in the 60s; Japanese empire sympathizers via the US (in the internment camps of California and elsewhere during WWII); Jews via the Nazis (as in Dachau, etc.); Philipino “bandits” in Guam via the US at the turn of the 20th century when the Phillipines was colonized; Nat Turner & Harriet Tubman’s “wild niggers” in the slaveholding American 19th century; Sacagawea’s “pagan Indian people” in the American 18th, and so on. Saying they all are, unquestionably, terrorists not only doesn’t make it true, it all but proves they aren’t.

Such black/white thinking on the topic, given the political/military purpose it usually serves, fuels the fire of Hamas’ militarism as an end in itself, instead of something that must be outgrown en route to peace.

Regarding Hamas, given the fact that both Israel and the U.S. has little stomach for them, many of us in the United States are still bereft of an explanation for their landslide victory in the Palestinian election process a couple years ago. Without an explanation for that that people can stand behind, support, or openly acknowledge and quote, there is no logical basis for the continuance of anything to many of us. New world orders (or those threatening to build one, as Hamas may be), whether it be in religion, science, culture or politics, can only be seen as a viable option to consider building by those who have an entirely different view of the preexisting one. A view that it behooves the proponents of the preexisting order to begin examining in detail, if only on a theoretical basis. Using a grade school interpretation of Hegel, if there is no considering of the antithesis to the Israeli thesis re its view of the Middle East, could there ever be a synthesis that leads to the path to peace?

Again, from an outsider’s point of view looking in: if Hamas and the Palestinians are, in essence, weak minded militaristic little roaches completely programmed by a dirty, corrupt religion–and that is the only logical explanation for the corrupt and brutal Hamas winning their elections by such margins and the terrible events like the one detailed in this article–well, okay. But that definitively means there can be only one “Final Solution” regarding them for the safety and security of the Jewish state: the same one Goebbels and Eichmann had in mind for the safety and security of the German state, and so on, and so on, throughout history. The decaffinated version of that quasi-logical conclusion means that, for the safety and security of the Jewish state, a Palestinian Kristallnacht is overdue, and the Israeli government has earned its right to carry it out. But history teaches us that Kristallnachts in their many forms are the prologue, not the epilogue, of uncontrollable evil, no matter what culture or race suffers under them. And that all of humanity and world civilization is made more fragile if not illusory by them.

In other words, we in America, with Israel’s help, need to openly and frankly discuss the roads Israel has in front of it and which one it is choosing. Moral crisis stories like the above serve the primary purpose, in the end, of making that clear. If Hamas and their followers, etc.–not to mention those that are just caught up in the fight bet. them and the Israeli military–are purely evil, purely weak, and are practised and/or potential terrorists serving a primtive & brutal (thereby false) God, there really is only one road open to the State of Israel in order for it to survive–frightfully ironic or otherwise. If the Palestinian people and/or their leaders aren’t purely such, regardless of to what degree or percentage they are, then there is another more logical, viable and inclusive explanation for what is going on in the Middle East–and another road to follow for peace in its context. A road leading to that “Undiscovered Country” for the both of Israeli and Palestinian that is not only possible but necessary for their mutual survival.

Which road does the story of this fallen soldier–and the painful choices his family and people must make regarding his life–rationalize Israel following? To me, that is the real question. The question that, when answered, all others regarding what Israel must do(like the one posed by this article) can be easily answered in context.