200 Dead Bodies + 5 Prisoners…

20 Responses to “200 Dead Bodies + 5 Prisoners…”

1. Lynn Gazis-Sax on July 19th, 2008 12:17 am

   Wow! Those are some highly valued corpses.

2. Lynn Gazis-Sax on July 19th, 2008 12:28 am

   It reminds me of a Tom Paxton song that’s sung from the point of view of a corpse, apparently an anonymous corpse of a soldier who had been marked missing in action, is finally taken back to Arlington years later. Probably written with a Vietnam War era death in mind.

3. Ahmad al-Safawi on July 19th, 2008 2:29 pm

   That is a morale that even i, as an Arab nasserist, can admire. However, it helps strenghtening Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon, which i am unhappy with.

   It have came to my knowledge that pro-Hizbollah arabs deny that one of the released prisoners actually did kill a little girl in a raid in Israel. Do anyone have any prooves that he did?

4. anna on July 19th, 2008 2:48 pm

   It seems even Kuntar agrees:

   http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3569961,00.html

   I think it is care but I also think it could be difference in culture. ‘Religious’ cultures tend to see the body after death as being merely a shell and that the real person’s soul/spirit as being the person, which has departed. However, secular cultures, like Israel for the most part, see the body as being the person, period. Thus getting the body back, equates to somehow getting the person back….

5. Roman Kalik on July 19th, 2008 7:07 pm

   Actually, Anna, this is an entirely Jewish reaction - giving the bodies a proper burial is very important in Judaism, as is Pidyon Shvuyim, acting towards the release of our captured.

   This entry may bear some light on the issue: http://www.jewfaq.org/death.htm

   Both issues I mentioned above (saving the living and bringing the dead for burial) play a very active role in Israeli society - you simply don’t leave someone behind, ever, even if it’s just the body of a comrade. The Israeli military revolves around the concept of never ever leaving a man behind - and every Israeli soldier knows that he won’t be left to rot should he be captured or killed. At the very least, his family will have a marked grave.

   In fact, Respect for the Dead, or preserving the Sanctity of the Dead, are entirely religious affairs - and I have seen them present in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That death is not viewed as the final step in our journey, but rather a required and unavoidable part of it, does not go counter to the respect we show to the “earthly shell”, if you will.

   Whereas it is in entirely secular societies, specifically secular Atheist ones, that I have noted the greatest disrespect one can ever find to the bodies of people, where they were taken to whatever experiment and dissection one can think of, simply because they were inanimate bags of dead flesh after their death, and thus should really be put to better use than to simply let them rot…

   In fact, in the early Fifties, a pretty major uproar on that issue occurred here in Israel over the practices of pathologists and medical students, as back then the state essentially owned the bodies of prisoners, insane, to do with as it pleased - and total autopsies occurred on the dead of the general populace as well at the stroke of a pen, if some Mapai official thought it could Serve To Advance Science.

   No, treating the dead with respect is not a secular practice at all… And in the Soviet Union, the way the dead were treated (unless they were important enough to commemorate and “immortalize” for the State) soon advanced to the dead… Medical treatment was free in the old USSR, and the medical experiments were a bonus, For the Good of the Collective and so on.

6. anna on July 19th, 2008 8:28 pm

   I’m not saying that religious societies are devoid of respect for the dead, merely that they do not attach as much significance to the physical due to their belief that the person is embodied in some supernatural element. It doesn’t mean that they treat the physical with any less respect. It was just a thought, based on observation of secular culture, where people go and ‘visit’ loved ones to talk to them, ie attend the grave and other such things, which are quite alien to some, not sure if all, cultures which hold belief in the supernatural. It shows that they believe that the person is at that physcal location, which explains why the physical body would be so important to have.

   but yeah, I get what you’re saying and I’ve heard that phrase before about leaving no one behind.

7. Howie on July 19th, 2008 11:01 pm

   RK…

   It seems the tradition or belief has very early roots. There are frequent references in the Torah, for example, about folk being pretty damn particular where they are buried. I believe both Issac and his kid Joe…were ademant about having even their bones ultimately brought back to Israel. The Bible itself is very careful about noting where various functionaries are buried etc.

   Funny, I lean towards Anna in the sense that I can’t see how it can matter…I mean in any final sense…otherwise…folks that were burned alive, lost at sea, blown to bits…what would happen to their souls.

   It was a stupid trade for Israel.

8. Roman Kalik on July 20th, 2008 5:16 am

   Not sure how ’secular’ that custom is, Anna, truth to be told. If there is nothing after death and the current life is final, then what would be the point to visit the physical body? It’s a bag of rotting meat and bones that *used to be* sentient by that point. If anything, going to the burial site and talking to the departed implies that at some level, the person talking believes that somewhere, the spirit of the departed is listening…

   Which, in turn, implies at least some belief in the supernatural.

   Perhaps it’s a shallow belief, and perhaps those who are more familiar with their faiths don’t need to do that… But we do live in a physical world, and by and large we need our physical anchors to tie us to the spiritual world.

   Howie, disasters and bodies that have been lost or destroyed… these don’t put aside the effort one should put towards changing that reality *where you can make a difference*. It is not a matter of what happens to the soul later, but a matter of us understanding the importance of life and death, the living *and* the dead, that we are *not* just temporarily-sentient meatbags.

   But it was still a bad trade, yes. The cost paid for the two bodies was above and beyond what they were truly worth, thus putting the living in danger - for if Israel is willing to pay such a price for bodies, why bother with keeping prisoners alive? Apparently, the appearance of it is enough to get us to pay the price.

   But I don’t hardly blame our government for this one, oh no. Every time the mere *mention* of the *possibility* of the two prisoners being dead was raised, a media uproar ensued. When the Army Rabbinate started the process of declaring Regev and Goldwasser dead, the families sued the army via the Supreme Court.

   Dig this, Howie? The families. Sued. The army. For trying to state the facts. And the media *supported* them, making the Army Rabbinate look like some kind of evil villain that would leave soldiers to die by pretending that they’re already dead.

   As much as I despise our current crop of politicians, they *did* try to make the facts heard - but it was much easier for the rather emotional Israeli public to pretend that reality was different… Not all of the public, but part of it. Enough of it for the media to feed off the hype, and turn it all into a closed loop that fed off itself…

   So yeah, we gave in to the body-snatcher. We gave him everything he wanted. And now, we’ll blame the government for it - even though this time, the government did exactly what we wanted it to do, and this is why the consensus in the Knesset was reached in such a quick and immediate manner.

   And this is what the Israeli public will never admit to itself - that in its little “war” against its electorates, it won. Good for us, eh? Herd mentality sure works!

9. anna on July 20th, 2008 6:27 am

   No. ‘visiting’ the person shows precisely that they believe that the person was entirely embodied in their physical body- it shows that for them being near to the body physically equates to being near their loved one. And people don’t generally tend to think of their loved ones in terms of the end result of the natural processes of life, as you eloquently put it ‘bag of …….’- but rather as the person. Secondly, the talking bit doesn’t equate to talking to their soul/spirit- that’s your conclusion based on your beliefs. Grieving is not a logical process and the talking is most probably a coping mechanism, for grief, loneliness and the prospect of a life without their loved one.

10. Drima on July 20th, 2008 6:57 am

    Jews in da house, thanks for info that adds a context to this seemingly crazy deal.

    As much as I admittedly admire the value and respect demonstrated here, I can’t help but feel that it was a pretty dumb exchange. The 200 dead bodies, fine. But Kuntar? Really?

11. Roman Kalik on July 20th, 2008 9:32 am

    You may be right, Anna, though I’d say there’s certainly quite a lot of gray in this issue, rather than simply black and white.

    Drima, Kuntar was supposedly given in exchange for Hezb’s report on Ron Arad’s fate, as per the original offer Israel gave Hezb years before the second Leb war. In reality, the report given shortly before the exchange was rubbish - Hezb didn’t give any concrete information, instead giving “theories”. The Mossad said it was crap, and told the PM that it was a no-dealer. Sadly, the report was just a matter of saving face, and the deal itself had become a certainty. No one wanted another prisoner case to drown in the seas of time… people wanted it to end, Hezb demanded Kuntar or nothing, and the government did what it did.

    All in all, it just made a lot of people here consider the death penalty to be a more valid consideration, though it doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t valid legally.

    By the way, I read an interview with the man who commanded the army unit that apprehended Kuntar, and he said that Raful (Refa’el Eitan, then commander of the Israeli armed forces) nearly bit his head off for taking Kuntar alive, or so he described the conversation. Maybe it was because Raful realized that the murderous bastards of yesterday become the Symbols of the Resistance tomorrow, with all that entails…

12. anna on July 20th, 2008 11:16 am

    if it disagrees with your views, it must be grey- yep, know the lesson.

13. Roman Kalik on July 20th, 2008 11:48 am

    …and by the same logic, I could say that if it disagrees with *your* views, it has to be an expression of either my arrogance or my self-certainty. Whichever appeals to you at the time.

    Frankly, I simply don’t see people as operating in such a simplistic manner, and yet I *can* expect them to reach the same form of behavior from the two stated points of origin, even though I still see my own premise as the more dominant. Perhaps it is simply a matter of my own context and thus, of my personal bias, I don’t discount that. But I do not entirely discount my premise based simply on the fact that it *might* be influenced by my beliefs - if I did that, I wouldn’t be having that many conversations, now would I?

14. anna on July 20th, 2008 12:14 pm

    um, no actually, that’s not the type of logic i use, but now that you mention it….

15. Howie on July 20th, 2008 2:34 pm

    RK-

    You gave me a side I had only heard a bit about and now the entire thing makes much more sense. The pressure…I guess the gov. had little choice and was lied to by Hiz. on top of that. Good points as always RK. I think the other point too, is that Hiz. never revealed if these guys were dead or alive…which added more to the pressure.

    It was dirty business. People flipped at the Israeli government and pretty much forgot who the real evil was…Hizboallah.

16. Andrew Brehm on July 21st, 2008 12:16 pm

    “However, it helps strenghtening Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon, which i am unhappy with.”

    So are we, Ahmad, so are we.

17. Roman Kalik on July 21st, 2008 7:47 pm

    Ahmad, just noticed your question, not sure how I missed it…

    In any case, expecting Samir Kuntar’s and Hezbollah’s campaign to paint him a hero, his classified court proceedings file was opened to public review.

    http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Terror+Groups/The+Kuntar+File+Exposed+-+Yediot+Aharonot+14-Jul-2008.htm

    It was kept classified for two main reasons, I suppose. One was that Kuntar was a major state security issue, and as such the details of his entrance to Israel, as well as any additional intelligence he may have possessed, were important enough to keep from public review.

    The second reason is because I don’t think the officials involved wanted the media circus. Samir Kuntar committed what was at the time the grisliest and most horrible violent event to occur in Israel. But in Israel, a “closed session court” just means that you get leaks rather than a full-scale media assault. Israel is a *country* that behaves like a small town community. Everyone knows everyone, at least to some extent. A careful evaluation of one’s family and social ties will eventually land the average Israeli with potential friends just about anywhere.

    And when I say “anywhere”, I mean it. Thus leaks, as does favor-pandering, occur often. To some extent, they have became as central to Israeli society as falafel stands.

    Public standards leaned more towards not airing that kind of… horror, if you will… in front of everyone. For the sake of the families involved if for no one else.

    And I can guess just what testimony Justice Ron Shapira refused to open to the public - that of the pathologist. Though much has changed since the Seventies and Eighties, at least that much remained.

    Though it didn’t prevent them from publishing the details of how Einat Haran’s *brain matter* was on Kuntar’s rifle butt, which is grisly enough.

    I don’t know what went through Kuntar’s mind, nor do I know what went through the minds of the members of his “unit”, as they planned and executed their attack. And I’m not sure I want to know.

    And you know, funny thing is… I read on several Lebanese blogs (not the kind that would be all that friendly to me) how Kuntar should be congratulated solely for surviving our evil Israeli prisons… well, I guess they didn’t pay attention to the fact that Kuntar finished a degree, got married, got *divorced*, all in his supposedly-harrowing Israeli prison experience. And got out looking the picture of overfed health. A day after leaving his prison cell, and it’s as if he was never there in the first place…

    I’m starting to think it was a shame the Knesset couldn’t bring itself to change the law regarding capital punishment in Israel, back in the days of the trial.

18. Nobody on July 21st, 2008 8:16 pm

    Roman Kalik on July 21st, 2008 7:47 pm

    . . .

    And you know, funny thing is… I read on several Lebanese blogs (not the kind that would be all that friendly to me) how Kuntar should be congratulated solely for surviving our evil Israeli prisons… well, I guess they didn’t pay attention to the fact that Kuntar finished a degree, got married, got *divorced*, all in his supposedly-harrowing Israeli prison experience. And got out looking the picture of overfed health. A day after leaving his prison cell, and it’s as if he was never there in the first place…

    Don’t forget to mention that his wife was receiving state stipend as a wife of a prisoner and that he graduated from our open university with a thesis that was something about Israel’s imperialism in the Middle East. The nastiest thing about all this is that these people no longer even care to keep our prisoners alive while we turned our prisoners in a PHD hothouse.

    Anyway, now that the hero is back to his homeland it’s no longer our problem. It’s up to the Arabs to decide what they want to do with the man. I think it would be appropriate to finish this discussion with this picture of Kuntar greeting jubilant crowds in Beirut. I don’t know what kind of associations people get when they see this photo but for me this is the true face of the Arab nation and the world of Islam. Let alone that all this happens in a country that’s considered by many as the most liberal and Westernized Arab country.

    Enjoy the photo

19. Jack on July 22nd, 2008 3:02 pm

    And of course upon his release Kuntar made a point of saying that he intends to resume his murderous ways.

20. Tamar on July 25th, 2008 8:58 pm

    Yes it’s true. We do value our dead. One of our army unwritten rules is that you never leave a wounded or dead soider behind…..we would have paid more. Much more. And we will pay - for Gilaad Shalit.

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