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Stan Goodenough is an experienced journalist who has written about politics in South Africa and the Middle East for such organizations as The Daily Dispatch of East London, South Africa, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post, and the Virtual HolyLand website. He has been a South African gentile resident in Israel for 12 years. Stan is editor of and .
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By Stan Goodenough
November 7, 2003
Courtesy of Jerusalem Newswire.
Hizbullah has Israel spread painfully over a barrel, with an unbearable choice to make.
The Syrian-sponsored terror group is holding the corpses of Benny Avraham, Omar Suweid and Adi Avitan - Israeli soldiers wounded and left to bleed to death by Hizbullah killers three years ago. The boys' families desperately want their bodies back; want to bury them in Israel, close to their homes.
Another Jew, abducted businessman Elchanan Tannenbaum, is suffering unspeakably in the group's torture chambers - his teeth wrenched from his jaws, the nails ripped out of his fingers and toes, his internal organs badly damaged. We can barely imagine the agonies his two children have had to go through these excruciating, never-ending months.
And one more Israeli, Air Force navigator Ron Arad, has been missing in action for 17 interminable years. Scraps of intelligence have periodically escaped, suggesting he may still be alive, and tantalizingly keeping hope from dying out in the wounded souls of those who love him.
Hizbullah is offering to give Israel the three bodies and the wreck that once was Tannenbaum. And the organization's leaders have thrown in an agreement to try to locate Arad.
In exchange, the organization is demanding Israel release from Israeli jails 440 Arab terrorists, some with the blood of Jews on their hands.
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is telling his Zionist foe:
Give us 440 of our men, (Lebanese, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs) and we'll ship home for their families and for all Israel to see those of your loved ones whose bodies we have mutilated and whose lives we have drained out of them.
Not only will you have the grisly remains to inspect, to check for missing parts; and not only will you have the mutilated body and face of Tannenbaum to display on television to the rest of his countrymen. You will also have twisted the knife in the wounds of your own people, those who lost their loved ones to the terrorists who are now to be let go to receive a heroes welcome from their own.
Furthermore, we will see what we can do about helping locate Arad, if we really feel like it. Yes, we know that just by agreeing to do this we will be blowing on the embers of hope that linger in the hearts of the Arad family, bringing their agonizing and their sleepless nights back to bear - full force. But don't you see? Don't you know us yet Israel? We enjoy this prospect. It gives us immense satisfaction, to make you suffer and suffer and suffer again.
Jews trade good.
And to top it all, given that we've gotten such a good deal out of this, we'll be sure to keep our eyes open for more Jews to kidnap, mutilate and kill, and whose conditions and whereabouts we can keep from you, knowing how much agony this inflicts upon your people as a nation.
You don't think it's a good deal? Well neither do we, hated Jews. But do you know what we'll do? We'll introduce more pain into the mix for you. If you DON'T agree to this deal, which we acknowledge is all really in our favor, then you will be responsible for the immediate and, you can be sure, horrendously painful death of Tannenbaum. You vote no, and you'll sentence your own man to die. And we'll keep our offer on Arad for another day, when we can exact an even more painful price out of you.
This is the stark, unenviable choice the Israeli cabinet is going to have to debate and decide on this coming Sunday: Inflict pain on our people or inflict pain on our people? What will hurt the least, in the short term and in the long? Only really evil people can put such an option in front of their foes.
There is one more choice, though, laying there in front of the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - the man widely known as Israel's greatest soldier. It's a choice in the tradition of Eichmann and Entebbe, Osirak and Beirut. It's a choice built on honor, on courage, and, most of all, on reality. Its results, eventually, will mean no more kidnappings, no more cross-border terrorism, and no more hostages.
This choice is predicated on the basic, time-tried principle that, if you give in to terrorists, you'll have to keep on giving in to them. The only way to end the cycle of pain and death is to take the battle to the killers - without compromise.
Israel has the intel, and Israel has the equipment, the weaponry - everything it needs. The cabinet should vote "no" Sunday, reviving what used to once be the nation's hallmark: We don't negotiate with terrorists.
Then Israel should take the war to them, whatever it takes - a massive show of power that will obliterate Hizbullah, leave Lebanon reeling, and send a loud and unmistakable message to Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, Cairo and Tripoli: The days of holding Israel hostage are over.
It's probably impossible to put oneself in the shoes of those families who so desperately yearn to lay their eyes on their precious children and parents just one more time. In the end, however, if by leaving them in the hands of the Almighty, and allowing the government to wield effectively the sword which He has placed in its hand, untold numbers of Jewish lives will be saved and secured against the kind of torment these families are going through today.
It's a hard choice, but its one, given the nature of the enemy, that will have to be made one day if Jews are no longer to suffer and die with the sadistic laughter of their killers in their ears.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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