Sunday, June 25, 2006

25-Jun-06: The difference between terrorists and soldiers

This morning's assault on an Israeli position by three Gazan terror squads brought about the deaths of two IDF soldiers. A third soldier was snatched, alive and wounded, and dragged back to Gaza as a hostage via an 800-meter tunnel stretching into israel from Gaza. This tunnel represents weeks and possibly months of work, confounding headlines like that in Melbourne's Age newspaper that the sneak attack was somehow payback for civilian deaths in the past week.

For decades, Israel has had to deal with an enemy which kidnaps and holds to ransom any Israeli unlucky enough to fall into their clutches. No one seriously holds the terror gangs to any international standard like the Geneva Convention - though why this should be is not so clear to us. At any rate, the identity of the parties responsible is well-enough known to warrant a specific form of response.

This afternoon, the IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz reports to a deeply worried nation that, as far the army is aware, the kidnapped soldier is alive. Halutz tells a press conference:

Hamas is involved in this matter from head to foot, literally. The soldier is alive, and therefore they bear responsibility for his fate.
The so-called Popular Resistance Committees, one of the three terror gangs vying for credit for this morning's act of war, tell a Gaza radio station that the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shilat, has stomach wounds but is in stable condition.

May Hashem
protect him from these barbarians, and bring his rescuers quickly and safely to his side.

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