Israel's Bones, Israel's POW's
by Giulio Meotti
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From the Shoah to the POWs, the Jewish people is still haunted by the fate of its missing sons.
There is no belief more ingrained in the ethos of current Israeli military and civilian society than a commitment not to leave its soldiers behind in the field (be they alive or dead).
No other country in the world would have trade 92 living, convicted Egyptian soldiers for 39 bodies of Israeli soldiers killed during the Yom Kippur War.
No other country in the world would have offered (before nixing the transfer) dozens of bodies of multiple terrorists.
But no other country in the world bears the scars that the Jewish State does, nor the almost absolute knowledge that there will be other wars to fight in this generation.
Israel’s unwritten rule of never leaving a soldier behind comes, to a great degree, from a sense of communal obligation following the Shoah.
Israel’s tenacious reverence for human life is what separates the Jews from Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran, al Qaeda and Fatah. To exemplify the parable of Israel’s condition in the Middle East, one has to look to the most dramatic and difficult of all deals: the proposed exchange of one innocent Jewish boy, an unexperienced Israeli army corporal named Gilad Shalit, held in cruel segregation for five years, with about 1.400 Palestinian prisoners condemned by the most rigorous processes that can be ensured by justice.
Among them, are at least a hundred convicts with life sentences, murderers, serial killers of Jewish women and children.
The issue of prisoners has been also discussed extensively by the rabbis. Shlomo Goren, who served as chief IDF rabbi for two decades, ruled that it was permissible to desecrate Shabbat not just to save live soldiers, but also to retrieve a dead soldier’s body, because Israel’s enemies use soldiers’ bodies as bargaining chips to free terrorists.
The story of the prisoners tells how deeply Israel is subject to two special extraordinary forces: total devotion to life and the anti-Semitic cynicism of a world that always pushes Israel to consider giving in.
Is it right or wrong to consider the life of a soldier worth the release of barbaric ferocity to the world?
Throughout its history, Israel has taken radical measures to recover its prisoners of war, paying a hugely disproportionate price in deals.
In 1973 Israeli pilots Boaz Eitan, Pinhas Nahmani and Gideon Magen, held by Syria for three years, were released in exchange for 56 Syrian and Lebanese prisoners.
A reserve officer, Dan Avidan, held in Egypt for four years, was released after Israel had returned dozens of Egyptian prisoners over the preceeding two years and received nothing in exchange.
35 soldiers were released by Egypt in exchange for 1,506 Egyptian prisoners of war (POWs).
In 1974, 60 Israeli POWs and 18 bodies were released from Syria (these prisoners complained of torture, and it was later revealed that Syria had murdered more than 40 Israeli soldiers while in captivity).
In 1975, Yitzhak Salem, captured in Lebanon while on an anti-terrorist mission, was exchanged for 10 Lebanese. 20 convicted terrorists were released in exchange for the remains of Eliahu Hakim and Eliahu Bet-Zuri, two Lehi members hanged in Cairo in 1945.
In 1979, 76 terrorists were released in exchange for soldier Avraham Amram, held in Lebanon for nearly a year.
In 1983, six soldiers were freed from Fatah captivity in Lebanon in exchange for nearly 4,500 prisoners in the Ansar camp and 100 more held in Israeli jails.
In 1984, 291 Syrian soldiers and 20 security prisoners were exchanged for soldiers Gil Fogel, Yohanan Alon and Ariel Lieberman, held for two years, as well as three Israeli civilians who had been detained for nearly two months. The bodies of five Israeli soldiers were also to be part of the exchange, but three of the five coffins returned did not contain the remains of IDF soldiers.
In 1985, 1.150 prisoners were exchanged for soldiers Hezi Shai, Nissim Salem and Yosef Groff, held for nearly three years by Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. The released terrorists included several mass murderers.
It’s a permanent, ghastly ritual in Israel. The government hopes to give bereaved parents and an anxious public some reason to feel relief, so it can implement the terrorist releases without hindrance. The work, carried out quietly, far from prying eyes, is frustrating.
The Jewish State paid a huge price for the principle of not abandoning a soldier in enemy hands. Sometimes, Israeli casualties in rescue operations were greater than the number of POWs Jerusalem liberated.
The Canadian Gen. E. M. Burns, head of the UN Observer corps in the 1950s, wrote that he couldn’t understand an entire nation “going crazy” because of one wounded sergeant taken prisoner. Israelis understood all too well. There was a time when the terrorists knew they would pay a heavy price for holding on to Israeli prisoners.
Unfortunately, today’s situation is the reverse. The Islamic terrorists know that the longer they hold Israeli soldiers, even their corpses, the higher the price they can extort from Israel.
The dilemma involves primarly the families. Not only the prisoner and his family pay a price. And not only the relatives of terror victims, about to see the killers of their loved ones go free, suffer emotional trauma.
The entire Israeli public is a kind of guarantor of the deal, because all citizens in Israel could be the victim in an attack launched by a newly released terrorist. On the other hand, every soldier knows he or she is a candidate for capture and would like to believe that the country will make every sacrifice to free them.
From the Shoah to the POWs, the Jewish people is still haunted by the fate of its missing sons. An invincible people confesses its bewilderment, while the world isolates them and deepens their wounds.
The stories of the families of the missing soldiers should have become a moral example for the world. Joseph Katz, who escaped Nazi detention in Budapest during World War II and lost a son in Lebanon, is a follower of the teachings of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and has always credited his faith as keeping him sane through these harrowing years. He once said: “I am reminded of the passage in Zacharia 4:6: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit’”.
Tzvi Feldman is another missing soldier, named for his paternal grandfather who was killed in the gas chambers. As the firstborn child, his birth was regarded by his father Avraham, the sole survivor of his family, as a sign that the Nazis had not succeeded in obliterating the Feldman line. Avrahm once wrote a letter to Tzvi: “My son, came back home, we are getting older”.
The Feldmans, the Katzs and all the other families have spent the past 30 years swinging between hope and despair, never totally sure whether their sons are alive or dead. It has meant 30 Pessahs, 30 Rosh Hashanas, and more than 1,500 Shabbats sitting around the family table with heartache and longing.
It is disputable, but understandable, that a country, so small and abandoned to itself, is deeply united around the value of life. How sad that, all around Israel, millions of people will make of this choice an invitation to kidnap and kill again.
Does Israel will risk one man’s funeral for the sake of another man’s burial? Is the corpse of a Jewish soldier worth the life of an innocent Jewish civilian? And whose Jewish head would roll for that one?
We could probably find the difficult answers in the face of Ron Arad, the symbol of Israel’s epos, a youthful face that is the love and the nightmare of the Jewish State. We have a few photos of his emaciated and dying body, and a short clip in which Ron says: “I am an Israeli soldier”.
Tammuz 5, 5771 / 07 July 11
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