Redeeming the Captives

July 3, 2008

by Daniel E. Levenson

In the summer of 2006 Hezbollah launched a violent assault from Lebanon, killing several Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two others during a border incursion that sparked Israel’s most recent war of self defense. The capture of these two young men, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev was international news and a clear sign that Israel could not trust either the Lebanese government or the small group of UN observers charged with keeping the peace along its northern border, to prevent hostile actions by Hezbollah.

In the past few days both Israeli and American media outlets have been reporting that the two men are no longer alive and that the Israeli government has decided to make a deal with Hezbollah to recover the remains of the two fallen soldiers. As Ethan Bronner reported in the New York Times, in return for the bodies of Mr. Regev and Mr. Goldwasser, Israel is going to hand over a convicted terrorist named Samir Kuntar as well as the bodies of some Lebanese infiltrators, and at a later date, some Palestinian prisoners will be released. Israel has also agreed to provide information to the UN about four Iranian Diplomats who went missing inside Lebanon.

There has been debate about this within Israel, and it is perhaps not surprising that Hezbollah is claiming this as a victory - after all, they have shown that they are in a position to negotiate not just an exchange of those killed in battle (which would perhaps be seen as an honorable thing by all sides) but that they can also win the release of a murderer like Mr. Kuntar and potentially the release of Palestinian terrorists as well.

Different groups and different people are of course bound to see evidence of different things in this deal. For Hezbollah and its supporters the message may be that Israel sees the terrorist organization as sufficiently powerful to dictate the terms of this exchange.

The opposite view, which is the one I am inclined to embrace, is that Israel feels it has a moral obligation to “redeem the captives,” even if those captives are no longer living. I think it is noble that Israel is willing to go these ends to return the two fallen soldiers to Israel, but at the same time, there is something troubling about the release of Mr. Kuntar, who was willing to murder innocent Israelis (including a 4 year old child) to further his political agenda. In the end, the government of Israel has decided to follow its moral conscience and send a message to the nation and to the world that those who give their lives in defense of Israel will not be forgotten nor exiled from their homeland, not in life, or in death.