Ron Arad (or his image at least) was featured today in a trailer promo on Lebanese TV for an upcoming program. What the program will be about has not been made clear (at least to us Israelis), but I suspect it will be about how the Hezbollah and other groups over the years have hurt the Zionists and captured soldiers.
The image and footage used in the promo was supposedly footage and images os Ron that have never before been made public or seen by anybody (outside of those who created the images). They have not yet been dated, but it is clear they are from a later time than previously released images of him. We just do not know yet if they are recent pictures or from a number of years ago. It is clear that somebody there knows of his fate and his location.
I suspect that Iran and Syria via Hezbollah and Lebanon are playing psychological warfare with us by bringing up Ron Arad. They are letting us know what can happen to the abducted soldiers if we are not forthcoming in the current negotiations (or lack thereof, depending which of the conflicting reports you believe.
Regardless, I had an idea it would come to this. Immediately after the capture of Gilad Shalit from the Gaza border by Hamas terrorists, there were debates whether to neghotiate for his release, along with conflicting reports whether such negotiations were taking place. Different government ministers weighed in whether they support negotiations or not.
On July 6th I wrote a post entitled "Negotiate a Deal". In this post I "predicted" (despite my being against negotiations - which was an issue I was misunderstood on and subsequently criticized about) that it would clearly come to a situation where we would be negotiating for Shalit's release with the potential release of hundreds and thousands of prisoners.
We have now arrived at the point where we are negotiating for the release of our soldiers. Yet we are playing our weak hand. We went to war with the stated goal of releasing the soldiers. We stopped the war without having achieved their release. We agreed to a ceasefire which does not gaurantee their release. All we have are statements made by Ehud Olmert every so often that he gaurantees they will be freed. All this is a weak hand.
We are now relegated to the fact that the only way we will achieve the release of the soldiers is via negotiations. And now the Lebanese are waving Ron Arad in our face. Is he alive? I do not know. Is he being held somewhere so we can negotiate for him? I don't know.
But if instead of going to a war the politicians were not willing to fight whole-heartedly and then having to negotiate anyway we would have taken the strong hand from the start (for example using the negotiation points I suggested), Hezbollah would not be able to play these mind games with us. And I think the situation would have already been resolved.
Excellent points. I personally think they are simply using Arad to gain more chips to get more "quality" prisoners in exchange for the soldiers. They are saying that "We still have something else you want besides the other two. You want all of them back, you have to play it our way. We know how you Jews are about sanctity of life and all that infidel garbage." At least, that's my opinion. I think the likelihood of him being alive is slim to none, and I think we can chalk this up as another failure for the government. G-d, what that poor family must be going through...
ReplyDelete-OC
Great insights and excellent points.
ReplyDeleteIsrael may as well give up or go back to war because they already lost.
olah - whether he is alive or not is not really the issue (though I hope he is alive and we get him back). Hezbollah has made fools of us again.
ReplyDeleteDan - thanks. We already lost and the problem is we also gave up. Our leaders have led us astray and not led us honestly and fairly. That is what happens when they are people who no nothing of leadership and have achieved their power through years of buying and bribing their way to higher positions. Now they are in the seats of power and do not know what to do.
I would not want Olmert to lead us back to war, because he will only make it worse. The only way to go back to war and achieve our securoty is by changing the leadership. Hopefully we will not need to go back to war, but we do need to change the leadership.
I don't think a leadership change will change all that much.
ReplyDeleteIn the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote "when a country decides to enter a war they have already lost."
Lebanon was a good example. Hezbollah baited Israel into a war and Israel lost. There is no way to win a war. You either defeat your enemy, are defeated by your enemy, or have a stalemate. Egypt and Jordan are good examples of a stalemate. All three may eventually lead to a long lasting peace and cultural shift but there is no winning.
Who in Israel can take over the leadership and defeat their enemies?