It was so terribly wrong of Israel to agree to pay the same price for our boys,whether alive or dead. This tells our enemies that if they kidnap our soldiers, there is no incentive to keep them alive... they are worth the same to us.

Shame on Olmert for being such a weak, power-hungry, spineless b*&%$#d. Dear G-d please send Israel a REAL leader.

rafi,

i simply can't believe that olmert didn't already know for sure they were dead. and so if he let the charade go this far, it is going through. it would take a man with much bigger you-know-what to do what you suggest.

we can only hope that israel has an apache on standby for when nasrallah comes out of his bunker to greet kuntar

(my only question, which i don't know if the can determine at this point without an autopsy), is when exactly they died. during capture or more recently

this is just so depressing. at least the regev/goldwasser families should get some type of nechama from this

LOZ - I do not know if they can be believed, but Lebanese media have been saying since yesterday that one of them was killed during the initial abduction and the second was seriously injured.
Now that we know they are both dead, the second probably died soon after from his injuries.

so when Nasrallah said Israel can expect a surprise from this trade, which brought up false hopes that at least one might be alive, what did he mean? maybe among the bodies and parts they are returning to us, maybe Ron Arad's remains will be included?
or was he just completely playing with us?

Relying on the government is pointless. It would be better to daven that the helicopter taking the terrorists crashes in Beirut airport on top of Nasralla. It would be a great kiddush H'.

i read the lebanese media reports. but who knows how accurate they are. everything is a mind game. the report just makes israel look even more gullible and weak.

"maybe among the bodies and parts"

that is the sickest part of this whole business. this is the second time now that he is handing over parts. i have no doubt that he has a whole supply of parts, that he can dole out to israel every so often when he needs to.

I was wondering about cancelling the trade and bringing Kuntar back (i would be impressed if they did that).
But dont we have a chiyuv of mes mitzvah?

I don't know.

Two years ago, there was a media report about the forensics that said there was so much blood at the scene of the attack the one was dead and that the second needed an ER ASAP and that there was no facility in southern Lebanon up to the job.

In other words, who is really surprised?

Olmert is tired of winning. He must be feeling exhilarated today.

Rabbi Weiss, former Cjief Rabbi of the IDF, just said on the radio that they knew immediately that Goldwasser had died during the attack. Regev was the question.

That being the case, the question is open why they dragged out the pain of the Goldwassers for so long. And if this deal was done in large part to relieve Karnit Goldwasser of her agunah status, as Olmert and others said two weeks ago, if they already knew then what was the need now for the deal, even from an emotional standpoint?

'The deal' seems reasonable to me, even knowing what we all now know.

1. Kuntar, had he been a murdering momzer stam (rather than a murdering momzer terrorist), would have been released around now anyway (20-odd years in prison).

2. The other live guys were pows, and need to be returned to Lebanon by international norms.

3. The dead bodies of Lebanese various, were only held by us as bargaining chips. It's time to play those chips.

4. The wild card here is the Palestinian terrorists to be released. Israel said, in effect "you Hizballah won't tell us if the boys are alive or dead, so we Israel won't tell you how many Palestinians we'll release."
If the boys were returned alive, one supposes that more Palestinians would be released. In the current circumstances it'll (hopefully) be very few or none at all.

Actually the deal does make sense.

Besorot tovot,
David.

I'm surprised that your assessment of the deal didn't include receiving info on Ron Arad that was completely unacceptable.

I don't consider that part of the deal. nobody expected any real new info in advance anyway, and they could have stopped it right there, as the deal originally stipulated that if the info was not satisfactory they could call it off. they chose t go ahead with it regardless, so I consider that aspect of the deal to be not relevant.

I don't get it. Israel now has the bodies. So why must they go through with the rest of the deal? We can kill terrorists, but we cannot cheat them?

The english mishpacha had an article this past week about a pilot who was shot down during one of the wars, and israel was so convinced he was dead, they told his family he was dead. Lo and behold they were able to get him back (I forgot all the details). The article was clearly going down on the govt for jumping to conclusions without proper evidence. I imagine there was a fear over here by the govt that they will announce their death and then hizbullah will return (one of) them home. I would be very interested to see a statement from the government saying either: "hizbullah are jerks for giving us dead bodies" or "we knew all along." The govt having no response is all the more frightening to me.

I suspect if we cheat them, they will:
1. not trust us in future deals
2. take revenge on other captives (if they have any - such as Arad, Baumel, Katz, Feldman, etc.)
3. be incited to kidnap more soldiers/people and extract higher prices.

I hear you but so what? You don;t think they would do all of that anyway? We killed hundreds of their fighters, you don't think that makes them angry? We forced Nasralla to live like a rat in a bunker, you don;t think that incites him to take revenge?

In this whole thing, that is the one aspect in which we have had the upper hand. Nasrallah has no freedom of movement and lives ni hidden locations underground because of his fears for his life.

RAFI:

"I suspect if we cheat them, they will . . ."

or it means they will not screw around with israel much if they know that israel is playing with a more realistic rule book?

LOZ - I have no problem with pulling a fast one on them (that is what I suggested in the post itself). I was just suggesting reasons why the government will not.

Considering all of the efforts of Karnit Goldwasser over these past two years, it is hard to believe that "they knew immediately that Goldwasser died during the attack". She certainly didn't seem to know this information.

"We didn't kid ourselves; the information was there for us to see."

The above is a quote from Shlomo Goldwasser, Udi's father. I don't blame them. They were counting on the 1% chance that the boys were alive. The government probably did not give them all the info. They had to work their hardest for their return.
That means nothing as far as the government, and what it knew, is concerned.

may hashem avenge their deaths!

B"H

Rafi, I am shocked.

Is this hasatah le'alimut?

Better watch out. We know that the Shabba"k is reading English language blogs these days.

No, Rafi's readers...there is no such thing as Free Speech in Israel...unless you agree with the government....

I know that may sound weird to those of you living it up in the U. S., but it's true.

hasatah l'alimut, inciting violence, is only a problem when inciting private people to resort to violence. Acts of violence by the government are perfectly acceptable. I was calling on, hoping for, the government to commit an act of violence. not a private citizen. not that I would necessarily be against that either. Each case on its own merits, or lack thereof.

Rafi, aren't you forgetting our lovely Supreme Court?

If they don't like you, they just change the rules and do whatever they want to you.

So, that although you are technically correct in your understanding of the holy medinah's holy laws {sarcasm}, you cannot be too sure that even mentioning such a thing will be retroactively illegal tomorrow.