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kidnapping for ransom: the new tactic
(the terrorist recycle machine)
FIRST WRITTEN May 09th, 2007 - REVISED MAY 17th.
The 3 American soldiers captured, missing, abducted or kidnapped (name it as you want…) South of Baghdad, in a bloody ambush on May 13th 2007, is a clear demonstration that the terrorist bandit-style groups are trying a new strategy, the kidnapping for ransom. Now 4,000 soldiers are searching for the missing ones. Is a repetition of the SLWII (Second Lebanon War). These groups are not freedom fighters, but merely Mafia-style gangs and clans, fighting for money, power, territory and political recognition. The normal “Arab Street” is just another prisoner, held hostage to this mixture of banditries-organized crime-terrorism and radical religion.
Too bad for the American soldiers killed, wounded or missing in action, that only wanted Iraq pacified. Their sacrifices have to be remembered in the fight for democracy and freedom.
A few weeks after Caporal Gilad Shalit* was kidnapped in a deadly attack in Gaza, I wrote an article about the “Symbolism of (kidnapping) Gilad Shalit”. Then, I was thinking that this matter, a small tactical operation, will be over in days or maybe weeks. I was wrong. Later, another 2 soldiers belonging to the Northern Command (Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser ) were abducted in another bloody raid by Hezbollah. Then the Second Lebanon war followed, with so many, too many Israeli soldiers dead.
The civilians on both sides suffered many casualties, but the criminal promoters of these movements, the Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon (under behind-scene Masters Syria and Iran), were just capitalizing, politically, militarily and financially: domestically and abroad.
The list of prisoners to be exchanged presented to the Israelis by the Palestinians is so large, with so many criminals and terrorists that the simple consideration of it is making the political and military (+ security) establishments very uneasy. The list is simply unacceptable. What demands will be posted to the Americans by the captors to free the 3 kidnapped soldiers?
Then the idea of committing acts of terrorism and crimes is a simple time problem: commit the crime, do some time, learn some Hebrew, read a lot, pump some iron, until my buddies in the territories kidnap someone and exchange it with me. For the terrorist elsewhere, the kidnapping for ransom (money and jailed comrades) is exactly like productive recycle machine.
Kidnapping is the weapon of the coward and The Organized Crime. Terrorism is also a tactic. We have to go after the ones who inspire and employ terrorism. We have to look at this symbolism not from a tactical point a view, but from a strategic one: if in the future, another soldier or group of soldiers will be made prisoners, than we have given away all the Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims, jailed terrorists and criminals in Israel and all over the World.
The Palestinians had time and it was always their advantage, along with the birth rate and demographics. The terrorist groups that kidnapped not only Gilad, Eldad and Ehud, but their society as well, as a whole. They do not want sophistication and evolution of their societies and a progressive statehood. The religion is sufficient! The Communists once referred to organized religion as the “opium for the masses”. Were they right!?
The idea that 3 Israeli soldier and the 3 American might be killed by his captors is far fetched. It is not impossible that some internal fight might develop between the terrorist factions, only because of the symbolism and the political weight of this matter. The clashes between factions in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere is like between the "families" (Mafia) on territorial control. Money is the name of the game and all others is just decoration.
“The symbolism” is now beyond the simple prisoner swap or a local tactical military/political affaire. This matter is now in the arena of international geo politics, with a loss of factors and groups trying to win political capital by becoming a factor into the tight equation: a matter between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Some one has to put an end to the mythical and superhuman status of our soldiers, from the prisoner exchange point-of-view, because, some day, we will simply run out of prisoners to exchange with the bandits.
Then, they will ask for what: money, no, they do not need money. The Iranians, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and the Pakistani all have money. Maybe they will ask for land and other commodities. And what will we do when we run out of goods to exchange with the criminals? This is exactly like the story of the “golden fish and the fishermen”.
Being in business with the criminals and terrorist groups is not a good thing. These are simply gang and bandits, in the bad word, just “kidnapping” the freedom fight name for camouflaging simple petty crimes. We just have to find a way to free our missing soldiers and attack, attack, attack. A raid based on Entebbe guidelines and another type & style of "politically correctness" will have to be put in to place. In Gaza, a strip of arid land 4 x 10 miles has only so many places to hide someone. At the same time the Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda's political echelons have to be held responsible for the Israeli kidnapped soldiers, in Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq.
The International Red Cross has to care less for the terrorists captured in Afghanistan and Iraq that are held in Guantanamo Naval base and try to visit the 3 Israeli soldiers kept as captives and care for their well being, or at least care the same…
An Israeli political dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah have only a simple meaning for them: trying to find a way to destroy Israel and its citizens. This dialogue can go either way, with the terrorist’s kidnapping the political agenda of the moderates and progressive elements in their societies. They even have kidnapped the religion and Koran that forbids these acts. All in the name of what?
The peace process can’t go any further when the Palestinian (and Arab countries in general, with only a few exceptions…) educational textbooks, from the elementary level, are bias of Israel, America, the West and general history. Today we fight the terrorists and new generations are grown in hatred-directed-ideology under our watch and our struggle. However the brain washing of the youth must stop and as well the specially "admiration & publicity" of the bomb suicides and martyrdom.
When you don’t have a separation of religion and state, only the inquisition and terror can dominate. Religion is not made to govern. The terrorist groups want the religion to take the place of the state, and we have the Afghanistan under Taliban rule as a vivid and fresh example: a gruesome and grotesque deformation of modern civilization and human rights bill.
In my opinion, the symbolism of the 3 soldier’s kidnappings (Israeli and American) just trespassed the humble frontiers of the Middle East and jumped in the main stream of the international political arena. It is time for The Big Players to jump in and flex some muscles?
If not, what is happening today with Israel and the big ransom in political capital that is required for the life of only 3 soldiers, will be even greater for the Western powers, when the terrorist groups and terrorist-states will have an atomic bomb and means to deliver it.
We simply cannot accept, as free people and independent societies, this direct, dangerous and open blackmail. The very core and foundation of our liberty is threatened!
*It seems that Gilad was kidnapped by a small and shadowy group named “Army of Islam”, whose “philosophy”, the front rhetoric for the masses, is inspired by the master-franchise Al Qaeda. The group is led by one Muntaz Dagmush, part of a Gaza mafia style clan. Is the same group that kidnapped a BBC journalist Alan Johnston, 44, in Gaza City, on March 12tn, and held, maybe for an exchange with a British held radical cleric, Abu Qaeda.
note august 2009: the bodies of regev and goldwasser (Z"L) were returned to israel, in a prisoners exchange after the second lebanon war. gilad shalit is still held in captivity, in the gaza strip, even after the successful “operation cast lead”.
> SENT TO: www.haaretz.com, www.thefirstpost.co.uk, www.nytimes.com
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MAY 09TH, 2007 |
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