Let's not become confused

Haaretz ^ | 8/2/6 | Nadav Shragai

[SmithL]

Nathan Alterman, who wrote extensively about purity of arms, wondered many years ago what kind of memorial should be erected for three IDF soldiers -- Hanan Samson, Yossi Kaplan and Boaz Sasson -- who fell while pursuing terrorists, because they were reluctant to harm a nursing mother who stood at the entrance to a cave in the Jordan Valley and behind whom the terrorists were hiding. Should it be an ordinary memorial, like those scattered everywhere else in the country in memory of the fallen in Israel's battles, or perhaps a monument in the shape of a woman with a child at her breast, whose lives the three purchased with their deaths?

Even today, the enemy holds children with one hand and fires on Israeli civilians and soldiers with the other, and the world uses false scales to weigh Israel's morality. Forty years ago, Alterman defined the difference between us and them after the deaths of Samson, Kaplan and Sasson. "There is no question that even by the furthest stretch of our imagination, we would be unable to imagine the possibility of the opposite of what happened during that pursuit. In other words, a situation in which IDF fighters would hide behind Jewish women and children, and use a Jewish nursing mother as camouflage and a hiding place to conceal themselves from Fatah members. IDF soldiers would be incapable of such a thing -- even if we ignore all the other reasons -- first and foremost for the simple reason that a Jewish woman with a baby in her arms is not a 'deterrent factor' for Arab fighters."

[EagleUSA]

Even today, the enemy holds children with one hand and fires on Israeli civilians and soldiers with the other, and the world uses false scales to weigh Israel's morality.
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This is why it is so important that the free world rid this planet of these cowardly scum that freely risk and take the lives of innocents for thier sick, perverted cause.

[nikos1121]

Some people are raised with a completely different sense of morals. You can see this fairly early in their lives... like around the age of 4 or 5.

[goldstategop]

Nadav Shragai is Haaretz's rare non-Leftist voice of sanity. He points out making concessions to terorists only whets their appetite and it stimulates even more terrorism. Giving into blackmail will not be a victory but rather a defeat for Israel. Of course it is important to bring home captives to their families. But not at any price; I would rather pull down the Temple than surrender to the murderers. If one has to trade on moral principles of the highest order for a human life, then in the end human life itself won't be worth a damn. Let's hope this time Israelis don't lose of sight of this as they have in the past.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)