UPDATE: The Jerusalem Post is claiming that all IDF soldiers have been accounted for and the kidnapping apparently was a false alarm. Thanks to reader Nathan for bringing this to my attention.
An astonishing development in Israel: the IDF has announced and a Palestinian militant group confirmed that it abducted an Israeli soldier in the center of Israel. Though the police have thrown up roadblocks throughout the area, given the announcement from the abductors that they’d completed the operation, it seems likely they have made their escape. It goes without saying that this new development complicates everything. It complicates the negotiations for Gilad Shalit’s freedom (the other abducted IDF soldier held by Hamas). It complicates U.S. attempts for a settlement freeze. Whenever Israel’s security is threatened, Israelis retreat into a security shell and are unwilling to entertain the idea of flexibility in any form.
This kidnapping is unlike the previous Shalit event because the latter was captured while on duty on the Israeli border with Gaza. This one occured within Israel proper and means that the kidnappers infiltrated the country and procured a car. All this would entail a fairly extensive operation involving a number of co-conspirators. This will shock Israel and rattle the nerves of the entire country. The Shin Bet will be on the carpet for this major breach of national security. Policitians will outdo themselves in nationalist bellicosity. There will be calls for retaliation and worse. It will get ugly.
Almost no one in Israel will face the nasty truth that the status quo is not viable. That there will always be horrible events like this unless there is real peace with real negotiations and real compromises in which each side gives up something it doesn’t want to give up. Israelis naturally prefer to be lulled by things as they are. They don’t like to contemplate giving up anything for the sake of an unknown. It seems almost an impossibility to convince them otherwise in the midst of such trauma. How do you ask a human being to look past the current woe to see that the only way to avoid future woe is by stepping into the unknown; and that the unknown is better than the known because the former will only lead to more such trauma?
quick update: none of this happened 😛
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418600902&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Thanks for pointing this out. It just goes to show that trusting the NY Times isn’t always advisable.
There are false alarms like this every few weeks. Not sure if you were following Ma’an news agency, but it just goes to show that it’s a deeply unreliable source (claimed that the soldier had phoned to report his kidnapping etc etc). Sometimes it’s best to hold off before pushing publish!
I don’t at all agree with you about Maan. I’ve generally found them reliable, certainly moreso than some Israeli publications like the J.Post, Yisrael HaYom, etc. Helena Cobban, a source I trust implicitly has this to say:
Well maybe they’re reliable because they confirm what you already know to be true. Question: Where were they getting all these bizarre stories confirming the ‘kidnapping’?
Where did you read that the IDF had announced it?
Where were Haaretz & the NY Times getting their sources? They reported it just the same as Maan did. I don’t hear you criticizing them as you’re criticizing Maan.
Well they didn’t say the IDF confirmed a soldier had been kidnapped, but until I understand exactly where you get the idea that they did it’s difficult to make a proper comparison.
PS I meant Haaretz; I don’t look regularly at the NYT.
I absloutely agree
It is vital to check before running with every rumour
Where did you read that the IDF had confirmed the kidnapping?
Just for your information, Shalit was kidnapped in “Israel proper” too.
Soldiers are not kidnapped, they are captured.
Sorry, he was kidnapped.
And if as you claim he was “captured” as part of a military action then Hamas is bound by international protocol in how it must treat such a POW–and that is regardless of how Israel may treat its own POWs. Hamas has flagrantly violated such international conventions in its treatment of Shalit. So if you want to play this semantic game, 2 can tango.
Richard, I have absolutely no problem with Hamas being held to international standards in its treatment of captives as long as Israel is required – and I mean really required – to hold to the same standards.
I do not consider it a semantic game to challenge the kind of propagandistic language by which Israel only ever “arrests” or “captures”, even when it is taking civilians as hostages, while its enemies only ever “kidnap”, even when they take active-duty Israeli soldiers.
I call the IDF’s taking of Arab captives ‘kidnapping’ whenever it happens, esp. when they are not militants. The Lebanese peasants who were kidnapped during the Lebanon war to use of bargaining chips in case the IDF soldiers were alive were kidnapped plain & simple & I called it that. I have written here an entire post about the Israeli use of language as propaganda tool. It’s particularly odious & I am sensitive to it.
I don’t think that one side should observe the Geneva conventions regarding POWs only if the other side does. I think this should be a standard that each side honors in and of itself & it should not be conditional.
Richard, I don’t doubt that you endeavor to use honest language, though I was not around when you wrote the post you refer to. And I stick to my insistence that soldiers of an attacking or occupying power, particularly on-duty soldiers, are not kidnapped, but captured, and the use of the term kidnapped in that situation is propagandistic and dishonest.
You are right that one side’s observing Geneva conventions should not be conditional on the other side’s doing so. It was not clear from what I wrote, but what I object to strongly is demands that those resisting aggression and struggling under the boot heel of tyranny, including the tyranny of foreign occupation and colonization, must uphold a higher standard of conduct than we demand of the aggressor and the tyrant.
Shalit was a militant and was captured, not kidnapped.
I think you mean he was active military, and I agree with you.