Politic?: Bring Out Your Dead!

Rescue workers and a member of Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas seen while searching for missing or dead terrorists after Israel blew up a cross-border tunnel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, last Friday. (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

"These people are the worst terrorists — genocidal terrorists. They call for the destruction of Israel and they call for the killing of every Jew, wherever they can find them."
"They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead, the better."
"They put seven hundred tons of concrete into each one of these terror attack tunnels to penetrate Israel. [This is cement Israel allowed into Gaza to construct buildings, schools, and hospitals, diverted for use in tunnels]. Now we’ve discovered dozens of them, so you’re talking about tens of thousands of tons of concrete instead of going to the benefit of the school, the population, going for terrorism against Israel."
"[Hamas terrorists] don’t care [about the death and destruction that they have brought to the local population. The international community should] undertake a program to demilitarize Gaza.""I think the international community has to, once this is put in place, we really have to undertake a program to demilitarize Gaza and to change the situation because it’s unacceptable. What makes it unacceptable is Hamas and Islamic Jihad."
"We didn’t seek this escalation. Hamas forced it on us. They started rocketing our cities, steadily increasing the fire. I called for de-escalation; they refused. I accepted an Egyptian ceasefire proposal, backed up by the Arab League and the UN; they refused. I accepted a humanitarian lull, proposed by the United Nations; they refused. We will stop our operations when we can bring back quiet to our people."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

An honor guard caries the coffin of Israeli Lt. Hadar Goldin at his funeral in 2014 in Kfar Saba. Goldin was thought to have been captured during fighting in Gaza but was later declared killed in action. His body has not been returned. (Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

"It has been more than two years since Hadar Goldin disappeared down a dark hole. The young Israeli lieutenant was last seen being dragged into a Hamas tunnel during the 2014 Gaza war. Bits of his equipment were recovered, stained with blood and tissue — enough evidence for forensic pathologists and army rabbis to declare him killed in action."
"But Goldin’s body is still being held by Hamas, the Islamist militant movement that controls the Gaza Strip. His mother, Leah Goldin, said, 'We have no way to come to an end of our mourning until we bring him home'."
"It is a terrible thing to have nothing to bury, and in this the Goldin family is not alone. The corpse of a second Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, also is being held by Hamas. Israelis consider the Hamas practice of hoarding bodies to be barbaric."
"But the reality is more complicated. Both sides are withholding bodies. Israel has not returned the remains of 19 Hamas fighters killed during the 2014 war."
"And Israel now routinely holds the bodies of Palestinian assailants who have been shot dead while attacking or threatening Israelis during a year-long wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank."
November 2016, The Washington Post

Israel's enemies in the Arab world are legion. The very idea that a Jewish state could exist among Muslim states is anathema to the vast bulk of the Muslim population in the Middle East. The scriptures held sacred in Islam inform the faithful that no geography once sanctified by Islam is to be defiled by the presence of any other religion. Although Jews have lived in the Middle East since antiquity, with ample evidence both paleo-archaeological and Biblical exists, Arabs, Persians and Muslims from all regions of the world see Israel's existence as a haven for Jews as an assault on the eternal and sacred prerogatives of Islamic conquest and domination.

The regional national authorities assembled their armies and made common cause countless times, determined to dislodge Israel from its perch on ancestral Judaic geography, and failed. Terrorist guerrilla groups took their place, supported by the countries whose national militaries failed in their efforts to destroy the nation and disperse or slaughter the Jews living there. Israel's existence is the reason for its existence as a homeland for Jews worldwide. The reason for the existence of terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and others of their ilk is the singular focus on destroying Israel.

To that end, countless attacks, within Israel have killed Jews over the years and so have attacks taking place within the international community targeting Jewish and Israeli interests and groups. Israel always considers it a blow of grievous proportions when Israelis and Jews are abducted, held as pawns in a game of intimidation, threats, violence and trade. Infamously, it is taken for granted that one live or dead Israeli can guarantee the freeing of up to a thousand Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons, placed there as threats and as just sentencing under international law for planning and carrying out deadly attacks against Jews.

Much can be read into the fact that Israel will exchange a thousand Arab prisoners, many with Jewish blood to their credit, for a single Israeli Jew captured by an enemy. While terrorists exult at the release of those prisoners causing the death of countless innocents, Israel redeems the life of a single Jew. With the recent destruction of yet another newly-discovered tunnel built by Islamic Jihad from Gaza exiting into Israel, a number of terrorists were killed in the explosion when the tunnel collapsed, among them several Hamas commanders.

Israel's Prime Minister has stated that there is no intention of returning the bodies of the dead Arabs to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Several Israelis remain in captivity, held by these groups, and a handful of dead Israelis have been withheld from being returned to Israel. This time, it is Islamic Jihad and Hamas who -- if they are sufficiently desirous of having their dead fighters returned for burial and the opportunity to host their martyrdom in the public sphere as a celebratory event -- must first render to Israel the Jewish abductees and the Jewish bodies for burial in Israel.