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Gilad Shalit (Israeli POW) returned home after over 5 years
rafie
Posts: 2,160
This young man, who was kidnapped by Hamas over 5 years ago while serving in the army, has finally been returned home. 1941 days in captivity.
The price that Israel had to pay was over 1000 terrorists, many of which have blood of civilians on their hands. 1000 for 1.
It is a very controversial deal here, but it is a happy day seeing this kid returning home. God only knows what this kid is going trough...
*** To all the usual suspects (you know who you are), this is not meant to be a political post and I would prefer that it did not turn in to (yet another) Israel bashing thread. I am not looking to debate any one on the subject. The only reason I posted it was to let people know of something historic happening in the region.
The price that Israel had to pay was over 1000 terrorists, many of which have blood of civilians on their hands. 1000 for 1.
It is a very controversial deal here, but it is a happy day seeing this kid returning home. God only knows what this kid is going trough...
*** To all the usual suspects (you know who you are), this is not meant to be a political post and I would prefer that it did not turn in to (yet another) Israel bashing thread. I am not looking to debate any one on the subject. The only reason I posted it was to let people know of something historic happening in the region.
Still can't believe I met Mike Mccready at the Guggenheim and got a pic with him!!!!!
2010: 9/7/10 - Bilbao
2012: 26-27/6/12 - Amsterdam ~~ 29/6/12 - Werchter ~~ 4-5/7/12 - Berlin
2014: 25/6/14 - Vienna ~~ 26/6/14 - Berlin
2010: 9/7/10 - Bilbao
2012: 26-27/6/12 - Amsterdam ~~ 29/6/12 - Werchter ~~ 4-5/7/12 - Berlin
2014: 25/6/14 - Vienna ~~ 26/6/14 - Berlin
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There is very little about the mid east that doesnt get turned into something political.
The only reprt that I've seen other than the swap is " he was treated well" Why couldnt THAT statement be the focus of your post?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
he was denied visits from the red cross, denied eye glasses. he was not in the sun and is clearly very thin and pale.
would you call an American or british soldier defending his/her country a terrorist?
the prisoners being released caused the deaths of more than a 1000 people- men, women and children.
i consider myself a liberal, democratric person but i'm not blind. there are two sides to every story.
hopefully there will be peace soon.
i think it was good that this man was released and i think it is good that israel kept their word and released their prisoners as well. it seems to be a move of good faith. now if we can just get them to quit expanding settlements on disputed lands we would be getting someplace...
i see this as a positive first step to resolving bigger issues.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom
Side Note, he was captured on the border via a tunnel.
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So whats the ratio..1 Israeli= about 1000 Palestinians, sounds about right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinia ... _prisoners
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Watch Israel grab more land now or capture 1000 more Palestinians to replace the ones they just handed over. This is what Israel does, they even give land back one side, and at the same time take more from the other side.
Freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shilat says: "I’ll be happy if all Palestinian prisoners are free"
IN his first interview since being released this morning, freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit spoke of his desire to see peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
He said he would be happy to see the release of more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Speaking in Hebrew on Egyptian television after his release, the 24-year-old soldier who was taken in 2006 when on national service said:
“It is possible to learn an important lesson from this - that it is possible to conclude deals to free prisoners.
When asked whether he would campaign for the release of 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli jail he said:” I will be happy if all these prisoners are free, so that they can go back to their loved ones, their territory and their families. I will be very happy if this happens.”
Wearing a blue checked shirt and looking very pale and thin, the soldier who was held in a secret location by Hamas for five years said:
“Obviously I missed my family a lot and also all my friends. I missed meeting normal people and there is now so much to do now that I am out.”
His family are waiting at Tel Nof air base. They have not seen him since he was captured at age 19 in 2006.
Meanwhile, buses carrying 477 Palestinian prisoners earlier headed to Gaza and the West Bank in the first stage of a swap deal to free the captured Israeli soldier.
Among those being set free in the operation, which began before dawn, are many serving life sentences for deadly attacks.
They are the first tranche of a total of 1,027 prisoners being let out in exchange for the release of Sgl Shalit, who has been held by Gaza militants for more than five years.
The deal, signed last week between Israel and its bitter enemy Hamas, is the highest price ever paid by the Jewish state for one person. It is expected to be the first time in 26 years that a captured Israeli soldier has been returned alive.
Late on Monday, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected an 11th hour appeal against the swap by families who had lost people in Palestinian attacks.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that the "prisoners have started moving".
Some 297 prisoners were being driven to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing where they will be greeted by top Hamas figures before entering Gaza.
"We are on the way to Rafah with Mussa Abu Marzuk and Sheikh Salah al-Aruri to welcome the liberated prisoners," spokesman Izzat al-Rishq told Hamas's Al Aqsa television in Gaza.
"The operation to return Shalit to the Israeli side will take place at the moment we are assured that all the prisoners have arrived at the Egyptian border."
Another 40 prisoners who are to be deported overseas will remain in Egypt before being sent to host countries, which include Turkey, Syria and Qatar.
Emotions were running high across Israel, where Shalit, has enormous symbolic importance, while Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza were also preparing to give a heroes' welcome to the returning prisoners.
Shalit was a 19-year-old corporal on duty along the Gaza border when he was captured on June 25 2006 by militants from three Gaza-based groups, including Hamas.
Three days after he was snatched, Israel launched a massive military operation against Gaza in a bid to secure his release, which lasted five months and left more than 400 Palestinians dead.
Shalit to be transferred to the Egyptian Sinai peninsula before travelling on to Israel. He will be met at the Tel Nof airbase in southern Israel by Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, before being reunited with his family.
His family have been readjusting and preparing for the long-awaited return of their son to their home in northern Israel, after finally moving out of the Jerusalem protest tent they called home for nearly 16 months.
Throughout the Palestinian territories, celebration preparations were under way, with Hamas expected to hold a massive welcome rally in Gaza City and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas slated to greet the released prisoners in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
In all, Israel will free 1,027 Palestinians, with a second tranche of 550 to be released within two months
Thanks for posting, a good read.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-shocked-egypt-tv-schalit-interview-145741250.html
Do you really wonder that?
Anyway, yea let's see what he say's once back assimilated into Israeli life, whichever way it goes, I hope Gilad will find the answers to whatever questions he may have. I'm sure he has many.
But that's just all obvious, btw the mask was black.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit returned home today after five years in captivity in Gaza in exchange for 477 Palestinian prisoners. Another 550 are slated to be released in two months. Forty of the Palestinian prisoners will be deported to Syria, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan. In his first interview, Gilad Shalit expressed support for the freeing of all Palestinian prisoners. While Palestinians are holding a massive celebration in Gaza today, Palestinian prison support groups note over 4,000 Palestinians remain locked up in Israel.
We turn now to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and political dissident. He spoke Monday night here in New York at Barnard College about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the prisoner exchange, and the Middle East, overall.
NOAM CHOMSKY: About a week ago, the New York Times had a headline saying "the West Celebrates a Cleric’s Death." The cleric was Awlaki, killed by a drone. It wasn’t just death; it was assassination—and another step forward in Obama’s global assassination campaign, which actually breaks some new records in international terrorism. Well, it’s not true that everyone in the West celebrated. There were some critics. Almost all of the critics, of whom there weren’t many, criticized the action or qualified it because of the fact that Awlaki was an American citizen. That is, he was a person, unlike suspects who are intentionally murdered or collateral damage, meaning we treat them kind of like the ants we step on when we walk down the street. They’re not American citizens, so they’re unpeople, and therefore they can be freely murdered.
Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist. Some of the critics have brought up the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which says that no person — "person," notice — shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Well, of course, that was never intended to apply to persons, so it wasn’t intended to apply to unpeople.
And unpeople fall into several categories. There’s, first of all, the indigenous population, either in the territories already held or those that were expected to be conquered soon. It didn’t apply to them. And, of course, it didn’t apply to those who the Constitution declared to be three-fifths human, so therefore unpeople. That latter category was transferred into—theoretically, into the category of people by the 14th Amendment, that—essentially the same wording as the Fifth Amendment in this respect, but now a person was intended to hold of freed slaves. Now that was in theory. In practice, it barely happened. After about 10 years, the category of three-fifths human were returned to the category of unpeople by the divisive criminalization of black life, which essentially restored slavery, maybe something even worse than slavery, actually went on 'til the Second World War. And it's being reinstituted now, past 30 years of severe moral and social regression in the United States.
Well, the 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws. The concept of person was expanded to include legal fictions, sustained—created and sustained by the state, what’s called corporations, and was also narrowed over the years to exclude undocumented aliens. That goes right up to the present, to recent Supreme Court cases, which make it clear that corporations not only are persons, but they’re persons with rights far beyond those of persons of flesh and blood, so kind of super persons. The mislabeled free trade agreements give them astonishing rights. And, of course, the court just added more.
But the crucial need to make sure that the category of unpeople includes those who escaped from the horrors we’ve created in Central America and Mexico, try to get here—those are not persons, they are unpeople. And, of course, it includes any foreigners, especially those accused of terror, which is a concept that has taken a quite an interesting conceptual change, an interesting one, since 1981, when Ronald Reagan came into office and declared the global war on terror, what’s called GWOT in current fancy terminology. I won’t go into that here, except with a comment, a note, on how the term is now used, without any—raising even any notice.
So take, for example, Omar Khadr. He’s a 15-year-old child, a Canadian. Now, he was accused of a very severe crime, namely, trying to defend his village in Afghanistan from U.S. invaders. Obviously, that’s severe crime, a serious terrorist, so he was sent first to secret prison in Bagram, then off to Guantánamo for eight years. After eight years, he pleaded guilty to some charges. We all know what that means. If you want, you could pick up a few of the details even in Wikipedia, more in other sources. So he pleaded guilty and was given eight more years’ sentence. Could have—would have gotten 30 more years if he hadn’t pleaded guilty. After all, it is a severe crime, defending your village from American aggressors. He’s Canadian, so Canada could have him extradited. But with typical courage, they refused. They don’t want to offend the master, understandably. Well, the crime of resisting aggression, it’s not a new category of terrorism. There may be some of you old enough to remember the slogan "a terror against terror," which was used by the Gestapo—and which we’ve taken over. None of this arouses any interest, because all of these victims belong to the category of unpeople.
Well, that—coming back to our topic now, the concept of unpeople is central to tonight’s topic. Israeli Jews are people. Palestinians are unpeople. And a lot follows from that as clear illustrations constantly. So, here’s a clipping, if I remembered to bring it, from the New York Times. Front-page story, Wednesday, October 12th, the lead story is "Deal with Hamas Will Free Israeli Held Since 2006." That’s Gilad Shalit. And right next to it is a—running right across the top of the front page is a picture of four women kind of agonized over the fate of Gilad Shalit. "Friends and supporters of the family of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit received word of the deal at the family’s protest tent in Jerusalem." Well, that’s understandable, actually. I think he should have been released a long time ago. But there’s something missing from this whole story. So, like, there’s no pictures of Palestinian women, and no discussion, in fact, in the story of—what about the Palestinian prisoners being released? Where do they come from?
And there’s a lot to say about that. So, for example, we don’t know — at least I don’t read it in the Times — whether the release includes the Palestinian—the elected Palestinian officials who were kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel in 2007 when the United States, the European Union and Israel decided to dissolve the only freely elected legislature in the Arab world. That’s called "democracy promotion," technically, in case you’re not familiar with the term. So I don’t know what happened to them. There are also other people who have been in prison exactly as long as Gilad Shalit—in fact, one day longer. The day before Gilad Shalit was captured at the border, Israeli troops entered Gaza, kidnapped two brothers, the Muamar brothers, spirited them across the border, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of course. And they’ve disappeared into Israel’s prison system. I haven’t a clue what happened to them; I’ve never seen a word about it. And as far as I know, nobody cares, which makes sense. After all, unpeople. Whatever you think about capturing the soldier, a soldier from an attacking army, plainly kidnapping civilians is a far more severe crime. But that’s only if they’re people. This case really doesn’t matter. It’s not that it’s unknown, so if you look back at the press the day after the Muamar brothers were captured, there’s a couple lines here and there. But it’s just insignificant, of course—which makes some sense, because there are lots of others in prison, thousands of them, many without charges.
There’s also, in addition to this, the secret prison system, like Facility 1391, if you want to look it up on the internet, a secret prison, which means, of course, a torture chamber, in Israel, which actually was reported pretty well in Israel when it was discovered, also reported in England and in Europe, but I haven’t seen a word about it here, in at least anywhere that anybody’s likely to look. I’ve written about it, and a couple of others. All of this is—these are all unpeople, so, naturally, nobody cares. In fact, the racism is so profound that it’s kind of like the air we breathe: we’re unaware of it, you know, just pervades everything.
Coming to the title of this talk, it could mislead, and it could be interpreted—misinterpreted—as supporting a kind of conventional picture of the negotiations, such as they are: United States...over here, and then these two recalcitrant forces over there; the United States is an honest broker trying to bring together the two militant, difficult groups that don’t seem to be able to get along with one another. Now that’s—it is the standard version, but it’s totally false. I mean, if they were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party, maybe Brazil, and on one side you’d have the U.S. and Israel, on the other side you’d have the world. That’s literally true. But that’s one of those things that’s unspeakable.
Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death
Tony Blair urges action and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas fears potential 'disaster that no one could control'
Harriet Sherwood in Ramallah
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 May 2012
Demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza in support of about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are escalating amid efforts by Egyptian mediators to broker a deal to avoid protests spiralling out of control if a detainee dies.
Two prisoners, who have refused food for 77 days, are thought to be close to death with another six in a critical condition, say Palestinian groups. The Israeli prison service (IPS) says no one's life is at risk.
In an unusual intervention, Tony Blair, the representative of the Middle East quartet, urged Israel to "take all necessary measures to prevent a tragic outcome that could have serious implications for stability and security conditions on the ground". He said he was "increasingly concerned about the deteriorating health conditions" of hunger strikers.
Earlier, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said the situation was "very dangerous". He told Reuters: "If anyone dies … it would be a disaster and no one could control the situation." Abbas has appealed to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, to intervene.
Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli parliament, told a solidarity rally in Jaffa: "If one of the striking prisoners dies, a third intifada [uprising] will break out."
According to Physicians for Human Rights, there is no previous recorded case of anyone surviving without food or supplements for more than 75 days. IRA hunger strike Bobby Sands died after 66 days in 1981.
Israeli security forces have responded to protests and marches in towns and villages across the West Bank with teargas, rubber bullets and water cannon. In Gaza, protests and rallies have been held and the hunger strike has featured in sermons at Friday prayers. About 50 people, including former prisoners and activists, have started a sympathy hunger strike.
"The protests are getting bigger every day," said Hurriya Ziadi from Ramallah, whose brother is on hunger strike after 10 years in jail. "The Palestinian people are very angry because these are our brothers and sisters who are asking for basic human rights. This touches every Palestinian."
The prisoners' protest was "feeding a wide range of nonviolent protests all over the West Bank," said former presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti.
"A hunger strike is one of the most effective forms of nonviolent resistance. But if there is a death, it will spark a lot of anger."
Egyptian negotiators are trying to head off that scenario by brokering a deal to end the protest. Some progress had been made, said Palestinian officials. Egypt mediated a deal last autumn which saw captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
The detainees' key demands are an end to imprisonment without trial or charge, known as "administrative detention"; an end to solitary confinement; allowing families from Gaza to visit prisoners in Israeli jails; access to educational materials; and an end to strip searches and night-time raids on cells.
The issue of prisoners' rights has strong resonance among Palestinian families, many of whom have seen relatives jailed. According to the Addameer, a prisoners' rights organisation, on 1 May there were 4,635 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 308 on administrative detention, seven women and 218 children.
Palestinian human rights group say about 2,500 prisoners have joined the hunger strike since it started as a mass protest on 17 April.
The IPS says 1,550 prisoners are on hunger strike under medical supervision. Four prisoners were moved to hospital last week, Two prisoners had been removed from solitary confinement, an IPS spokeswoman said, including Mahmoud Issa who was in isolation for more than 10 years.
In a letter addressed to "my beloved Lamar", Tha'er Halahleh, who has refused food for 77 days, asked for forgiveness from his daughter who was born two weeks after he was imprisoned 23 months ago and whom he has never seen.
"When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other then their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence," the letter said.
"You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity."
Bilal Diab, who has been held under an administrative detention order since last August, sent a will to his family two days ago, requesting celebratory sweets be distributed at his funeral.
"We will have victory, but only through martyrdom or immediate release – not any partial solution," he wrote. "On the 75th day of my hunger strike, I am still determined, patient and focused."
Israel says both men are members of Islamic Jihad and their detention is necessary on security grounds.