Webloggin » On Moral Equivalence

What’s the big deal, many ask? Hezbollah and Hamas kidnapped some Israeli soldiers, turning them into prisoners, and they’ll readily release these prisoners if Israel, in turn, will release some prisoners it holds. It all sounds so beautifully symmetrical. Except it’s not.

The kidnapped Israeli soldiers had done absolutely nothing beyond being soldiers, which is a matter of status, not acts. How about the acts of those Israeli prisoners? Well, the BBC describes one Hezbollah prisoner as follows: “[Amir] Qantar . . . attacked a block of flats in Nahariha in 1979, killing a father and his daughter.” How marvelously clinical. Here are a few more details, from the victims’ wife and mother:

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border.

Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer.

As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat.

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