By BEN HARTMAN, JPOST.COM STAFF
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu confirmed the three yeshiva students who disappeared Thursday night were indeed kidnapped by a terrorist organization in his first on-camera statement Saturday evening.
“I can’t share everything we know, but can say: Our boys were kidnapped by a terrorist organization, no doubt,” said the prime minister.
Netanyahu said that Israel was doing everything in its power to the boys home, and reiterated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for their well-being.
“We see Abbas and the PA as responsible for all attacks that come from their territory, either Gaza or the West Bank,” he said. “The claim that they are not responsible because it was in Area C is baseless. The responsible party is the one who controls the area from whence the terrorists came.”
The prime minister said that the kidnapping was the “true result” of the recent unity government that was forged between the Fatah and the Hamas that caused Israel to suspend the peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
“The unity with Hamas, opens the door for Hamas to control the West Bank. There is no possibility to talk about peace with Israel while you talk about unity with a group that wants to destroy Israel,” Netanyahu said.
“In our area states are under threat of attack from extremist Islam and terror groups. Over and over we see that we can trust only ourselves, the IDF, the Shin Bet and Israeli citizens and soldiers,” he added.
Following his televised update, Netanyahu was scheduled to convene his cabinet.
Netanyahu met with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and the head of the Shin Bet Yoram Cohen earlier in the day on Saturday as well as meeting with senior defense officials on Friday.
Meanwhile, Yuval Diskin, former chief of the Israel Security Services (Shin Bet), took the opportunity of the kidnapping to speak out on Saturday against releasing Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.
“We should end the policy of exchanging terrorists for kidnapped soldiers, or end the policy of freeing terrorists and we should rather freeze West Bank settlement building during peace talks with the Palestinians,” Diskin wrote on his Facebook page.
“The prisoner releases are the principal motivators for further kidnappings,” he added.
I prefer Arnold Harris’ method:
In fact we have to get over this Jewish “moral superiority” rubbish and get a little nasty; inflict a little pain, as it were. Remember the IDF officer who was taken to task for using his rifle butt effectively against a loudmouth anti-Israel activist? Well that’s exactly what I mean:
@ BethesdaDog: Yes Arnold, Israel does in fact have insanely strict gun laws. I would not speculate on the ongoing investigation except to acknowledge it as a potential game changing event with the most serious ramifications.
Every American who cares about Israel needs to phone their senators and congresspersons and demand The US quit supporting The Terrorist Regime Hamas/PA on the one hand and fully support Israel in what may prove to become a cataclysmic descent into uncontrolled chaos.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Doesn’t Israel have very strict gun control laws? That’s what I’ve read. Under the laws, would these young men have been able to carry weapons?
I’m also wondering if the Israeli borders are porous? The other night, I met a fellow who was definitely an Arab, living here in America. He lived in Amman, with roots ultimately in Gaza City. He says he went back to the Middle East, and was permitted to enter Israel. He told me he spent 8 days driving from the south of Israel to the north. I expressed some skepticism, but he said he had to go through more rigorous checks, but he is an American citizen, so they let him through. Maybe somebody with more experience knows whether this is customary practice. I don’t know the extent of travel restrictions, if any, on Arabs who originally came from Arab countries or the Gaza Strip. Would it make any difference if the person were an American citizen?
The nice thing about a loaded firearm is that it is the nearest thing to godliness in a place where you need divine protection to avoid being kidnapped by Arab hostage=takers. I never have been able to understand why all these yeshiva bocherim neglect to treat firearms and other weapons with the same degree of respect that they regard Tora. And maybe I have missed something here, but where exactly in Tora is there anything that contradicts the principles and imperatives of self-defense?
As for negotiating with terrorists to get back hostages, that just sets the stage for the next hostage-taking. Some or all of what I write about this probably sounds cold-blooded and heartless of some or all of you who read what I have to say.But I judge war in terms of the overall gain or loss to the Jewish nation, not effects or costs of the war paid by individuals.
In any case, as suggested in one of the posts here on Israpundit, the triple kidnapping must be treated by the State of Israel as a causus belli. Which means you are obligated to rain death and destruction down on the heads of your enemies.
You shall never have peace with those Arabs, and you cannot run away from them in a country as tiny as Israel.
So why don’t you turn this conflict around by taking the initiative of terrorizing them, for a change?
And don’ try to feed me any line of whining dripshit about the unfortunate bocherim. Instead of that, do something useful by teaching them how to be fearsome killers.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s the way haShem wants his Jews to act.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI