He spent the last three years in a dark, hidden jail cell. He was suffering from skin cancer and diabetes, yet he was denied the medication that his family had sent him. Frequently tortured, he was not allowed to talk with his family nor receive letters delivered via the Red Cross. He was kept in complete isolation.
Israel’s newspaper Haaretz reports that he was kept so isolated that he had no idea of such news events as 9-11, or of the 1,000 Israelis that have been victims of terror over the past three years.
This person is Elhanan Tennenbaum, who while on a trip to Europe several years ago, was kidnapped by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah. Until recently, no one knew anything of Tennenbaum’s whereabouts.
Around the time of his kidnapping, a group of three Israeli soldiers were on a jeep patrolling the Lebanese-Israeli border. A United Nations vehicle approached them, at which point armed terrorists from Hezbollah jumped out of the vehicle and attacked, kidnapped, and later murdered the soldiers. According to the Jerusalem Post, another U.N. vehicle managed to videotape the whole event, but the U.N. refused to hand over a copy of the video, only allowing a select group to watch it, with the faces of the terrorists blurred. The U.N.’s job was to keep peace in the region, not sit in the sidelines and watch, proving to be useless once again.
Until recently, Hezbollah was not willing to reveal any information regarding the fate of any of those kidnapped, leaving everyone else clueless about their current state. With a motto of “no one left behind”, Israel released over 400 arrested terrorists last week in return for Tennenbaum, the kidnapped Israeli, and the bodies of the three soldiers. Furthermore, Hezbollah refused in the exchange to release any of the other Israeli soldiers who have been kidnapped over the past decade or give any information about their state, including Ron Arad, who has been missing since 1982.
What other country in the world would release hundreds of terrorists in return for three bodies and one civilian? This was so absurd that Victims of Arab Terror International and the Organization of Casualties of Terror Acts in Israel filed petitions with the High Court demanding that the prisoner swap deal be canceled. They asked the court to disqualify the deal, saying that “hundreds of dangerous terrorists, including ones with blood on their hands,” must not be released. Nevertheless, last week on the day that a suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus in Jerusalem murdering ten people and badly injuring dozens more, Israel went ahead with the deal.
Sure, one man is freed and three bodies are brought back to help bring closure to their families, but was it worth releasing hundreds of potentially dangerous people in return for so few? Perhaps this will strengthen the moral of a country badly hit by terrorism by letting its citizens know that their country is always there for them. I just wish that Israel wasn’t so lenient when it came to fighting terrorism. Perhaps a stronger stance against terror would be deterrence against future terrorist acts. On the other hand if I were Tennenbaum or part of his family, I would want Israel to do whatever it takes to have him released.
Perhaps Israelis compassion for its citizens that are locked away and tortured somewhere, (even if its just one), is so strong that the country is willing to take great risks. In a country that believes that each one of its citizen’s lives is priceless, no price is too high to bring them back home.
Gilad Skolnick is a Collegian columnist.
