Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Palestinian hunger striker reaches deal for release

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}
RAMALLAH, West Bank - A Palestinian prisoner whose hunger strike had stoked weeks of protests in the West Bank ended his eight-month on-off fast on Tuesday in exchange for early release by Israel, Palestinian officials said.

Israeli and Palestinian officials had feared that had Samer Essawi, 32, died because of refusing food, it might have led to mass unrest.

At least six Palestinian protesters were wounded in February in clashes with IDF soldiers after another Palestinian died while being interrogated in an Israeli jail. The clashes were fueled by the worsening health of Essawi and other prisoners.

Under a deal signed by Essawi and a military prosecutor, he will serve eight more months for violating bail conditions from an earlier release, the officials said, announcing he had ended the strike.

He will then be allowed to go to his Jerusalem home, Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian prisoner organization, told Reuters.

Israel convicted Essawi of opening fire on an Israeli bus in 2002, but released him in 2011 along with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit.
So let me see if I understand this correctly.

In 2002 this maniac shot up a bus in an effort to kill a bunch of Jews.  Since then he sat in prison until he was one of the five gazillion criminals and murders and Jihadis that Israel released for Gilad.   And now he's back in prison for another eight months for violating bail conditions, but Israel is considering giving him an early release if he would eat?

Once again, how can anyone have writer's block when the pure stupidity piles up this high and this fast on a daily basis?

The guy shot up an Israeli bus, for crying out loud.  I do not know about you guys, but where I come from if someone takes a gun and goes down to the road and shoots at a bus full of people (was it a school bus?) they pretty much go away forever.  They don't get exchanged for kidnap victims.  And if they refuse to eat that's basically their problem.

I don't really quite understand why Israel does this kind of thing.  Israel is the most maligned country on the planet and, yet, it is constantly begging the world for some kind of pat on the head for noble little gestures like this.  Israel gives up the Sinai and it gets back hatred.  Israel gives up the Gaza and it gets back ten thousand Kassam and Katyusha rockets.  People try to kill Jews in the Jewish State and they get released for diplomatic reasons.

Look, I was thrilled when Gilad Shalit was released from whatever Gazan hell-hole that they subjected him to, but there is no reason to release this maniac - and, yes, anyone who fires a gun at a bus is a maniac.

It's as if Israel, if not the Jewish people more generally, are so desperate for some kind of acceptance by the world that they will do anything for a pat on the head, but it simply never works.  Releasing criminals and murderers because they refuse to eat, and thereby potentially sparking riots by their misguided and heavily propagandized compatriots on the outside, is beyond foolish.

It is suicidal.


8 comments:

  1. I should think they could be deported to Brussels, Strasbourg, Caracas, Malmo, and allow our better moral angels of the EU tend to their mercies there. I'm only half kidding. If Sweden, Venezuela and Ireland are so vociferously in their corner then send them all there. There must be thousands who'd be be happy to go and plenty of room, money and well wishing in those places to take them in. When Saddam Hussein did it, the leftists cheered. I suspect that they'd be happy to export a few thousand well trained 'activists' to places that already pride themselves as being 'refugee' and 'dissident' friendly destinations for people from the Mideast.

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    1. I like the way that you think, Trudy.

      You're definitely outside of the box.

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    2. Canada offered to take 120,000 of them but Hamas won't allow it. Good luck putting them somewhere else.

      http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/hamas-refuses-settlement-of-palestinian-refugees-in-canada/

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    3. Right but that was ordinary Gazans where there's no media or political advantage. I'm talking about convicted murderers, terrorists, parole violators and so on. The heroes of the left. In the UK they can't even manage to deport the Hook Hand Sheik who not only illegally entered the UK and bragged out it, openly preached mass murder and terrorism in public, in London and falsified information to illegally get national benefits. And the courts fought the UK government to allow him to stay in the UK indefinitely.

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    4. I know Trudy. It is disgusting.

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  2. "I don't really quite understand why Israel does this kind of thing."

    Let's just say Zionism's work is only half done.

    One half was to get the Jews out of the ghetto. Inasmuch as the Jewish nation now has a state of its own, even if a sizable portion of the nation is in the Diaspora, we can say this mission is accomplished.

    The other half is to get the ghetto out of the Jews—the mentality that was necessary in stateless, defenseless life but is now a dead weight, nay, a millstone, hanging over the Jewish nation's neck. This goal has advanced quite a lot among the Israeli Jewish populace, thanks in great part to Arab aggression—give credit where it's due—but has yet to seep up to the levels of the mainstream media and the policymaking leadership.

    I don't know when, but it's only a matter of time.

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  3. I think the Palestinians know that Israel will defend its interests and this episode will not change the equation.

    When the Palestinians name a public square after this "courageous" man, I hope his champions will feel very proud.

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    1. You would think, oldschool, that the world in general would hate that kind of thing; naming stuff after genocidal murderers. I suppose it's jut part of the Palestinians charm.

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