Love of the Land: PA TV honors anniversary of terror attack with interview of terrorist's sister

PA TV honors anniversary of terror attack with interview of terrorist's sister

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)
13 March '10

(Clinton called [xxxxxxx] “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about [xxxxxxx] approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” Crowley said. Clinton, he said, emphasized that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”)

If you guessed that the call was to Abbas and the "deeply negative signal" was this event, you would be incorrect. Also, you are not a member of the Obama administration. Y.



March 11th, 1978 was the date of the worst terror attack in Israel's history, when 37 people were murdered in a bus hijacking known as the "Coastal Road Massacre." Official Palestinian Authority TV opened its broadcasting last week on the 32nd anniversary of the terror attack by praising it as:

"A glorious chapter in the history of the Palestinian people... [near Tel Aviv] in the heart of the occupation state. The operation shocked the occupation entity."

PA TV's praise of the attack was part of the introduction to an interview with Rashida Mughrabi, sister of terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who commanded the attack. She also praised the attack and called for further terror against Israel, to whom she referred as "the Zionist enemy":

"This is a day of glory and pride for our Palestinian people and a blow to the Zionists... we must unite, and our rifles must unite, against the enemy who steals our land."

The following is from the PA TV interview with Rashida Mughrabi:

Host: "Now, dear viewers, we move on to a glorious chapter in the history of the Palestinian people. On this day in 1978, the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi prepared to meet her God by carrying out a self-sacrifice operation of Martyrdom-seeking [near Tel Aviv] in the heart of the occupation state. The operation shocked the occupation entity at the time and has left its mark until today and for years to come. Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian Shahida (Martyr), has become a symbol and model of resistance, sacrifice, and Martyrdom-seeking; a model of giving and of redemption of the homeland."

Rashida Mughrabi, sister of terrorist Dalal Mughrabi: "This is a day of glory and pride for our Palestinian people and a blow to the Zionists, who view it as a day of blood for them. It is a day of pride for us, just as the day which they see as [Israeli] Independence Day, is our day of catastrophe...

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Love of the Land: PA TV honors anniversary of terror attack with interview of terrorist's sister

Love of the Land: Remembering Dalal Mughrabi

Remembering Dalal Mughrabi

David Hazony
Contentions/Commentary
12 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

The Palestinian Authority just pushed off plans to honor Dalal Mughrabi by renaming a square just outside Ramallah after her. Her claim to fame? In 1978 she headed up one of the most horrific acts of terror every undertaken in the name of Palestine. In the attack, she and 11 others under her command landed on a beach north of Tel Aviv and started shooting and hurling grenades at passing cars and buses on the highway. They then hijacked a bus. Anyone who tried to escape was gunned down. Thirty-eight Israelis, including 13 children, were killed in the Coastal Road Massacre. Another 71 were wounded. In response, Israel launched an assault on southern Lebanon, where her Fatah bosses were based.

We don’t know why the PA has delayed the renaming of the square, but they insist that it’s not because, say, she might not put the Palestinians in the best light.

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Love of the Land: Remembering Dalal Mughrabi

Love of the Land: Who's The Real Hero?

Who's The Real Hero?

Honest Reporting/Backspin
11 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

(The Bar-Lev story link is a must read)

Actress Laila Rouass wants to make a film about Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. The Daily Telegraph writes:

“Was she a revolutionary fighter or was she a terrorist?” asks the actress. “I suppose that is up to the individual to decide. She is still alive and lives in Jordan. I have spoken to her on the phone and I would love to go meet her in person.”

Rouass has funding for the film. “There are very few times that you see the female side of these things and what drives a woman to do what she did,” adds the actress.

Khaled was part of a PLO plot to hijack five Western airplanes and use the hostages to gain the release of other imprisoned terrorists.

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Love of the Land: Who's The Real Hero?

Love of the Land: I Hate That Verb "Stand By"

I Hate That Verb "Stand By"

Batya Medad
Shilo Musings
10 March '10

And I consider the idea of "taking risks for peace" a very dangerous oxymoron. Yes, you have to be quite a moron to think that there will be peace if you take risks like the ones those American politicians keep demanding from us. Yes, they promise to "stand by" us and watch the #!%#&!! fly.

Biden: U.S. will always stand by those who take risks for peace

As a certified/diploma-ed (not cuckoo) English teacher I know that there are idioms which don't mean what the words taken separately mean. That's no comfort when I hear American politicians promising to "stand by Israel," because one of that verb's accepted meanings is just to observe:
I don't want the world to watch us being attacked and then debate suitable response, judge who's guilty and then sympathize with our enemies. We all know that the world--including the United States of America-- is more concerned with satisfying the Arabs than defending our needs.

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Love of the Land: I Hate That Verb "Stand By"

Love of the Land: When fighting terror is an outrage

When fighting terror is an outrage

Soccer Dad
24 February '10

After the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the United States attempted to capture the terrorist responsible by forcing the plane they were on to land on an American-Italian base in Sicily. However, Italy and Egypt were outraged and Italy refused to extradite the terrorists.

Jack Ohman the cartoonist for the Oregonian brillaintly captured the hypocrisy of the anger directed at the Reagan administration for trying to bring the killers to justice. His cartoon showed pictures of Hosni Mubarak, Bettino Craxi and Yasser Arafat; under each picture there was a caption: "Mr. Mubarak demands an apology"; "Mr. Craxi demands an apology"; "Mr. Arafat demands an apology."

On the right of the panel was a wheelchair draped with an American flag. The caption was "Mr. Klinghoffer has no demands."

For the all the outrage the three politicians expressed, there was no remorse that they had played a role in allowing terrorists to kill or escape. Things have not changed much. Arab terrorists still threaten Israel with the acquiescence of Arab states and European countries still enable them.

The Washington Post reports In a shift, United Arab Emirates may tighten travel rules after assassins' entry:

The use of forged European passports by assassins who entered Dubai and killed a Hamas operative may lead the United Arab Emirates to review the open border policies that have made it a commercial and tourist hub, a top UAE official said Sunday.

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Love of the Land: When fighting terror is an outrage

Love of the Land: More Like This Please

More Like This Please

Michael J. Totten
Contentions/Commentary
23 February '10

I can understand why Dubai authorities aren’t happy about the killing of Hamas senior military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, presumably by Israeli Mossad agents, in one of the city-state’s hotel rooms last month. More than most countries in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates has stayed out of the Arab-Israeli conflict and would rather it not wash up on the beach.

Even as European Union officials perfunctorily squawk about the use of forged passports by the assassins, few others have grounds to complain. Al-Mabhouh was a terrorist commander on a mission to acquire Iranian weapons for use against civilians. He was a combatant. Unlike his victims, he was fair game. He would have been fair game for even an air strike if he were in Gaza. As he was, instead, in Dubai, he was taken out quietly without even alerting, let alone harming, any of the civilians around him.

If only Israel could fight all its battles this way. It would be the cleanest and least-deadly war in the history of warfare. Even some of Israel’s harshest critics should understand that.

“The Goldstone Report,” Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Jerusalem Post, “suggests that Israel cannot lawfully fight Hamas rockets by wholesale air attacks. Richard Goldstone, in his interviews, has suggested that Israel should protect itself from these unlawful attacks by more proportionate measures, such as commando raids and targeted killing of terrorists engaged in the firing of rockets. Well, there could be no better example of a proportionate and focused attack on a combatant deeply involved in the rocket attacks on Israel than the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.”

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Love of the Land: More Like This Please

Love of the Land: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh: To Kill a Terrorist - Exclusive Analysis

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh: To Kill a Terrorist - Exclusive Analysis

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
17 February '10

The assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh has touched off a great deal of outrage by the same media organizations and countries that typically ignore the murders committed by Islamic terrorists. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a Muslim Brotherhood member and a co-founder of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the "armed wing" of Hamas. Essentially Mahmoud was a co-founder of the terrorist sub-group responsible for more than half of the murders of Israelis that have taken place over the last decade alone.

If you're wondering what that long string of syllables, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, means. It's in memory of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, a Muslim religious leader who founded the "Black Hand" terrorist group, the first modern day Muslim terrorist group in Israel, which murdered Jewish farmers and tried to launch an uprising in order to create an Arab-Islamic state in place of Israel. The good Sheikh worked together with the Mufti of Jerusalem, who went on to help Hitler to carry out the Holocaust. Qassam never had the chance to do the same, as he was killed in 1935 while hiding in a cave after the murder of a Jewish police officer.

The only difference between Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and his inspiration Sheikh Al-Qassam, is that the latter met his end in a cave and the former in a hotel room. Both men were committed and fanatical Islamic terrorists who plotted to drown the region in blood in the name of their Jihad. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's presence in Dubai was no casual vacation trip. Mabnouh had become a key figure in the weapons smuggling network between Hamas and its Iranian backers. Meanwhile Dubai has become an vital link in the chain of international terrorist operations. Its global import-export connections combined with the support of UAE leader Sheikh Zayed for Hamas, and Dubai's proximity to Iran make it a mecca for terrorist smuggling operations.

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Related: Mossad? I certainly hope so!

Love of the Land: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh: To Kill a Terrorist - Exclusive Analysis

Love of the Land: Remembering one victim of Arab terror

Remembering one victim of Arab terror

Six years ago, Yehuda Haim got on a bus to work one sunny February morning in Jerusalem, and paid with his life.


David Bedein
Op-Ed/JPost
08 February '10

Friday marks six years to the day, according to the Hebrew calendar, since a Jerusalem grocer, Yehuda Haim, was murdered on a bus that Arab terrorists blew up in Jerusalem.

Ever since the restaurant at the Beit Agron Press Center in Jerusalem closed in 2001 because of declining tourism, Haim’s sandwich business at the corner grocery store had been booming for reporters. Yehuda would make each reporter a pre-prepared sandwich with fresh bread and any condiments the customer would ask for.

For me, he knew exactly how many pickles I liked with my tuna fish, and just how I liked my egg salad. And he carefully cut each fresh vegetable to order. I had a special need, since I would wash my hands at Beit Agron and make the blessing over the bread only when I got to the store. I became used to hearing Yehuda’s “amen” to the first bite in my sandwich, before he would fill it with his goodies for me yet again.

One Sunday morning, on the bus to work, passing the old Jerusalem train station, the bus in front of ours blew to bits. The first instinct was to run to the bus, don the proverbial press badge and grab a camera to report the event, snapping shots and getting them to the wires in real time. Not knowing at the time that one of the bodies flung from the bus window was Yehuda Haim, who was on his way to work.

The names of the victims were solemnly announced on the radio news, including that of Yehuda Haim.

All I could think about was Yehuda’s smiling face on Friday, when he said “amen” to my blessing on a tuna bagel, when he wished a good Shabbat to three reporters who came by his store.

His smiling face was turned by an Arab terrorist into lifeless body parts on Derech Hebron. That day at lunch, I had lost my lunch partner. Maybe Yehuda would say amen to my blessing from heaven for that day’s bagel, I thought.

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Love of the Land: Remembering one victim of Arab terror

Love of the Land: Israel’s deadly mistakes

Israel’s deadly mistakes

Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
20 December 09

IN 1983, ISRAELI authorities arrested Ahmed Yassin, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. He was convicted of unlawfully stockpiling weapons and establishing paramilitary jihadist organizations, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Just two years later, however, he was set free in the now-infamous “Jibril deal’’ - the release of 1,150 security prisoners held by Israel in exchange for three Israeli soldiers held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group headed by Ahmed Jibril. Yassin soon launched Hamas, a murderous organization committed to Israel’s liquidation. Over the years, Hamas terrorists have killed hundreds of Israelis, and maimed or wounded thousands more.

Few Israeli policies have been as counterproductive or morally questionable as the lopsided prisoner exchanges it has entered into with terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Time and again, Israel has paid for the freedom of a few POWs - sometimes just the remains of a few POWs - by releasing hundreds of violent detainees, many of them complicit in the deaths of civilians. And time and again, the newly freed terrorists have picked up where they left off.

(Continue article)
Related: A nation held hostage

Love of the Land: Israel’s deadly mistakes

Love of the Land: Goldstone, I too am a war criminal

Goldstone, I too am a war criminal

David Chinitz
Daled Amos
13 December 09

I moved to Israel from the United States in December 1981. It was the same day that the Israeli government officially annexed the Golan Heights. Hearing about it literally as me, my wife and our three month old daughter - now a lawyer in Tel Aviv - were about to board the plane, I mentally processed the issues: Is such a unilateral move legal? Is it wise? Is it just? To be honest, I pretty much just shrugged and got on the plane.

Over the last 28 years I have come to appreciate the shrug as the signature gesture of Israeli children. When an Israeli child has doubts about something on offer from an adult, the shrug is her way of signaling: "Sorry, that doesn't work for me." While the physical shrug disappears with age, the Israeli manner of shrugging things off is at one and the same endearing and off -putting. But given the environment of endless hostility in which Israelis live, their shrug is not the kind that reflects callousness but reconciliation to the fact that life in this part of the world is really messy, both morally and practically. There's not much choice but to carry on.

Consider the Golan Heights. Before 1967 the Syrians constantly shelled Israeli agricultural settlements that lay below the Heights, and not much else was going on there. Since Israel conquered the Golan in response to Syrian aggression in 1967, it has flourished under Israeli rule, providing a burgeoning tourist industry to Jews, Arabs and Druze who live there. Israelis cultivate Golan vineyards that have produced world class wines that even left wing Israelis enjoy. To be sure, some Golan inhabitants, in particular in certain Druze villages, still express a preference for Syria. In exchange for normal relations with Syria, I might be willing, subject to continued access and water sharing arrangements, to return the Golan to Syria. But I don't feel any moral compunction about vacationing there. Shrug.

I live on land in Jerusalem that was empty when I arrived, but who knows who owned it before 1948. Many of my friends live in Arab houses that were definitely owned by Palestinians in the past, and some have even looked them up to ascertain that the previous owners have no desire to make a claim. I have watched as Palestinians from the territories conquered in 1967 benefited from improvements in their quality of life that came from Israeli health and social services, all the while chafing, and often reacting with barbaric disproportionate violence including suicide bombings to what they call "occupation." I detest the minority of obnoxious, ethnocentric Arab-baiting Israeli settlers who place their obsession with physically living in certain areas of Jewish historical significance above any other consideration, including the rule of law.

But I don't feel any moral doubts about the main blocks of settlements inhabited by law-abiding hard-working citizens. Between the extremists on both sides who have acted persistently to thwart any accommodation, I judge the Palestinians as worse. Because even when Israel has made concessions and given up territory, the Palestinian extremists have responded with stepped-up violence to the detriment of both Israelis and Palestinians. So I shrug and take the position that as long as the Palestinians seem more interested in eliminating the Jewish state than in achieving a compromise, I'm off the moral hook.

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Love of the Land: Goldstone, I too am a war criminal

Love of the Land: An Impossible Choice

An Impossible Choice

A soldier's mother tries to decide what Israel should do about the Shalit exchange. It is an inhuman dilemma, one only barbarians could create.

Paula R. Stern
IsraelNationalNews.com
06 December 09

There is a debate going on in Israel now - two sides, each in agony.

There are those who say Gilad Shalit has been in captivity too long. We have to do all, we owe all, to bring him home. Hamas has gotten away with violating international law by denying Israel and his parents their basic right of contact with their son. For more than three years, Hamas has refused to allow international representatives such as the Red Cross, to confirm he is well treated, safe, healthy. Unimaginable agonies, unbearable torture.

His parents have lived with all of this, traveling the world, begging them to listen, to do something for this boy who grew into a man without them. He was 19 when he was taken, as my Elie was 19 when he entered the army. Today, Gilad is 23-years-old...his parents have missed so much in those years. It is enough.

There are those who say that leaving Gilad in captivity breaks all that we hold dear.
don't leave a soldier behind; morale will fall among incoming troops if they can't believe their country will do all to bring them home.

All this, in varying degrees, might be true. That is one side of this great divide. They will agree to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, their identity and crimes almost unimportant, for the one son that Hamas holds. Yes, they smile sadly, the numbers are absurd, but what can we do? We can't leave Gilad there; would you leave Gilad if he were your son? Look now, in the mirror and answer that question for yourself. If it was your son, could you, would you, leave him there?

On the other side of this great divide, are those who say that though they want Gilad home, it cannot be at any price. We must think with our heads and not our hearts. These 1,000 - beyond the absurdity of the equation - are murderers, terrorists - convicted security prisoners who were not strolling on the beach when they were taken into custody. Some murdered and the blood of their victims thrills them. They yearn for more, promise there will be more.

(Continue article)

Love of the Land: An Impossible Choice

Love of the Land: Refusing to remain silent in the face of evil

Refusing to remain silent in the face of evil

Jonathan and Esther Pollard
JPost Opinion
25 November 09

Why is the life of one Israeli captive deemed so precious that Israel's leaders are willing to dispense with all logic and morality in order to redeem him? Why is the life of another Israeli captive dismissed as if it were worthless?

Why is the life of one captive such an urgent national priority that the safety and security of every single Israeli citizen must be put at risk? Why is the life of the other captive so inconsequential - after decades of captivity - that negotiations for his release have never been undertaken?

Are we, the People of Israel, so incompetent, so bereft of will, talent, imagination and faith in God that we really believe the only way to secure the release of the former captive is at a price so exorbitant that it beggars the imagination? Do we really believe that the wholesale release of terrorists and murderers is a rational response? Are we, the People of Israel, so bereft of vision that we cannot grasp that burying one captive alive while we pray for the release of the other drives the blessing away and brings shame and dishonor upon us all?

Are we, the People of Israel, so politically brainwashed that we cannot see that, in both cases, mere expediency reigns supreme in a morally-bankrupt government? This is not fulfillment of the mitzva of pidyon shvuyim!

AS LONG as Israeli leaders demonstrate a unanimous will to exploit the value of rescuing one captive because it suits their political ends, while simultaneously ignoring another captive, there can be no national honor, nor national self-respect. There is only political expediency. Self-serving, opportunistic, political expediency.

Those who are willing to close their eyes to the truth and follow lockstep with Israel's "leaders" in support of this unconscionable plan to unleash the forces of evil by allowing the architects of mass murder to pour forth from Israeli jails are placing their own lives at risk as well as the lives of their loved ones.

Those who fail to speak out and protest Israel's lopsided, immoral policy of selective rescue - damning one captive while saving the other and simultaneously putting the lives of all citizens in jeopardy - must know that they are complicit in this criminal deed.

It is painfully clear that Israel's mainstream media has stymied all rational debate on this issue, just as it has, for its own self-serving reasons, lent its support to the government's cowardly abandonment of the latter captive.

Nevertheless, moral conscience does not permit us to remain silent.

If our words are not heard today, so be it. A time will come when they will be heard. We hope that by then, it will not be too late.

Jonathan Pollard is an American-born Israeli citizen currently in the 25th year of his life sentence in an American prison. Esther Pollard is his wife.

Love of the Land: Refusing to remain silent in the face of evil

Love of the Land: At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
07 November 09

TO BRANDEIS University last night, South African jurist Richard Goldstone brought his international reputation as a legal scholar, a human rights advocate, and the former chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, brought facts and figures, maps and photographs, and audio and video in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

The two men were at Brandeis to discuss Goldstone’s highly controversial UN report on Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack in Gaza last winter. The report, written after a fact-finding mission with which Israel refused to cooperate, accuses the Jewish state of committing war crimes by using “disproportionate force’’ to inflict widespread destruction on Palestinian civilians - a policy that amounted to “collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip.’’ Last night’s encounter marked the first time since the report was issued that Goldstone publicly debated the report’s merits with a leading Israeli figure. It would not surprise me to learn that he is in no hurry for a second.

That is not to say that Goldstone didn’t speak well, even eloquently, in defending his own integrity and his chagrin at Israel’s refusal to have anything to do with his commission’s inquiry. Nor was there any mistaking his sincere outrage when he itemized the physical devastation he viewed in Gaza - 5,000 homes destroyed, 200 factories disabled, water systems wrecked, poultry farms demolished - or when he denounced the bombing of a mosque during prayers. “If that isn’t collective punishment, what is?’’ Goldstone asked. Such attacks, he said, “scream out’’ for investigation by Israel.

But Goldstone spent much of the time talking about himself - he recounted his dealings with the chairman of the UN Human Rights Council, his nightmares about being kidnapped by Hamas, his pleased discovery that ordinary Palestinians were “just like’’ ordinary Israelis - while his interlocutor focused relentlessly on facts and evidence. Gold played video of Israelis under Hamas rocket attack, and noted that such attacks had increased 500 percent after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. He displayed aerial photographs of Hamas military installations located amid schools and mosques. He described Israel’s extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties, and showed Palestinian TV broadcasts confirming those efforts. He presented images of weapons caches inside Palestinian mosques and homes.

It was a powerful presentation - so powerful, in fact, that Goldstone regretted not having seen it earlier. “The sort of information shown to us by Ambassador Gold,’’ he said, “should have been shown to us during the [UN] investigation.’’

Yet to my mind, what was most striking of all was Goldstone’s inability to give a clear answer to an essential question: What should a law-abiding country do to defend itself against relentless terrorist attacks?

In one form or another, that question came up repeatedly. In his welcoming remarks, Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz observed that we live in a “new age of warfare,’’ in which civilized nations confront terrorists able to “mix and melt’’ into the civilian population. Asked Gold, after describing the thousands of rockets launched by Hamas at Israeli communities: “What would you do if your population was facing repeated attacks for eight years?’’ During the question-and-answer period, a student asked Goldstone - who had condemned Israel’s “disproportionate’’ attacks - what he would have considered a “proportionate’’ response.

But the judge, astonishingly, had no answer. He responded that that was a decision for the Israelis to make. He said it was a question that had given him “many sleepless nights.’’ He mused that perhaps undercover “commando attacks’’ would have been more appropriate. (“Gee, why didn’t the Israelis think of that?’’ murmured a voice in the audience.) He even suggested that it might make a good subject for a Brandeis research paper.

Judge Goldstone uses his international platform to pronounce Israel guilty, in other words, but will not say how Israel could have avoided such a verdict.

For the truth is, no other verdict was possible. Where the UN is involved, the guilt of the Jewish state is always taken for granted. The eminence of its chairman notwithstanding, the Goldstone Commission was a sham, and its bottom line was foreordained. The mystery isn’t why the Goldstone Report has been so widely denounced, but why Goldstone agreed to write it in the first place.

Love of the Land: At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

Love of the Land: Netanyahu, It's Time For a Change of Tack

Netanyahu, It's Time For a Change of Tack

Frimet Roth
JPost
07 September 09

Once again, hope for the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit was raised and then dashed within days. The familiar roller coaster invites the question: Why have our leaders failed to free Schalit?

This year several high-profile missions were carried out to rescue Western hostages. Their success could be instructive for Israel. First, Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian politician, was freed along with 14 other hostages from jungle captivity in July 2008 in a daring, Hollywoodesque infiltration of guerrilla camps.

Then, on August 5, 2009, former US president Bill Clinton's visit to North Korea scored the surprise release of two American journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years' hard labor by a Pyongyang court. The women were whisked to freedom with Clinton only 20 hours after he landed there.

Next, on August 16, 2009, a visit by US Senator Jim Webb of Virginia to Myanmar secured the return of an American imprisoned there.

Elation over these homecomings has been tempered by concern over the ramifications of the deals cut. As an Associated Press report put it: "Such visits, argue experts, can give regime leaders an aura of respect and recognition that may make it harder for the US to press for sanctions or continue isolation policies aimed at forcing change in everything from humans rights to nuclear power."

ISRAEL IS primed to pay astronomically more for Gilad Schalit. Yet our leaders are indifferent to the deadly ramifications. The release of mass murderers in return for Schalit's freedom poses an irrefutable risk. Yet for three years it has been touted as the single option available.

The day after Schalit's disappearance, his kidnappers offered information about him if Israel agreed to release all female and under-18-year-old Palestinian prisoners.

Since then, while the list of prisoners has grown, no other avenue of rescue has ever been shown, let alone rumored, to be on the cards. Not even the massive Operation Cast Lead produced evidence of any rescue attempt.

Instead, Hamas has been sitting pretty all these years. The only pressure exerted on it has been to delete several prisoners from its list and to approve the exile of several others after release. Moreover, the sine qua non of any deal, the release of all female prisoners, has never been challenged. It is accepted by all as a compassionate stipulation.

One of those women is Ahlam Tamimi. This journalist-cum-university student was involved in the reconnaissance and planning of the August 9, 2001 terror attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant.

That morning, Tamimi, along with a suicide bomber and 10 kg of explosives, took a taxi from Ramallah. At the checkpoint between east and west Jerusalem, her accomplice, Izzadin al-Masri, got out and walked past the IDF soldiers empty-handed. Tamimi remained in the taxi, passing through unsearched, while the explosives lay beside her.

Once past the checkpoint, Tamimi rejoined Masri on foot. The pair then walked toward the center of Jerusalem. Tamimi carried a camera and the two conversed aloud in English to pass for tourists.

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Love of the Land: Netanyahu, It's Time For a Change of Tack