: re: In Hostage-Terrorist Policy Shift, Obama Admits Failures

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 9:31 AM
Subject: re: In Hostage-Terrorist Policy Shift, Obama Admits Failures
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     In July, 2006, Hezbollah abducted two israeli soldiers. Israel responded with an invasion of Lebanon in which hundreds died. The only worse response the Israelis could have made would have been to pay the abductors what they asked. To pay ransom in any one case is to be complicit in the next abduction, and the next, and in the destruction of society.
   You don't have to take this analysis on my word. Here it is from Hassan Nasrullah, who directed the Hezbollah abductions:

"We did not think that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not,"

 There you have it from the director of kidnappings. They won't happen when everyone knows there will be no pay out.

      However much president Obama wants to mollify the families of kidnap victims, he cannot apologize for doing what is right. We must never reward kidnappers.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.haaretz.com/news/nasrallah-we-wouldn-t-have-snatched-soldiers-if-we-thought-it-would-spark-war-1.199556