IDF Chief: Israel must free terrorists for Shalit
Ashkenazi calls Goldstone report biased as it ignores rocket fire; says IDF moral, avoided harming civilians.
By Haaretz Service Tags: Goldstone report Israel news Gaza IDFIsrael Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said Monday that there was no way Hamas would release abducted soldier Gilad Shalit unless Israel agreed to free jailed Palestinians involved in terror attacks.
"There is no way to bring Gilad Shalit back without freeing terrorists," the IDF chief told Army Radio. "The question, of course, is what kind of people [prisoners] and what they did."
Negotiations under Egyptian and German mediation have been ongoing to free Shalit, who was kidnapped by Gaza militants in a 2006 cross-border raid, but no progress has yet been confirmed.
During the interview, Ashkenazi also blasted the damning United Nations report on Israel's winter offensive against Hamas in Gaza, calling it "biased" and reiterating that the IDF was a moral army.
"I read the report - it is biased and unbalanced," Ashkenazi told Army Radio, in his first public response to the report.
Referring to Richard Goldstone, the South African prosecutor who wrote the report, the IDF chief said: "From his mandate, he was already unbalanced. He ignored Hamas [rocket] fire. As the one who planned the operation, I say that we have a moral army; we did everything we could to lessen the harm to noncombatants."
Though the 547-page document, which was released on Thursday, accuses both Israel and Hamas of carrying out war crimes during the three-week campaign in Gaza, it focuses primarily on Israel's actions during the hostilities.
Ashkenazi added: "We were not those who chose to operate from within a population. We distributed leaflets, we left phone messages, we warned people to stay away. But when we needed to hit a squad that was trying to launch a Grad rocket, we didn't hesitate."
The lieutenant general added that the army was investigating its own actions, but not because of the UN report or any other - because this was important to Israel. He also said that soldiers were given explicit orders on the rules of engagement, which were alleged to have been lax during the campaign.
"But I want to say more than this," he added. "Before all the reports, immediately after the end of the operation, we investigated ourselves. Since then and up until now, we have held a process of investigation, including appeals from Palestinians."
He went on to say that from an ethical point of view, the IDF was a "light among nations."
In regard to the situation on the northern border, Ashkenazi said it was not in the interest of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant organization, to start a new conflict.
"Nevertheless, we are not complacent," he said. "We are monitoring closely what is happening inside of Lebanon. Hezbollah continues to become stronger and we are planning for the possibility that we will need to be there too. It is correct that Hezbollah is rearming, but the IDF will have an answer."
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
no words are adequate enough to describe the pain thAT gilad's family going through ,i wrote a song that will remind everyone that this is not going away and we won't waite , we must bring Gilad back home! hear the song on my site www.myspace.com/ofironit , best regards to shalit faMILY FROM OFIR
I dont think Israel will free the palestinians "terrorists" they may serve better in captivity.
Bibi Nethanyahu made a big mistake by refusing to take part in this UN-Charade. He left the field to Hamas and Goldstone is certainly not the first innocent foreigner who fell for Palestinian lies and and staged invented information. Nearly all the foreign press in Israel let themselves be manipulated by fixers (out of the American Colony Hotel), staged (Mohammed Al-Dura) or dreamed up "massacres" (Jenin). The Israeli attitude is one of unfortunate arrogance, thinking the whole world is against it. This might be true for the UN-Human Rights Council, but being part of this globe, we cannot just shut our eyes and disassociate ourselves from the rest of the world. In the case of Goldstone's report, Bibi did a great disservice to his country.
The IDF itself was born of a coalition of Jewish terrorist organizations following 1948, for one. And the other is to acknowledge that terrorism is the poor man's answer to overwhelming military opposition. The third is that most if not all Palestinian prisoners are prisoners of war, and in the end, with peace, all must be returned to their home country. To do otherwise is to support an endless cycle of guerilla war against Israel. Ah yes, the sine qua non for peace is for Israel to retreat to the 1967 armistice line. Peace will come by regional and international guarantees. There is no other way. The status quo relentlessly leads to WWIII.
and it's the same with idf's military courts when it comes to prosecuting alleged crimes against the palestinians.
es not moral or human right oriented as reflection of their societies.IDF best in the world.thats why Islamic regimes want to destroy it.they can not destroy the western free institutions if Israel exists.The world is safe because of Israel.The arrogange of the Iranian mullahs and dicators around the world is seen as they are showing their true hands.Israel is not the problem it is the solution.The problem is extremism which does not wish to coexist with democracy and sees Israel as the one obstacle to world domination of Islamic extremism.Better wake up and not listen to idiots like goldstone who are twisted and an organization like the UN who long ago gave up its relevance and became an instrument of nothingness
...and Israel is one big military state. And that bit about "light unto nations?" Get real. Those of us that watched live during the Second War on Lebanon, that Israel ultimately lost learned a lot about Israel's "light among nations" crap. And then came the war upon the Gaza Ghetto that Israel created and orchestrated. The light's out. Broken, Laying in broken shards upon the ground being trampled underfoot by IDF troops who shoot women and children with white flags, who fire White Phosphorous on UN shelters, who scrawl obscenities on Gazans walls with their own feces, and defecating in refrigerators. There is little hope that Israel will ever be a "light among nations" - more like a blight.
As a matter of fact, only abnormal people condone what Israel did in Gaza. I think many Israeli "supporters" are inflicted with some sort of mental sickness. What else explains how people could read the report, see the corroboration, watch the videos and then pop up in a comment section on a news site and defend the indefensible?
...that was mentioned eighteen times in the Goldstone Report. You can go on pretending all that you want. But you cannot change the facts. It was an operation intended to bring the civilian population of Gaza to its knees bowing down before Israel. The Goldstone Report is simply the latest, and the most credible to report this, you must have missed all the live video. The rest of the world outside of the Israeli-AIPAC bubble did not.
Instead of a "light upon nations" I think the IDF is a "dark page in Western history". The IDF can view some Palestinians as terrorists, while the Palestinians view them as freedom fighters. The IDF can view itself as the defender of the Jewish people, but the Palestinians can view it as the biggest terror organisation in the Middle East. In light of the history of the conflict, and who is more to blame, I prefer the PAlestinian view.
IDF,what you called terrorist, they are someone else defender of their own home!
trading hundreds of terrorists for Shalit will flood the country with more terror causing untold numbers of innocent deaths. and it will reenforce the bad precedents of the past which lets the terrorists know they will one day be freed. so, tho it hurts, gilad should stay where he is to prevent scores of innocent dead israeli's in the near future. maybe the water and electric to gaza should be cut off til he is returned. or all aid prevented from going in until he is freed. . Israel swore to never deal with blackmailer, and yet it has over and over. now is the time to stop..how about kidnapping some high level hamasniks in return?
country then Israel , then we could compare . Anyway in that case Arabs would not be able commit terror any more , terrorists would became a museum item for all to see . It is only Israel , the only country in the world , who plays tootsy with terrorists while they rocketing the country for eight long years .
Ashkenazi once told this, I don't get what make him change his heart.
I think not. Goldstone's document condemns the rocket fire from Gaza is several palces and in categorical terms. I also agree the report is flawed and uneven handed in many respects. Nevertheless, it contains a worrying number of detailed corroborated reports concerning the begaviour of a some IDF troops and their commanders.
Palestinians are 'not' Terrorists...they're Palestinian Guerilla Freedom Fighters...(PFF)! TATA
Times have changed too drastically in the thirty three years since Entebbe...wouldn't work nowadays...
idf chief represts israel. goldstone represents un. between the two i trust idf. un has a history of beeing biased ,at least from the time they had as head of un a former nazi criminal.
how about just a morally ethical army that did it's best and cares about human life. A light to the nations myth gets us way way to high up there. We are normal people after all.
BEFORE releasing terrorists!