3 Years Is Too Long!

by Findalis

June 25, 2009 will be the 3rd anniversary of the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. 3 years of being a POW. Yet in his case the International Red Cross is not allowed to visit, the world’s media (excluding the media in Israel) is silent, and the leaders of the world are more concerned with recognizing Hamas (the kidnappers) and not one lone Israeli soldier.

It was Yelena Bonner, the widow of Andrei Sakharov who brought up Gilad’s plight to the public forum in a speech given at the Oslo Freedom Forum:

Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?

You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners’ everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House…

But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit’s rights.

The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?

And yet I still think (and some will find this naive) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release – and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.

Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism.

Gilad Shalit is a Jew. That is why the world accepts Hamas’ continued captivity of Sgt. Shalit. Dr. Bonner saw the truth, when will the rest of the world see it.

Dhimmi Carter has suggested to President Obama that Hamas be taken off the terror group list. Perhaps President Obama do so when and if Hamas releases Sgt. Shalit first. It would be a gesture on Hamas’ part that they are willing to become civilized and follow international law. Until that they must be kept on the terror group list.

Not once during President Obama speech to Muslims that he gave in Egypt did he mention Gilad Shalit. Not once. Isn’t it about time that he did.

And isn’t it about time you did too. You can. For the next 24 hours go onto Twitter, Facebook and other networking sites and shout out about this injustice. A Soldier’s Mother has done just that with:

We MUST get #Gilad to the top on Thursday! Spread it using RT Facebook, LinkedIn – email. Please Thursday remember #Gilad!”

Let us all make Thursday Gilad Shalit Day.

It is time to bring Sgt. Shalit home. Let it be soon!

Unimaginable Horror in Tehran Today

*cross-posted from Assoluta Tranquillita*

Remember I told you how worried I was when it became clear that all foreign media had been booted out of Iran? That is ALWAYS a classic gambit – prelude – when brutal regimes intend/plan to massacre their own. We have all seen that too many times throughout even recent history. NOW, I find this about Tehran TODAY. From ThreatsWatch comes this. Read and watch.:

Unimaginable Horror in Tehran Today

Iran has executed its Tiananmen Square. Baharestan Square has become synonymous with barbarity, cruelty, massacre and inhumanity.

An Iranian blogger (whose URL I will not publish) live blogging from Baharestan Square in central Tehran today captures but brief glimpses of the unimaginable horror that took place today. Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by “black-clad police” and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime’s Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.

From the live blogger’s eyewitness account:

>More than 10.000 Bassij Milittias get position in Central Tehran, including Baharestan Sq.
>Army Helycopters flying over Baharestan and Vali Asr Sq.
>The streets, squares and around BAHARESTAN (Approx. South-eastern of Tehran) is swarming with military forces, civilian forces, the security motorists
>The croud have moved to the south of baharestan, the situation is bad, the shooting has started
>In Baharestan Sq. in the Police shooting, A girl is shot and the police is not allowing to let them help
>In Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping people like meat – blood everywhere – like butcher

This is the Iranian regime, wading into its own unarmed people and axing them to death, bludgeoning women (seen as the greatest threat to the regime) and throwing them to their deaths from pedestrian bridges. The same Iranian regime whose embassy officials are invited to American embassies around the world to celebrate on July 4th, of all things, a successful revolution.

This frantic phone call from a Tehran woman will break your heart as you consider our standard response has been “that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence” and that “the international community is watching.” Part of yesterday’s response by President Obama in a press conferences included “that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy (of the Iranian regime) and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.” The Iranian theocratic regime clearly is not interested.

There is much more, and absolute proof of what Iran is really capable of. Go to ThreatsWatch NOW and read the rest here.

I am speechless right now, (and the words I COULD say are not fit for print) but I HOPE that BO has more than mealy mouthed platitudes to say about this. As the woman in the phone call says:

“You must help us. You should stop this. Help the people of Iran.”

Are you listening BO? Are you?

“Then they came for me…” God help the Iranians.

H/T Blake.