Fears rise for life of missing teen

[Scurrilous]

Rising concerns: Eliyahu Ashri, 18, from Itamar, missing since Sunday, fails to show up for class trip. Police, IDF forces search Bethlehem and Ramallah. Palestinian Resistance Committees insist: We kidnapped settler in West Bank

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3268098,00.html

<snip>

"The IDF and Israel Police are seriously considering the possibility that Eliyahu Ashri, aged 18, from Itamar, was kidnapped in Samaria. Soldiers and policemen from the Judea and Samaria district began intense searches for the missing youth, with the primary focus in Bethlehem and areas surrounding Ramallah. The PRC's original claim that they had kidnapped a settler was published Monday night by Ynet.

Police said they believed that if Ashri was kidnapped, that he may be held captive in Ramallah, and there were serious fear for his wellbeing.

Tuesday Ashri's father filed a missing-person's report with the Ariel police department for his son, missing since Sunday. According to current information, Ashri, who studies in a pre-military mechina (preparatory program), left his friend's house in Beitar Elite, south of Jerusalem, on Sunday and has not made contact with his family ever since.

A spokesperson for the Popular Resistance Committees, Abu Abir, confirmed to Ynet for the second time in less than 24 hours that his group kidnapped an Israeli settler. Abu Abir said his group refused to release any information about the kidnapped Israeli or details of the operation that led to the alleged capture of an Israeli settler.

"We won't give information for free," Abu Abir said."

[barb162]

1. bad news

[Tom Joad]

2. "Sameria"? I think they mean illegally occupied West Bank.

[cali]

3. Does

that justify kidnapping or harm to him?

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Obviously...

Yep. If someone points out that it's the West Bank and not Samaria, it must mean that justifies kidnapping someone. :sarcasm:

[Tom Joad]

5. Just sayin... why use the inaccurate language?

[cali]

9. Just sayin

your immediate leap into stating that the kid was from a settlement, being sure that point was made, and without a word of concern about the welfare of the kid, was rather sad.

[Tom Joad]

6. of course, no matter what i said, no matter how much i told you i did not

want the youth harmed, many would believe otherwise. so what's the use?

Israel has kidnapped (or "detained") hundreds of Palestinian youths this year. Little concern for them.

In the first quarter of 2006 alone, some 350 children were arrested -- compared to around 700 child arrests in the whole of 2005. The vast increase in arrests is in turn leading to overcrowding in prisons as record numbers of juveniles are being held in unsuitable and unhygienic conditions.

At any given time there are probably hundreds of Palestinian children in detention, with some 350 in detention at the beginning of 2003. In 2002 one-fifth were between 13-14, the rest between 15-17. The military and police tend to target children between 12-17, but have arrested children as young as nine.

Children are arrested "at checkpoints, on the street, or at their homes by heavily armed Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. The soldiers take them to detention centres in Israeli settlements or military camps... the children are interrogated. This almost always involves some form of torture or abuse, including sleep and food deprivation, threatening language, beatings with heavy batons, being punched and kicked, as well as being tied in painful and contorted positions for long periods of time..."

[DemFromMem]

7. Moral relativism doesn't bring world peace

You are well within your rights to criticize what you feel are human rights violations on the part of Israel. But where you lose me is when you make the leap to say that something as abhorrent as kidnapping and a teenager is okay because Israel does bad things as well.

It's no better when pro-Israel writers on this board excuse the inexcusable on the other side and simply say that the Palestinians are worse.

I've always felt that if the Palestinians followed the examples of Gandhi or Dr. King, they would probably already have their own indendent country and a thriving democracy. India shamed Britain and won their country. African Americans shamed white America and won their rights. When will the Palestinians and their diaspora pursue the path of non-violent resistance? Surely that is a more productive path than standing up for this kind of nonsense.

[Tom Joad]

10. DemFrom ... what are you reading?

"But where you lose me is when you make the leap to say that something as abhorrent as kidnapping and a teenager is okay" I did not say it was okay. No more than you did. It seems you make the leap. I was just mentioning that the child was in illegally occupied land.

Please, read my post. Carefully. We can clear up the misunderstanding.

I do support nonviolent resistance in Palestine (which is very popular with Palestinians), and that is being met with brutal violence from Israel , and silence from much of the US public.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4474.shtml

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker humanitarian service organization, has nominated two candidates for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize: Jeff Halper from Israel and Ghassan Andoni from the West Bank and Gaza.

In a region torn apart by conflict, these grassroots peace activists have been committed to nonviolence as the path to justice, peace, and reconciliation. For decades they have worked to liberate both the Palestinian and the Israeli people from the yoke of structural violence -- symbolized most clearly by the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They have opposed the Separation Wall that blinds people to one another's existence. They have instead tried to build bridges to recognition and celebration of a common humanity.

[DemFromMem]

11. Then stop the excusing.

If you are truly for non-violence, then you will condemn acts of violence on BOTH sides. When you make the observation after every atrocity committed by the Palestinians that, oh, by the way, the Israelis are bad also, your message is NOT non-violence. If you were committed to non-violence, you would condemn an act of violence and not add the little implicit qualifier at the end basically excusing the act because the other side does the same thing. Those little qualifiers show up over and over again on this board.

[Tom Joad]

12. Nonviolence of King.

I do condemn all violence against civilians. I condemn the violence of the group that kidnapped this young man, and the violence of the Israeli govt that uses him as a pawn by encouraging illegal settlements in other people's land, i condemn first and foremost my own governments violence by subsidizing these settlements.

If you read Martin Luther King, you would know that violence is not only that which comes out of a gun, but structural violence as well.

so just allowing the "peaceful" confiscation of land by Israeli settlements, is a form of violence, even if no shots are fired. It is, a massive, organized, structural, violence and oppression. I also say, along with Martin, that is time to end the silence, there comes a time when silence is complicity.

You are right, though, DemFromMem, I should have been more clear in the first place. So my apologies for directing my frustration toward you.

[Name removed]

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