# 98 – What is ‘Happy’?

July 15, 2008

The papers are full of it today.

Aviva mentioned the point of how often the word ‘happy’ is brought up (in Hebrew: sameach or smecha/fem.) by the families and friends of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the 2 soldiers captured 2 years ago by Hezbollah. ‘Happy they are coming home’ – ‘Happy this is all over’ and so on. Happy? Maybe, but that’s not for which what the word was meant to be used.

The exchange will be tomorrow.

Until today, nothing has been revealed about their condition. It has been presumed thay are dead, although P.M. Olmert made a statement 2 weeks ago declaring that they were dead. Today, a Lebanese source says that 1 is alive.

The army is preparing for military funerals at each of the soldiers’ homes. The Red Cross has stationed doctors on both sides of the border; just in case.

And the families? Can you imagine what they are now going through? They HAVE to believe that there is a chance their loved ones will walk into their arms.

Lebanon is preparing a hero’s welcome for Samir Kuntar, one of those being released by Israel in the exchange. Even the Lebanese P.M., Saniora, at least a political enemy of Hezbollah and it’s extreme policies, is ‘sharing the joy of his people’.

This is a man who, at the age of 16, entered Israel on a rubber dinghy, killed one policeman, entered an apartment and took a man and his 4 year-old daughter hostage. The mother, in her desperation to keep her 2 year-old daughter quiet, hugged her so tightly, the child was smothered. Dead in her mother’s arms.

The police arrived. Before the shootout, Kuntar shot the father in the back of the head, and crushed the child’s head against a rock.

He was then captured.

And now he’s free.

His mother’s happy.