The Alresalah Arabic-language wrote that the two Israelis being held by Hamas are “soldiers.”
It reported:
An Ethiopian-Israeli soldier, identified as Abraham Mengistu, entered to the Gaza Strip by mistake on September 8, 2014.
The second Israeli, a Bedouin from the southern city of Hura, was not identified. Israel also has kept a veil of secrecy on his disappearance, but Hura’s reputation for crime and terror leaves open the possibility that the missing Bedouin entered Gaza with the cooperation of Hamas.
Nevertheless, Alresalah referred to him as a soldier, also.
Hamas has said it will not disclose any information about the two men until Israel releases terrorists from prison, including those who were freed for kidnapped soldier GIlad Shalit and then rearrested for more terror.
News of the missing Israeli broke on Thursday when Israeli media demanded a gag order be released and since then has dumped on the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the IDF for alleged racism.
As in previous hostage incidents, the government and military should be given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to work quietly for their release, but the immediate conclusion, without any basis, that Mengistu still is in Gaza because he is an Ethiopian only complicates matters for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Lior Lotan, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s representative for the Mengistu affair, made things even worse by leaked comments to Mengistu’s family that they would make matters worse if they went public and criticized the Prime Minister.
That immediately was reported as a “threat,” and Lotan issued has issued a public apology.
However, the anti-Netanyahu media are not satisfied and want the Prime Minister’s head, an expression that perhaps should not be used so loosely these days.
Lotan had told the family:
You have two options: The first is to point the finger at Hamas and tell them ‘You are holding him; you are responsible for his fate, return him to us and we want to know that he’s alive.’
Then you have the second option, which is to point the finger at Jerusalem and say ‘You aren’t right, you let him cross and did not respond to letters.’
I have my opinion on what is best for Israel [and] what will help him and what will help Hamas, but you have to choose and you will be responsible for the outcome.
That does not sound like a threat. It sound like putting the facts on the table, but if the leftist media says it is a threat, it is a threat.
Zahava Gal-On, the leader of the left-wing Meretz party, immediately concluded that Lotan would not have spoken as he did to another family if their skin were white.
“No one should dare to tell us that this is not connected to skin color,” she asserted.
And if she says it is racism, it is racism.
Prime Minister Netanyahu personally apologized to the Mengisto family for Lotan’s remarks and is visiting them them Friday.
Now the family of the Bedouin is screaming “racism” because no one from the government has visited them.
It is not known if the Bedouin was a terrorist or a criminal. It is not known what Israel has been doing behind the scenes, quietly, to free them.
All that really is known is that the establishment media are further jeopardizing the lives of the missing Israelis and soon will be jeopardizing the lives of all Israelis by demanding that the government gain their release by handing over more terrorists, who can go around killing more people.