The IDF and Israel Police are seriously considering the possibility that Eliyahu Asheri, aged 18, from Itamar, was kidnapped in Samaria. Soldiers and policemen from the Judea and Samaria district began intensive searches for the missing youth, with the primary focus inRamallah and Bethlehem. Police said concerns were high for the Asheri's life.
The PRC's original claim that they had kidnapped a settler was published Monday night by Ynet. On Tuesday, Asheri's father filed a missing-person's report with the Ariel police department for his son, who had been missing since Sunday. The father said his son often went for trips without keeping daily contact his parents, and therefore he did not file the report earlier.
According to current information, Asheri, who studies in a pre-military mechina (preparatory program), left his friend's house in Beitar Ilit, south of Jerusalem, on Sunday and has not made contact with his family since.
Arieh Goldman, from the settlement secretariat in Itamar, told Ynet: "On 9:00 p.m. Sunday night, one of Asheri's classmates saw him for the last time hitchhiking near the French Hill (in Jerusalem). No one has seen him since then…He was on the way to a fieldtrip". "We have been sitting with the family since this (Tuesday) afternoon. We have an emergency committee in the settlement who is taking care of the family. The community supports them. Awareness has been heightened since the kidnapping in Gaza," Goldman said.
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 his alleged capture."We won't give information for free," Abu Abir said.
Another spokesperson for the Popular Resistance Committees told Ynet that the missing young settler from Itamar was kidnapped on Sunday. "Eliyahu Asheri was kidnapped on Sunday," Mohammad Abdelal said, referring to the 18-year-old settler by name. Abdelal said his group set up a special unit to carry out kidnappings under an operation called "Cavaliers' Wrath."
Prime Minister’s Olmert’s refusal to act quickly and decisive when Cpl. Shalit was kidnapped by Palestinians has created the climate for another Israeli, this time a civilian youth in the West Bank to be taken hostage. Instead of one Palestinian front there are now two. The PRC and their Hamas masters are on a roll and will not be stopped until such time that the consequences are so horrific that it will not be worth the world of grief to even contemplate such actions.
Years ago I knew a Lebanese man intimately who was held captive by a Hezbollah fraction for 41 days. I met him four years after the kidnapping. Eventually he was freed in a prisoner exchange due to the rather aggressive intercession of close family and associates.
Four years after the events of his captivity had transpired, the ordeal of those 41 days were still etched deeply and angrily into his body. What mental scars he carried from his captivity he successfully masked in every day conversation or in ordinary pursuits but night in the land of Orpheus was an entirely different matter. I know because I lay beside him, and it is not a fate that I would willingly wish on anyone. And he was one of the lucky ones simply because he survived and hostages at the hands of radicalized fanatics so rarely do so in the Middle East. It is said that where there is life; there is hope, but far too often the radicalize Palestinian “militants” that make up the maddening crowd resort to a level of barbarism that Western minds can rarely grasp clearly and distinctively even with pictures.
How long and how many more will have to be held hostage until Olmert decides diplomacy has run its course? Perhaps, I have read too much Machiavelli, and I, unlike Olmert, would rather be feared than loved, but I have to ask; is there no provision for the impeachment of a Prime Minister under the Basic Laws for Israel?
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