News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) The father of kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit told youth from the Kibbutz Movement Wednesday night that young Israelis should always have faith that the government will do everything it can to rescue them if captured by the enemy during army service. "Youths enlisting in the IDF must never doubt the willingness of the government and IDF to retrieve them if they are captured," he said. "This is Israel's moral power."

Child murderer Samir Kuntar and four other Lebanese terrorists were recently freed in exchange for the dead bodies of kidnapped IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. The two were abducted three weeks after Shalit's son was taken in a raid by Hamas terrorists on an IDF outpost near the Kerem Shalom Crossing on June 25, 2006. It was not known that Goldwasser and Regev had been murdered by their Hizbullah captors until their bodies were returned to Israel in coffins. Israel transferred to Hizbullah the bodies of 190 other terrorists to secure the return of the bodies of the IDF soldiers.