Steven Plaut writes for The Jewish Press: It is perhaps the ultimate irony that the Bus 300 affair recently popped up again in the Israeli media just days after the al-Qaeda terrorist with the U.S. passport, Anwar al-Awlaki, was liquidated by a drone in Yemen, and shortly before the Netanyahu government agreed to release more than a thousand terrorists for the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Many of the points being raised in debate over the killing of al-Awlaki are the same as those long raised regarding the Israeli Bus 300 affair. In both incidents terrorists were summarily executed by the intelligence agencies of democratic nations, without trial and “due process.” Both cases are being exploited by the enemies of those democracies to paint them as inhumane regimes.
In the Bus 300 affair, intelligence agents from Israel’s Shin Bet killed two terrorists captured after hijacking a bus full of civilians, mainly women, and threatening to blow them up.
The al-Awlaki affair is far fresher in everyone’s mind. Many on the left, joined by Ron Paul and some fringe members of the right, are grumbling about how al-Awlaki was liquidated “without proper due processand trial.”
