Israel, like the US, has good reason to not return terrorist corpses

The Biden administration is demanding that Israel return the bodies of dead terrorists to their families. Hmm: Why didn’t the Obama-Biden administration do that with the body of Osama bin Laden?

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel was asked by reporters on June 21 what the administration thinks of the Israeli policy of temporarily holding the corpses of some Palestinian terrorists.

He replied: “Families must be able to bury their loved ones in a dignified and unimpeded manner.”

I wonder what Osama bin Laden’s family thinks about that.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is currently holding at least two Israeli hostages, as well as the remains of several Israeli soldiers.

Israel doesn’t have many bargaining chips to try to get them back. 

One option would be to release imprisoned terrorists — but that’s extremely risky, because so many of them quickly return to their murderous ways.

Another option: Have the various countries that provide billions of aid to the Palestinians use the money as leverage for the release of the Israeli hostages.

But no government has stepped up to do that. 

So one of the few options for Israel is to temporarily hold on to the dead bodies of terrorists, in order to trade them.

Even if no trade is in the offing, Israel has an additional strong reason to hold on to the bodies of terrorists — so that terror groups won’t be able to turn their burial sites into shrines that will help inspire more killers.

Palestinian glorification of terrorists is an ongoing problem, and not just with Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs 40% of the West Bank territories, organizes funerals for dead terrorists in which the killers are lionized as heroes and martyrs.

(It also names streets, parks and schools after the terrorists and financially rewards their families.)

You’d think our State Department would appreciate Israel’s situation, given our own history when it comes to dealing with similar issues.

Following the killing of bin Laden in 2011, President Barack Obama could have handed his body over to bin Laden’s family, as President Joe Biden’s spokesman is now demanding Israel do with Palestinian terrorists.

Instead, Obama chose to dump bin Laden’s body in the northern Arabian Sea.

The Reuters news agency quoted Obama administration officials as saying “there was concern that a grave could have served as a shrine and rallying point for his followers.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, praised Obama’s decision as “prudent” because it would prevent the danger “that there’ll be any shrine to Osama bin Laden or grave robbing or any other lasting impact for this death.”

Three days after instructing the US army to dump bin Laden in the sea, Obama defended his decision in an interview on the CBS Television program, “60 Minutes.”

He said the terrorist leader’s body was treated in a “respectful” way, because it was washed and wrapped in a white sheet — as Muslim religious law requires — before being dumped into the waters.

The problem, of course, is that the very idea of throwing a dead Muslim into the sea contradicts Islamic practice.

Saudi Sheik Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, an adviser to the Saudi Royal Court, told reporters: “That is not the Islamic way. The Islamic way is to bury the person in land (if he has died on land) like all other people.”

During World War II, by the way, the bodies of Japanese pilots that were recovered after kamikaze attacks were not given back to their families.

Some were given “burials at sea” according to military protocols; others were just dumped into the Pacific Ocean.

Read, for example, Ian Toll’s “Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945.” 

Whether it was Japanese suicide bombers in the 1940s or contemporary terrorist leaders, our government has had good reason not to return bodies to the enemy.

Israel has good reason, too.

Stephen M. Flatow is president-elect of the Religious Zionists of America. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in Israel in 1995, and the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”