[Avodah] Trading convicted killers for dead bodies

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 08:41:47AM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
: I've been thinking a lot about it and don't want to discuss the
: specifics but am wondering if anyone has seen any halachik (micro and/or
: meta-halachik) material on trading convicted non-Jewish killers for dead
: Jewish bodies. I suppose an obvious parallel is Maharam Mrutenberg and
: the gemara's 2 reasons -impoverishment and/or impact on future
: kidnappings.

I'm not sure what there is to discuss on the Torah side -- other than
ruling out such a discussion. It's a matter of assessing the logistics:
will this set a precedent that costs more lives than is saved by the
loyalty to an army that will do anything to bring you home?

(As for your oncerns, I apprectiate them. But I can reject politicized
responses, so I have little motivation to reject potentially dangerous
questions. Unlike Areivim, here the job is not so large that I need to
engage in some preemptive pruning to preserve time for doing anything
else.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person must be very patient
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