From the JewishWorldReview
What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero?
Most Americans are familiar with the brutal murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer on the cruise ship Achille Laura in 1985. Terrorists led by Abu Abbas (who was later given safe haven in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein) took the ship captive and threw Klinghoffer overboard. But few recall that the ship was seized to bargain for the release of, among others, Samir Kuntar from an Israeli prison.
Kuntar had taken part in an earlier terror attack. In 1979, as a 16-year-old, he and four others had traveled to northern Israel by boat from Lebanon and come ashore in the seaside town of Nahariya. At midnight, Smadar Haran recalled, they burst into her apartment building. Peering out to see what the noise was, Smadar, mother of two, slammed shut her apartment door when she saw the terrorists — but too late. Kuntar had glimpsed her. Her husband, Danny, helped Smadar and their younger daughter, 2-year-old Yael, to squeeze into a crawl space above the bedroom.
Smadar wrote later, "I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades." As police began to arrive, Kuntar and the others dragged Danny and 4-year-old Einat down to the beach. With Einat watching, Kuntar shot Danny in the head and then threw his body into the surf. Kuntar then repeatedly smashed Einat's head against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her, too. Yael did not survive the attack either. In an effort to keep the baby from crying and betraying their hiding place, Smadar had accidentally suffocated her.
This week, Kuntar, dressed in fatigues and sporting a Hitlerian mustache and haircut, walked down a red carpet arrayed for him in Beirut. The government closed all offices and declared a national day of celebration.(more)
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