US papers call Kuntar welcome 'repulsive'

[notfullofit]

Yitzhak Benhorin Published: 07.19.08, 08:58 / Israel News

News agencies in the US heaped criticism on the welcoming ceremonies held in Lebanon in honor of the return of convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar, who was freed from an Israeli prison as part of the prisoner swap deal with Hizbullah, which brought home the bodies of kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

"There is something morally repulsive in the hero's welcome given the most famous – or notorious – of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel," a Boston Globe article entitled "A strange kind of hero" said on Friday.

"This is the creature Nasrallah hailed as a resistance hero, the figure Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called a 'huge hero who sacrificed 30 years of his life for the Palestinian issue,' the celebrity that Lebanon's president and prime minister saluted as a liberated freedom fighter."

The New York Post declared the deal "a shameful exchange", which was also the title of the editorial published on Friday. "Six bloodstained terrorists got a red-carpet hero's welcome," the article read.
snip...

British newspapers were somewhat more reserved in their criticism towards Hizbullah, and more disapproving of Israel's conduct. snip

The UK's Guardian also criticized Israel's government-based decisions, specifically those surrounding the Second Lebanon War. "That 2006 war was mishandled on all sides," one commentator wrote. Another claimed that "there is an unmistakable sense that Israel, still smarting from its failure to win the war against Hizbullah, has come off second best" in the exchange.

more..
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3570116,00.html

[Bob Dobbs]

1. One man's freedom fighter is a power eliteist's terrorist.

It's all about your perspective.

[LeftishBrit]

2. While it's true that one side's 'fighters' are often another side's 'terrorists'...

most soldiers and freedom fighters and terrorists do NOT set out to brutally murder a small child. They may and often do act in ways that are likely to put children in harm's way, but they don't beat them to death with their own hands. Someone who does that, whether soldier or freedom fighter, is a war criminal, not just a combatant.

Kuntar's only possible excuse is that he had not reached maturity when he committed the crime - but he shows no signs of having changed.

[Bob Dobbs]

3. There are conflicting reports of the actual events in the action in question.

"Israeli witnesses" accounts can not be judged as unbiased.

I presume you are equally critical of IDF murders of Palestinian civilians, the numbers of which dwarf Israeli casualties.

[notfullofit]

4. "Don't be scared, my baby, it will be alright"

snip..
According to Smadar Haran, her last memories of Danny and Einat, that day, were when they were being led away at gun point by Kuntar. She could hear from her closet space Danny telling Einat, "Don't be scared, my baby, it will be alright" and Einat replied to him in her little voice, "Dad, where is Mommy? I want Mommy." Smadar's last memory of her 2-year-old daughter, Yael, was when her little daughter was taken to the apartment hiding space. Right before Yael had her mouth covered by her mother, she asked her mother "Where is my little pacifier." There was no time to search for the pacifier. Minutes later Smadar covered Yael's mouth to keep her from revealing the hiding space. Smadar soon felt her daughter's tiny tongue licks and lip sucking on the palm of her hand. She didn't know what to make of it at first but hours later was told by doctors and paramedics that the reason Yael was licking her palm while she covered her mouth was because she was gasping for air.

After taking Danny and four-year old Einat hostage, Kuntar and his group took them down to the beach. Samir Kuntar quickly shot Danny in the back and then drowned him in the Mediterranean Sea to ensure his death. While Kuntar drowned Danny, he forced terrified Einat to watch and cry. According to eyewitnesses, "Danny was murdered in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see." Little Einat would not have that horrible memory in her head for long. Kuntar, the brave Lebanese freedom fighter, crushed Einat's skull over and over upon the rocks with the butt of his rifle until she was dead.

During the ensuing shootout between Kuntar's terror group and Israeli police, two policeman were killed along with two of the Arab terrorists. Kuntar and the fourth participant, Ahmed Al-Abrass, were captured. Ahmed Al-Abrass was later free by the Israeli authorities in the infamous May 1985 Ahmed Jibril prisoner exchange deal in which 1,150 Arab prisoners (some of whom had blood on their hands) were exchanged for three Israeli soldiers. Kuntar was not included in the deal.

more
http://samirkuntar.net/

I guess the mother could be lying.....

[Sezu]

5. So Jews are liars. Well isn't that convenient? n/t

[azurnoir]

9. The commenter said Israeli not Jew

but this hardly the first you have conflated the 2, which BTW is against forum rules

[LeftishBrit]

6. I was not referring to 'Israeli casualties' in general, but to *setting out* to kill a small child

Most combatants on either side do not do that.

I do condemn a lot of Israeli actions, notably their use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.

What do you mean by 'Israeli witnesses cannot be judged as unbiased'? Would you apply the same rule to Palestinian witnesses to Israeli settler violence, or to witnesses of a crime in any other country. So far as I know, Kuntar has never denied the murder. So what do you think did happen?

[notfullofit]

7. Confessed proudly

snip

Samir Kuntar has confessed proudly to his murder of the little girl and never once showed one ounce of remorse for his crime. Even while serving his prison term, he has bragged repeatedly during interviews about how proud he was for murdering the 4-year-old Israeli child. While in prison Kuntar got married and even receives conjugal visits. Below he stands proudly alongside other convicted Arab murderer, Marwan Barghouti.

snip

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah doubt that Kuntar murdered Danny and Einat Haran. The only difference is that Israel sees him as the cold-blooded murderer he is. Hezbollah and their supporters glorify him as a freedom fighter and hero!

There is another point worth mentioning. Hezbollah has never claimed that Kuntar was innocent or that he may have been framed. They only demand his release as if he were being held unlawfully and that Israel had no right to imprison him. Once again it's all about Israel never doing any right and Arabs incapable of doing any wrong!


much more
http://samirkuntar.net/

[Behind the Aegis]

8. And where else do we see this?

"The only difference is that Israel sees him as the cold-blooded murderer he is. Hezbollah and their supporters glorify him as a freedom fighter and hero!"

[notfullofit]

10. Note that in the

ynet article 'The UK's Guardian also criticized Israel's government-based decisions,' the Guardian was quick to criticize Israel and did not condemn Hizbullah as loud as did the U.S papers. Of course that is par for the course from The Guardian these days (or so it seems to me).

[cali]

11. bullshit. cheap, lazy and hackneyed.

people who murder 4 year olds in close blood are simply depraved and hateful murderers.

[Vegasaurus]

12. Freedom fighters don't bash in the heads of babies

and moral people don't celebrate those devoid of human decency.

The whole way this came down was disgusting. Shame on people who celebrate killers.

[Mudoria]

13. I hope Mossad keeps close track of this baby killer....

[Sezu]

14. Ando so it begins.......

"King Abdullah II was urged on Sunday to pardon a Jordanian soldier who is serving a life sentence for killing seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997.

"After around 12 years in prison, Ahmad Dakamseh deserves your majesty's special pardon," a group of 70 Islamists, unionists, lawyers, human rights activists and former officials said in a signed letter to the king.

In March 1997, Dakamseh fired an automatic weapon at a group of Israeli schoolgirls as they visited Baqura, a scenic peninsula on the Jordan River near the Israeli border, killing seven and wounded five others as well as a teacher.

The attack came almost three years after Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty, only the second between an Arab country and the Jewish state.

"Following the recent release of Arab prisoners, we hope to see Dakamseh free again," they said, referring to Israel's prisoner swap with Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group last week.

The signatories Islamic Action Front secretary general Zaki Bani Rsheid, former prime minister and intelligence department director Ahmad Obeidat, Jordan Bar Association head Saleh Armouti, and Hani Dahleh, president of the Arab Human Rights Organisation.

"The current political stage requires a policy that would make people happy and ease their socio-economic and political pressures. Pardoning Dakamseh will have a great effect on people," the letter said."

The new human rights approach....free child killers everywhere.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/darticlen.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2008/July/middleeast_July525.xml§ion=middleeast&col=

[Vegasaurus]

15. "Human rights Activists" being in favor

of pardoning or celebrating terrorists is disgusting.

But then again, many so-called "progressives" also side with human rights abusers.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

I thought human rights activists and progressives were in favor of human rights, but now we find that they side with terrorists, murderers and horrific abusers of human rights.

[Sezu]

16. Must be the "new," postmodern progressivism. n/t

[notfullofit]

17. I think you are right,

I have not heard many of these 'progressives' condemning this Kuntar spectacle.
At least I have not seen much indication of this.

[Vegasaurus]

18. No, it seems in fact that "progressives" and "human rights activists"

(with different definitions than have been used in the past, apparently), are very much in favor of supporting terrorism, murder and human rights abuses, all under the guise of "cultural relativity".

Progressives and human rights activists accept these miserable acts, because they are perpetrated by Arabs or Africans?

That makes terrorism OK, because it is the response to "evil white imperialism"?

There is something so wrong with this whole frame of thinking, and it has reduced these kinds of "progressives" and "human rights activists" to whacks and nutjobs who are no better than the right wing racists they purport to be working against.