
 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
July 18, 2008
/ 15 Tamuz, 5768
Hero's welcome
By
Linda Chavez
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A country's heroes are a reflection of its people's values. So what does it say that Lebanon gave a hero's welcome to Samir Kuntar this week? Kuntar has been in an Israeli prison since 1979 and was released in exchange for the return of the bodies of two dead Israeli soldiers who had been kidnapped by Hezbollah in 2006, leading to Israel's incursion into Lebanon. He's not a household name in the United States, far less famous than the terrorist who led the group in which Kuntar operated, Abu Abbas, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But Kuntar's crimes are worth recalling.
On April 22, 1979, Kuntar, then 16 years old, came ashore with three other terrorists near Nahariya, a beach resort along Israel's Mediterranean coast. They quickly made their way to a nearby apartment building, killing a policeman on the way. Once inside the building, they went apartment to apartment searching for Israelis to murder. They weren't picky. Their victims didn't have to be soldiers or even adult males. When they reached Danny Haran's apartment, they found their target.
Danny's wife, a neighbor, and the couple's younger daughter managed to hide in a crawl space in the bedroom, but Danny and their older daughter, Einat, weren't so lucky. Kuntar and his associates took the two to the beach, where, according to eyewitnesses, Kuntar forced Einat to watch as they killed her father. Kuntar then took his rifle butt and smashed the 4-year-old's skull on a rock, killing her.
But Danny and Einat weren't the only victims of Kuntar's barbarism. Back in the apartment, Danny's wife, Smadar, discovered that her efforts to keep her 2-year-old, Yael, quiet while Kuntar and his men searched the apartment had tragic results. She wrote about her ordeal in 2003 in the Washington Post, shortly after Abu Abbas was captured in Iraq.
"I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. 'This is just like what happened to my mother,' I thought," Smadar wrote.
By the time Smadar was rescued hours later, she discovered that her daughter Yael, too, was dead: "In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her."
But you would never know any of this judging from the way Kuntar was welcomed home. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora greeted Kuntar at the airport, with Suleiman calling him and four others released by Israel "the freed heroes." When the men arrived later at a border town in southern Lebanon, hundreds thronged the streets strewing flowers and shout
ing praise.
Could it be that Kuntar is a changed man? That he somehow regrets what he did that horrible night nearly 30 years ago? Lest anyone think so, Kuntar left no doubt about his own intentions: to kill again and be killed as a martyr to his cause.
Dressed in military fatigues, Kuntar wasted no time making a public statement when he visited the burial site of another terrorist, Imad Mughniyeh, killed in a car bomb in neighboring Syria. "We swear to God ... to continue on your same path and not to retreat until we achieve the same stature that Allah bestowed on you," Kuntar promised. "This is our great wish. We envy you and we will achieve it, God willing," he said.
Just a few short years ago after the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri in 2005, it seemed Lebanon was on the verge of a democratic rebirth. Millions took to the streets to demand Syria, which had occupied the country for 30 years, withdraw its troops which it did. Lebanon held its first relatively free elections a few months later. But this week's public adulation of a stone-cold killer dashes any hope that Lebanon has abandoned its culture of violence.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
Linda Chavez Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|