By- Suzie-Q @ 6:00 PM MST
Israel’s Exchange and Obama’s Enemies
Huffington Post
Steve Posner
Posted July 1, 2008 | 02:34 PM (EST)
Is Obama’s embrace of Israel a feigned sop to the Jews? If not, then why such fervent pledges of support? They can only hinder the reconciliation with an Islamic world that Obama seeks and which we so urgently need. The imminent prisoner exchange between Israel and the Hezbollah Muslim extremists in Lebanon hints at an answer.
The Israelis have agreed to swap Samir Kuntar for information on three of their soldiers who have been missing in Lebanon. The three are feared dead but Israel is committed to seeing their soldiers returned home, whether dead or alive.
Hezbollah’s insistence on the release of Kuntar may offer us some insight into the reasons for Obama’s defense of Israel.
On April 22, 1979, Kuntar’s team piloted a rubber dinghy from south Lebanon onto the beach of Nahariya in northern Israel. Landing around midnight, they killed a policeman and then entered the home of an Israeli couple who were asleep along with two young children. They dragged the father and his four-year-old girl to the beach while the mother hid in the closet with their two-year-old daughter.
On the shore, the father was shot at close range in front of the little girl. Then, after killing him, Kuntar picked up the girl by her feet and smashed her skull against the rocks.
Meanwhile, the mother was still hiding in the crawl space above their bedroom where she had earlier taken refuge with Yael, her four-year-old. “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,” she later wrote. “As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust.” But her mother had survived, her daughter did not. “By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later,” she recalled, “Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.”
In Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, an official newspaper of the same Palestinian National Authority that has been promised sovereignty in the West Bank in exchange for peace with Israel, the man who smashed the skull of a two-year old girl was declared “a beacon of light for us and for the generations to come and an authentic role model.” Is it all that perplexing that Obama would support Israelis in their defense against such madness? “Just because the president misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them,” Obama explains. “The terrorists are at war with us,” he cautions. “They kill man, woman, and child.”
There are Palestinian patriots and Muslim moderates who seek true peace with Israel, and with us. There has been injustice on both sides. We must not forget our Abu Ghraibs and our Guantanamos. But as we Americans strive to overcome our faults and our failures, the man who smashed a two-year old’s skull on the rocks of an Israeli beach is slated to be released into the adoring crowds of Lebanon. Yet, amid the cheers arising in Hezbollah’s Beirut and the Gaza of Hamas, the sound of Obama’s defense of Israel may also be heard.
Obama appears to have grasped the saddening Israeli insight into what has become a shared enemy. As Obama reminds us, “To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against.”
Steve Posner’s latest book is “Spiritual Delights and Delusions: How to Bridge the Gap between Spiritual Fulfillment and Emotional Realities.” Visit his website at steveposner.com
THURSDAY, JULY 3, 2008
Exchange of Prisoners – An Absurd Imbalance
Israel is giving up five prisoners including Samir Kuntar, the convicted Lebanese terrorist who received a sentence of 542 years in prison for his infamous role in the 1979 infiltration into the quiet coastal town of Nahariya where he butchered a young Israeli father, Danny Haran, in front of his four-year-old daughter, then smashed her skull against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her too. Tragically, her two-year-old sister was accidentally smothered to death while her mother tried to keep her quiet so that Kuntar would not discover them. Kuntar has now claimed that on his release he would return to terrorism.
The only problem is we are now given to understand by Israel’s intelligence services that the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Regev and Goldwasser, who are the subject of the exchange, are no longer alive, whether because of their possibly serious wounds at the time of their abduction or because of torture or intentionally deficient medical care by Hezbollah. (Hezbollah has always refused all contact and any information about the two Israelis – apparently, giving comfort or closure to the families concerned is not a pressing priority for Hezbollah.)
The exchange would make both pragmatic, political and moral sense if the Israelis were to ensure that their prisoners were transferred to Hezbollah in the same state and condition as the two Israelis being received. A body for a body, a corpse for a corpse. Perhaps then in future these terrorist regimes might be better tempted to follow the Geneva Convention and take the most rudimentary care of their prisoners.
http://SamirKuntar.net
According to an Israeli 1979 Newspaper:
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 drowning Danny in the sea in front of little Einat, Kuntar, the brave Lebanese freedom fighter, then turned his attention towards the frightened little 4-year old. He took his rifle and then swung it across the little toddler’s head, knocking her to the ground. As little Einat was knocked to the ground, she was screaming and crying hysterically “mommy daddy help me,” while thrashing her little legs around in the sand. But unfortunately Einat was alone, and no one was there to save her. Kuntar then dragged the little toddler a couple of feet to the closest rock he could find, this was while she was begging him not to hurt her. Kuntar, then laid her head down on a rock, with the intention of crushing it with the butt of his rifle. Einat, instinctively covered her head with her little arms, Kuntar struggled with the little toddler until he finally managed to clear her arms out of the way so that he could aim for her head. Once her arms were out of the way, Kuntar proceeded on beating her on the head over and over with the butt of his rifle, and repeatedly stomping on her little body as hard as he could as well, until blood rushed out of her ears and mouth, and her little cries faded away as she was knocked into unconsciousness. Then, to ensure she was dead, Kuntar continued on beating her over the head, as hard as he could, several more times until her skull was crushed and she was dead.