23 thoughts on “Kuntar’s Release: What’s to Celebrate?? – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Aren’t there a fair number of savage murderers in power in Israel, Lebanon, and other places in the Mideast? This particular savage murderer was a 17 year old teenager who, living in a war zone, was apparently easily propagandized into becoming a “heroic” child killer. I bet you could turn a lot of 17 year olds into murderers easily enough–it happens often enough in many places all over the world. You don’t even need a war–just poverty will do it sometimes. In happier circumstances he could have gone to college, learned how to fly a jet, and killed children from the air.

    The hero worship of him is sickening. But then, I don’t think either Americans or Israelis are in any position to give lectures on that–I seem to recall, for example, that some child-butcher named Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel. Kuntar denies being a child-killer, so no doubt many of his Arab admirers ( wrongly) believe he is a victim of an Israeli frameup. Sharon voters probably believed he was innocent also, or else they didn’t care.

  2. @Donald:

    In this blog, I have written a great deal about young IDF soldiers & Border Police who commit crimes almost as heinous as the one Kuntar committed. If you consider that the IDF weaponry is far more sophisticated than Kuntar’s then the crimes could even be seen as more heinous. I focussed on Kuntar in this post because he was freed yesterday.

    MANY Israelis saw Sharon as a butcher & a threat to democracy. They succeeded in barring him fr. politics after Sabra & Chatilla for a time. But there weren’t enough of them to prevent his being elected PM.

    I know what Kuntar claims happened. The fact that he claims he simply “doesn’t know” how the little girl was killed seems wildly implausible. As for whether or not the father was killed by Kuntar or during Israeli firing to free him, I imagine this issue was examined during his trial though I don’t know the particulars.

  3. Leaving aside whether or not Quntar did the crime, and how culpable he was given that he had not reached his 17th birthday at the time and had been a child soldier since 13, I want to address the meme of “national hero.”

    OK Hizbullah put on a big propaganda show today. To call Quntar a national hero, implying that he is a hero to all Lebanese, cannot be accurate. You read the blogs, you know how many Lebanese bloggers hate Hizbullah. Quntar, furthermore, is not and never was a Hizbullah member. He’s Druze, and he was arrested in ’79, before the founding of Hizbullah. HA is playing some game or another, mostly to do with internal politics I am sure, but to say that he is a national hero in Lebanon has to be an exaggeration.

    Quntar was a pawn at age 16 when he was sent off to Israel to kill that family. He is still a pawn. He probably has very little idea of why he is being used, but he just got out of jail, he has no life particularly, and why wouldn’t he raise his fist, march in the parade, and vow resistance to Israel? He has been an Israeli prisoner all these years, of course he hates Israel. And now he is returning to Lebanon to all this folderol.

    Taking the whole charade seriously is a mistake. Saying that all Lebanese see him as a hero is inaccurate.

    Let’s not list with every propaganda gust of wind. The larger principle here is that the exchange was made, dissolving a longstanding tangle. This display in Lebanon is quite unseemly, and of course it rankles. But on the other hand, so what? See my blog – I just posted on the topic.

    This whole propaganda spew is not important in my opinion. Ignore it and wait to see what happens next. My inclination is to look at the positive aspect – the exchange was made, the issue is resolved. After time passes, perhaps we can all move on. If we spend a lot of time picking at the old scab we won’t heal. Fretting over this display in Dahiyeh is another way to pick at the scab. You don’t know what irrationalities the people of that suburb harbor after the assault of 2006. You might be just as irrational yourself had you lived through such an event.

  4. I know you’re fairminded, Richard–I was reacting somewhat emotionally and a little unfairly myself because I’d just read the NYT stories on this. (I was out of town for a few days). It irritates the hell out of me how the Israeli view (no doubt correct) that Kuntar is a child-killer is adopted, but Israeli crimes are just accidents of war–that’s how it is generally seen in the US.

    As for Kuntar, I’m sure he is guilty. I didn’t know until today, though, that he was 17 at the time and according to one claim I read today (which I haven’t verified yet) he may have been in battle at age 15. To my mind that puts him into the category of child soldier–the real guilt on the Arab side would be the people who used him as cannon fodder. Forget the Israeli/Arab context and think of this act as occurring in any number of other wars–I think most people would be talking about Kuntar with some degree of pity for how a 17 year old was used. The condemnation would be for the group that used him. I can’t help but think that because it is the Israeli/Arab conflict that even this level of nuance goes out the window, though it certainly says nothing good about the group that sent him in.

  5. Leila: I used the term “national hero” because I understand that the government of Lebanon called for a national holiday today. I realize that they in effect had to do this because of the manipulation of the event by Hezbollah.

    I also understand that not every Lebanese supports Hezbollah (thank God).

    But in general I agree w. yr approach to this and think you raise a good point. Perhaps in the long run good things will come from this development. My only concern is that Hezbollah seems to be on a roll over the past few months with its new veto power over government decisions and its success facing down the Opposition during the recent violence in Beirut. Freeing Kuntar is yet another feather in their cap.

    I’d rather see Hezbollah weakened than strengthened.

  6. The exchange of prisoners / bodies was always going to be a propaganda victory for Hezbollah but as Leila states, its not something I would take too seriously. Every Lebanese citizen knows that their country remains in a position of potential civil destruction should the various religious/ethnic fractions heighten the tension between one another and refuse to cooperate and compromise to form a version of a unity Government that works for all Lebanese. So this little ‘victory’ has no practical value.

    Really, yesterday means little in the long term, perhaps it only signals the potential willingness of Israel to use diplomacy rather than force as a means to meeting a resolution?

    There have been far too many set-backs for me to see this as any other different day in this long saga of conflict.

  7. I consider the matter of Kuntar’s guilt or innocence to be pure speculation at this point. He was accused and convicted by the pathological liars of Israel. Their credibility is absolutely zero. Without independent confirmation, we know nothing about what happened.

    What is beyond dispute is that Israelis routinely torture children for fun:

    http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=811&CategoryId=1

    and target children on a daily basis:

    http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/child-killed.html

    The IDF troops are welcomed home with great fanfare just as Kuntar was. The israelis don’t see their troops as cold blooded child murderers, so why should the Lebanese view Kuntar this way (on the say so of their tormentors?)

    Let’s be fair: child murder, child torture is NOT the official policy of Hezbollah, while it undeniably IS the policy of Israel. They have killed more children than the total number of Israeli civilians killed. Who are they to pass judgement on ANYONE?

    The hypocrisy is vile.

  8. One person posted a comment that would equate Sharon’s conduct at Sabra and Shattila as equivalent to the conduct of Kuntar. The undisputed facts relating to Sharon’s conduct at Sabra and Shatilla was as follows:

    A group of Christian Arabs attacked a group of Moslem Arabs and killed hundreds.

    In that event, Jewish soldiers were not accused of killing. The charges against Sharon were that he could have used force to stop Christian Arabs from killing Moselm Arabs and failed to do so.

    An formal military inquest was held and Sharon was censured for his failure to prevent Arabs from killing Arabs.
    There was open debate in Israel with large portions of the country and he press condemning his negligence and smaller but significant poartions approving of his actions.

    Kuntar has admitted slaughtering a young family . He shot the Daddy in front of the 2 year old baby daughter and then crushed the baby’s skull. He has gloated over the agony of the mourners. He states he can’t wait to do it again. He is applauded for his savagery.

    But most daming for his people is the fact that in their “civilization ” a murderer of Jews will always be treated as a hero and has never and will never be put on trial.

    Things must be pretty bad in Pro- Palstinian land when the best that can be offered is trying to equate Sharon’s negligence with cold bloode murder.

  9. Sorry to chime in just to affirm what rykart said, but it’s difficult to read the coverage of the prisoner exchange without seeing the excruciating hypocrisy of the American media. And any journalist from a major media outlet who attempts to provide actual information instead of jumping on the “Hezbollah is evil/Israel is being victimized again” bandwagon gets CRUCIFIED by the “pro-Israel” media watchdogs.

    Case in point: Griff Witte, the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the Washington Post –not exactly a publication known for its critical stance on Israel– has been ripped to shreds by CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Reporting in America) for seeing the “Arab-Israeli conflict largely through the reductive, inverting prism of “the Palestinian narrative” –a ridiculously transparent effort to coerce each and every reporter into adopting the party line on every aspect of the I-P conflict. See the latest 1100-word screed here: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=38&x_article=1511

    As Rykart says, “The IDF troops are welcomed home with great fanfare just as Kuntar was.” Can any of you remember the last time Israeli society publicly denounced the (daily acts of) violence committed by the IDF?

  10. @Dennis Cook:

    Kuntar has admitted slaughtering a young family . He shot the Daddy in front of the 2 year old baby daughter and then crushed the baby’s skull. He has gloated over the agony of the mourners. He states he can’t wait to do it again.

    I would challenge you to provide proof of any of this. In fact, if you read Maariv’s interview w. Kuntar (translated & published by The Guardian) there is much that is self-serving, but he directly contradicts yr statements above. He does not admit slaughtering a family (though he may very well have done so). He does not gloat over the agony of the mourners (at least not in this interview). He does not say he can’t wait to do it again. I recall reading a statement fr. him saying that he longs to return to Israel, which is certainly a provocative statement implying he agrees w. Hezbollah’s goal of destroying Israel. But that is not the same as what you claim.

    …Most daming [sic] for his people is the fact that in their “civilization ” a murderer of Jews will always be treated as a hero and has never and will never be put on trial.

    Perhaps we could expect Arabs not to treat their own murderers as heroes & to try them in court when Israeli soldiers & police are not allowed to kill Palestinians civilians w. apparent impunity. What should Arabs believe about an Israeli “civilization” in which soldiers kill civilians and are almost never punished?

    You have a twisted, racist view of Arab civilization.

    @Rykart:

    Let’s be fair: child murder, child torture is NOT the official policy of Hezbollah, while it undeniably IS the policy of Israel. They have killed more children than the total number of Israeli civilians killed.

    I have not a scintilla of doubt that if Hezbollah thought it could advance its goals it would willingly begin targeting Israeli children for murder & torture. And if the tables were turned & Hezbollah had the power the IDF has, it would behave no better nor worse than the IDF does now.

    I don’t agree that child murder or torture is the official policy of Israel. But I do believe that the IDF is perfectly willing to accept the killing of children as collateral damage in their efforts to subjugate the Palestinian people. In certain cases as well the IDF does use Palestinian children in ways that contravene the laws of war, a policy that is unconscionable. But to say that this is somehow equivalent to an official policy of child murder or torture is untenable..

  11. BTW: Kuntar was tried in court. Those records have been declassified now. The court trial was really damning. He originally confessed after the act (no reason not to, evidence was overwhelming, there were eyewitnesses, his gun was a different calibre than those carried in Israel, the girl’s head was crushed!) but in court he put on a show.

    His new account (which has changed over the years) was refuted by eyewitnesses (remember, he did this on a beach) and the evidence.
    There was brain tissue on his rifle-butt. The girl’s cause of death was blunt force to the head (pathologist reported)

    This is just a report on the evidence. If you want to see it yourself, then inquire.
    http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Terror+Groups/The+Kuntar+File+Exposed+-+Yediot+Aharonot+14-Jul-2008.htm

  12. In an essay which offers a different pov than Shirin’s, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb calls the prisoner swap a humiliation and strategic defeat for Israel:
    “First, the prisoner-exchange constitutes a tacit admission of Israel’s responsibility for the July-August 2006 war, which wreaked mass destruction on Lebanon and resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 (mainly civilian) Lebanese.

    Second, the exchange-deal confirms the Winograd commission’s assessment of Israel’s defeat in [the Lebanon war]. Its formidable military machine failed then both to eliminate Hizbollah’s military capacity and to win the unconditional release of its two prisoners.

    By recognising Hizbollah rather than the Lebanese government as its negotiating partner, Israel has inadvertently undermined the latter and thus further exacerbated its own position.

    [Hisballah’s] memorialisation of its dead fighters, the longstanding campaigns it has waged to retrieve its prisoners and the military actions and diplomatic initiatives it has taken to retrieve them, have underscored how valuable its living and dead fighters are to it – and begun to pay real political dividends. In this too, Hizbollah has seized the initiative from Israel, whose last military operation to retrieve its prisoners was as long ago as 1994.”

    http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-israel-hizbollah-prisoner-deal

  13. Cede strategic ground and then “insist” that its enemies make nice — why on earth hasn’t Israel thought about doing that before?

  14. I have not a scintilla of doubt that if Hezbollah thought it could advance its goals it would willingly begin targeting Israeli children for murder & torture…

    Do you really mean that, Richard?

  15. The others on this blog seem to be very well informed about Jews vs Arabs an Arabs vs Jews. Therefore, maybw some wwell informe guy/girl can give me some facts:

    1.I frequently see bloggers on this site state that Sharon is a murderer. No facts that identify the who/why/what/ when of the murders he is supposed to have committed. I would like to know who he murdered ( or murders which he ordered ) when were they ordered, and was any official inquiry made into the murders.

    2. I frequently see insertions on this blog by participants who say that Israel allows those who murder Arabs to go unpunished. Does anyone know if Israel has ever indicted a Jewish person for deliberate murder of an Arab person.If so, the dates and the who/how /when, of the indictment, please.

    3.Does anyone know if an Arab person has ever been indicted by either the PA or by an Arab country ( like Lebanon ) for the murder of an Israeli Jew/If so, dates, and particulars , please. ( I believe there have been instances where Jordan has indicted and tried Jordanians and Palestinians for the murder of Israelis .I’d like to know if there are other Arab countries who have done likewise.

    or support is given for that reference do not provide details to support that allegation. Could someone please tell me the who, what, when where of the murders alleged to have been committed by Sharon.

    2.

  16. “I have not a scintilla of doubt that if Hezbollah thought it could advance its goals it would willingly begin targeting Israeli children for murder & torture. And if the tables were turned & Hezbollah had the power the IDF has, it would behave no better nor worse than the IDF does now.”

    I have no idea what this assertion is based on. Why not say that if German Jews had the power of the State, they would have behaved no better than the Nazis? Why should this be so? The statement has no basis.

    “I don’t agree that child murder or torture is the official policy of Israel. But I do believe that the IDF is perfectly willing to accept the killing of children as collateral damage in their efforts to subjugate the Palestinian people.”

    But the Israeis are NOT merely reckless toward innocent life. They absolutely DO target children. This has been reported over and over and over again. Often Israeli IDF show up in their jeeps and hang around until they shoot someone, very often a child, sometimes with live ammunition, sometimes with a rubber coated bullet. Sometimes the child receives a nasty wound, sometimes he or she is blinded or has a lung perforated and other times they are killed. An “investigation” follows, no one is charged and that’s how it is. This has been going on for decades, while the Israelis crow about their superior regard for human life.

    Here’s the former NYTimes Mid East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges describing a typical day:

    “And I walked out towards the dunes and they were–the–over the loudspeaker from an Israeli army Jeep on the other side of the electric fence they were taunting these kids. And these kids started to throw rocks. And most of these kids were 10, 11, 12 years old. And, first of all, the rocks were the size of a fist. They were being hurled towards a Jeep that was armor-plated. I doubt they could even hit the Jeep. And then I watched the soldiers open fire. And it was–I mean, I’ve seen kids shot in Sarajevo. I mean, snipers would shoot kids in Sarajevo. I’ve seen death squads kill families in Algeria or El Salvador. But I’d never seen soldiers bait or taunt kids like this and then shoot them for sport. It was–I just–even now, I find it almost inconceivable. And I went back every day, and every day it was the same. ”

    http://www.bintjbeil.com/articles/en/011001_hedges.html

    Or they drop a two ton bomb on a housing complex full of children, certain to murder children in addition to their “target” as they did in the Shaheda case. The pilot was welcomed home and profusely congratulated by then-fuhrer Sharon. Again, routine and completely unremarkable. (We’re not even talking about the fact that an entire generation of Palestinian children has been severely traumatized and mentally scarred for life by what the Israeli occupation has done to them.)

    But hezbollah are now dubbed child-murderers because a guy who is neither Shiite nor a Hezbollah member killed an Israeli child 30 years ago? We should launch a grieving party for the families of the two IDF soldiers while utterly ignoring the 190 families of the Lebanese, whose bodies Israel returned in the prisoner exchange?

    What would have happened if the guy who deliberately crushed Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer were imprisoned in the West Bank and then repatriated after a prisoner exchange? You think he’d be condemned in Israel? Fat chance. They’d throw a ticker tape parade, but of course, he was never charged with anything and the US government refused the family’s request for an independent investigation.

    and so it goes.

  17. @Rykart:

    Why not say that if German Jews had the power of the State, they would have behaved no better than the Nazis?

    Because Jews never had any conflict with the German state as Hezbollah has with the State of Israel.

    As for the allegation that there is an “official IDF policy” of child murder & torture…all the incidents you mention are true & indicate a deep callousness on the part of the Border Police & IDF. But to say that this is “official policy” of the entire State or entire IDF is stretching things beyond reason.

    then-fuhrer Sharon

    This is petty, lazy, lame-assed grandstanding. Argue facts & not emotions. If you want to shout slogans calling Israeli leaders Nazis you’ll have to go somewhere else to do that.
    @Judy:

    Do you really mean that, Richard?

    I don’t put much stock in Hezbollah as a humanitarian movement. Comparing the relative callousness of Israel vs. Hezbollah I’d be hard-pressed to say which is better or worse.

    One thing I will say is that during the Lebanon war it seemed to me that Hezbollah was far more disciplined both on the battlefield & in terms of its political strategy. I was impressed that when Israel called for a lull in fighting under international pressure that Hezbollah responded in kind. It showed a political maturity that Israel lacked.

    But do I have faith that were Hezbollah to become king-makers in Lebanon they would be any better at governing than any other sect or ethnic group? I doubt it.

    Perhaps I overstated a bit in saying Hezbollah would be willing to deliberately kill Israeli children if it would advance its political agenda. Maybe it wouldn’t. But the fact that no one from Hezbollah or Lebanon seems willing to confront the enormity of Kuntar’s 1979 acts is troublesome. Yes, I understand that Israel is responsible for killing many Lebanese & Palestinian children. Yes, I understand the enormous hostility this generates against Israel. And yes, such hostility is justified. But why not the least awareness of or sensitivity to pain on the other side? Are we so anesthetized by our own particular suffering that we cannot acknowledge the suffering of the other??

  18. Regarding Ariel Sharon:

    I have a question about Ariel Sharon. On this site, I see Posts by Ryckert and Donald in which there are statments, about one sentence long which state that Ariel Sharon is a murderer.

    I would like to know the following:

    Who did Sharon kill and when and where did the murder take place?

    I’ve posted this question several times and I do not receive an answer.

    This is my last try. I hope someone who knows the answer to that question will respond

    Dennis Cook

  19. I didn’t realize this thread was still going on. Dennis, your requests are absurd. There’s this thing called google, which you could use. Type in Sharon and wikipedia’s entry comes up first (or near the top). And it mentions this–

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre

    The 1982 invasion of Lebanon also involved massive bombing raids on Beirut and other places, which killed thousands of civilians.

    Sabra/Shatila can’t be so easily dismissed either, as you choose to do. The record of the Christian Phalangists was well known to everyone–when Sharon sent them into the camps it was exactly like sending KKK units to patrol a black neighborhood.

    As for Israel’s human rights record in general, one very good source is the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. You can look it up. There is also Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. There are also numerous articles that appear in magazines such as The New York
    Review of Books, the London Review, Harper’s, etc…

    All of this is a waste of time. If you had the slightest trace of openmindedness about this, you’d know that both sides have committed atrocities and you wouldn’t need strangers on the web to spoon feed you this stuff. You’ve already encountered this material and dismissed it or chosen not to look in the first place.

  20. But thanks for demonstrating once again Orwell’s contention in “Notes on Nationalism”. Look it up.

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