Free the monster Samir Kuntar

[bemildred]

Mr. Burston seems to like inflamed rhetoric, but his point needs to be examined.

Samir Kuntar is a monster. He may never have deserved a life.

It's time we let him out of prison.

---

But Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev do. So do their families.

Free the monster. Let them live.

Haaretz

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. Once again, context matters

In 1979, Kuntar led a group of gunmen on an attack in Nahariya, during which broke into an apartment and took hostage Danny Haran, 28, and his four-year-old daughter, Einat.

...

"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.

"As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

"By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her."

[tocqueville]

6. maybe he had family in Deir Yassin (background context)

Eliahu Arbel's eyewitness account: Eliahu Arbel arrived at the scene April 10. He was an Operations Officer B of the Haganah's Etzioni Brigade. He reported:-

"I saw the horrors that the fighters had created. I saw bodies of women and children, who were murdered in their houses in cold blood by gunfire, with no signs of battle and not as the result of blowing up the houses. From my experience I know well, that there is no war without killing, and that not only combatants get killed. I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin."<47>
Jacques de Reynier's eyewitness accout:Jacques de Reynier was a French-Swiss Representative of the International Red Cross. He came to the village on April 11. He reported: "... a total of more than 200 dead, men, women, and children. About 150 cadavers have not been preserved inside the village in view of the danger represented by the bodies' decomposition. They have been gathered, transported some distance, and placed in a large trough (I have not been able to establish if this is a pit, a grain silo, or a large natural excavation). ... One body was a woman who must have been eight months pregnant, hit in the stomach, with powder burns on her dress indicating she'd been shot point-blank.".<48>

Dr. Alfred Engel's eyewitness account: Alfred Engel went to Deir Yassin with Jacques de Reynier, his conclusion is similar to de Reynier's. He reported: "In the houses there were dead, in all about a hundred men, women and children. It was terrible. ... It was clear that they (the attackers) had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range. I was a doctor in the German army for 5 years, in World War I, but I had not seen such a horrifying spectacle."<49>

Yeshurun Schiff's eyewitness account: Yeshurun Shiff was an adjutant to David Shaltiel. He was in Deir Yassin April 9 and April 12. He reported: "The attackers chose to kill anybody they found alive as though every living thing in the village was the enemy and they could only think 'kill them all.'...It was a lovely spring day, the almond trees were in bloom, the flowers were out and everywhere there was the stench of the dead, the thick smell of blood, and the terrible odor of the corpses burning in the quarry.".<50>

Yair Tsaban's eyewitness accout: Yair Tsaban was one of several youths in the burial team at Deir Yassin April 12. He reported: "What we saw were dead women, young children, and old men. What shocked us was at least two or three cases of old men dressed in women's clothes. I remember entering the living room of a certain house. In the far corner was a small woman with her back towards the door, sitting dead. When we reached the body we saw an old man with a beard. My conclusion was that what happened in the village so terrorized these old men that they knew being old men would not save them. They hoped that if they were seen as old women that would save them."<51>

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

not that it excuses Samir Kuntar
but there is no "black and white" in this story...

[msmcghee]

8. The single most important principle that . .

. . must be embraced by all parties in the ME if ever there will be peace - is that no past act of violence justifies another one today.

If you believe that past acts do justify such retributive acts of violence - then you have signed the final death warrant on peace in the mideast - as well as on many millions of innocent people who will die violent deaths before their time - because of your belief.

Each side has at least sixty years of violent acts they can call upon to justify whatever they wish to do. That is what has to stop.

[pelsar]

9. i tend to agree...

i always find the attempts to "justify" some terrorist act by finding a past one to be "childish at best"......but what i do find "amusing" (for lack of better word) is that when it comes to blaming israel is seems the same few events/massacres are always brought up, whereas if i were to look at the various ones that the palestenains have done, i would have a hard time choosing from the hundreds....

that said (as it always comes to mind when someone dives into the past to to show an israeli massacre) i still find it irelevant. It can serve no purpose than to bring up emotions that seperate as opposed to reduce the distance between the two sides.

and on that note....why would some one want to?.....

[Violet_Crumble]

11. No surprises there...

Anyone would think the poster that msmgee was replying to had tried to justify an act of terrorism by another in the past. They didn't...

Just curious, but why do you find acts of terrorism by Israelis irrelevent, yet don't feel the same about Palestinian ones? I'm taking it by yr comment 'if I were to look at the various ones that the Palestinians have done, I would have a hard time choosing'?

[pelsar]

12. i find them both irrelevant.... my writing wasnt clear

when discussing the problems...my comment was just a "reply" (and internal reaction that i usually keep to myself because i dont feel it adds to anything) to the "deir yassin, king david, list that always seem to appear.

[geek tragedy]

14. No, it was the stock answer of the anti-Israel crowd whenever

an atrocity by Hezbollah, etc is concerned. The old game of "Bbbbbbut, bbbbut, but Israel has done awful things too."

It is, of course, bullshit. That four-year old girl certainly didn't kill anyone, unlike the piece of shit who is the subject of this discussion.

Why Israel didn't just put a bullet in his brain is beyond me.

[geek tragedy]

13. Was Einat Haren complicit in that slaughter?

If not, then this is not context for her murder by a vicious terrorist.

This guy is a monster, and that Hezbollah wants him released just shows what that it is at its heart a bunch of monstrous terrorists.

[msmcghee]

2. The whole article is necessary to understand his statement.

Fredda has provided some of that necessary context.

The final part provides additional context than you provided in the op. It also comes without the dashes in the middle with seems only to add confusion and actually violates the rules of not editing quotations from the material you are using.

The actual quote is:

"Of all the issues in the Mideast thicket, normalization of relations, determination of borders, sovereignty of holy sites, freezing of settlements, the element that receives the least world attention is that of prisoners. Yet the issue is of paramount importance to large numbers of Palestinians and Lebanese, whose families love their imprisoned sons, daughters, and fathers no less than we do ours.

The issue must be of paramount importance for us as well.

Samir Kuntar is a monster. He may never have deserved a life.

But Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev do. So do their families.

Free the monster. Let them live."

[bemildred]

3. Fair use rules allow 4 paragraphs.

I picked the first two and the last two.
The three dashs are there to indicate that something is omitted at that point.
It is not allowed to post the whole thing.

[msmcghee]

4. Understood. n/t

[bemildred]

5. For the record ...

I do not generally put an ellipsis in at the end of whatever is quoted, between the last quoted text and the link, even though there may be a good deal more text after that point. The ellipsis, if one would be indicated, is assumed at that point.

My policy for selecting excerpts varies, sometimes I pick for relevance or because of my own interests, other times I go for quantity, and sometimes just first and last. In all cases I expect that readers have a certain responsibility of their own to read the piece themselves, rather than relying on me to produce a summary, that is not what I do. I am here primarily for my own education and amusement, and I try to post articles of interest when I have the time, sort of as a compensation for the service this site renders to me.

[msmcghee]

7. The confusion in this case was caused by . .

. . the author's use of the same sentence,

"Samir Kuntar is a monster. He may never have deserved a life."

. . at the beginning of his article and again at the very end. I missed the repetition. My bad.

You said, "I am here primarily for my own education and amusement, and I try to post articles of interest when I have the time, sort of as a compensation for the service this site renders to me."

Despite your professed altruism, the impression I get is that you have a policy of searching anti-Israeli / pro-Palestinian websites - and simply posting whichever articles have the most emotional headlines supporting your politics. These mostly provide an opportunity for the same group of the most virulent Israel-haters to chime in with posts like - "Israel again, committing war crimes and ignoring the most basic human rights of . . blah, blah, blah . . Thanks for posting this very important article."

You currently have 30 articles posted, none of which carry any comments from you - they are just cut and paste with the usual inflammatory headlines. Some have ellipses (--) which give the impression that they mark the end of the excerpt and that the following text is your own, if someone is not paying close attention.

You would make a better impression on your detractors - me anyway - if you selected articles that made a particular impression on you and thoughtfully if briefly explained why - after you provide the relevant excerpts. Generally, I think you could spend more time explaining what you believe and why you think that is right - and less time telling others (like me) that we are wrong. We already know that you think that.

Finding fault with someone's position is easy since no position is without some weakness. It takes more guts to explain your position and lay it out there naked for others to try to shoot down. But it's a great way to fine-tune what you believe, if that's important to you.

You may now state that the idea that you would want to make a better impression on me is laughable - and I'd understand that. For my part however, I think you are one of the more intelligent posters around here and I'd like to see you make better points - despite our differences. That type of post would also help me understand more accurately where you are coming from. Such nuanced information seldom survives the flying insults that take over most threads in I/P - but I think it's worth the try.

I think it's important for everyone here to remember that we are all liberals and we all hope to see a major liberal shift in our government's direction. Treating our differences with some respect can be difficult when we all have such very strong feelings about these I/P issues. I am certainly no saint in this regard as I have responded in a pretty snarky way to some posts when provoked - but I think we could all do better - and DU would be the better for it.

[Violet_Crumble]

10. To be fair...

You currently have 30 articles posted, none of which carry any comments from you - they are just cut and paste with the usual inflammatory headlines.

1. It's rare that anyone posts articles which are accompanied by their own comments, and personally I prefer it that way...

2. Yr going to have to explain what's inflammatory and 'anti-Israel' about these articles that bemildred has posted:

"Ya'alon says Israel's leaders should quit for Lebanon failures" (from JPost - such an 'anti-Israel' source!!)

"Over 500 Italian peacekeepers arrive in Lebanon, 500 more expected" (from Ha'aretz - wasn't aware that Haaretz was an 'anti-Israel' website)

"Tenders issued for hundreds of homes in W. Bank settlements" (Ha'aretz)

"Battered Israeli town faces postwar struggle" (Reuters - 'anti-Israel'?)

"Wanted: A new combat doctrine" (Ha'aretz)

and so on...

I'm really a bit confused here. How is 'anti-Israel' defined that bemildred's articles would fall into that category? Is it even the slightest hint of criticism of the Israeli govt?

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bemildred]

16. Thanks Vi, but don't bother. nt