The World Should Know What Kuntar Did to My Family
By Smadar Haran Kaiser, Washington Post
May 18, 2003;
Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas’s terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar’s name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.
It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty, crueler even than the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was shot on the Achille Lauro and dumped overboard in his wheelchair. Kuntar’s mission against my family, which never made world headlines, was also masterminded by Abu Abbas. And my wish now is that this terrorist leader should be prosecuted in the United States, so that the world may know of all his terrorist acts, not the least of which is what he did to my family on April 22, 1979.
It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.
Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. 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.
The next day, Abu Abbas announced from Beirut that the terrorist attack in Nahariya had been carried out “to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty” at Camp David the previous year. Abbas seems to have a gift for charming journalists, but imagine the character of a man who protests an act of peace by committing an act of slaughter.
Two of Abbas’s terrorists had been killed by police on the beach. The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abu Abbas was determined to find a way to free Kuntar as well. So he engineered the hijacking of the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt and demanded the release of 50 Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. The only one of those prisoners actually named was Samir Kuntar. The plight of hundreds held hostage on a cruise ship for two days at sea lent itself to massive international media coverage. The attack on Nahariya, by contrast, had taken less than an hour in the middle of the night. So what happened then was hardly noticed outside of Israel.
One hears the terrorists and their excusers say that they are driven to kill out of desperation. But there is always a choice. Even when you have suffered, you can choose whether to kill and ruin another’s life, or whether to go on and rebuild. Even after my family was murdered, I never dreamed of taking revenge on any Arab. But I am determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison. In 1984, I had to fight my own government not to release him as part of an exchange for several Israeli soldiers who were POWs in Lebanon. I understood, of course, that the families of those POWs would gladly have agreed to the release of an Arab terrorist to get their sons back. But I told Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, that the blood of my family was as red as that of the POWs. Israel had always taken a position of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. If they were going to make an exception, let it be for a terrorist who was not as cruel as Kuntar. “Your job is not to be emotional,” I told Rabin, “but to act rationally.” And he did.
So Kuntar remains in prison. I have been shocked to learn that he has married an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of terrorist prisoners. As the wife of a prisoner, she gets a monthly stipend from the government. I’m not too happy about that.
In recent years, Abu Abbas started telling journalists that he had renounced terrorism and that killing Leon Klinghoffer had been a mistake. But he has never said that killing my family was a mistake. He was a terrorist once, and a terrorist, I believe, he remains. Why else did he spend these last years, as the Israeli press has reported, free as a bird in Baghdad, passing rewards of $25,000 from Saddam Hussein to families of Palestinian suicide bombers? More than words, that kind of cash prize, which is a fortune to poor families, was a way of urging more suicide bombers. The fortunate thing about Abbas’s attaching himself to Hussein is that it set him up for capture.
Some say that Italy should have first crack at Abbas. It had already convicted him of the Achille Lauro hijacking in absentia in 1986. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now wants Abbas handed over so that he can begin serving his life sentence. But it’s also true that in 1985, the Italians had Abbas in their hands after U.S. fighter jets forced his plane to land in Sicily. And yet they let him go. So while I trust Berlusconi, who knows if a future Italian government might not again wash its hands of Abbas?
In 1995, Rabin, then our prime minister, asked me to join him on his trip to the White House, where he was to sign a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat, which I supported. I believe that he wanted me to represent all Israeli victims of terrorism. Rabin dreaded shaking hands with Arafat, knowing that those hands were bloody. At first, I agreed to make the trip, but at the last minute, I declined. As prime minister, Rabin had to shake hands with Arafat for political reasons. As a private person, I did not. So I stayed here.
Now I am ready and willing to come to the United States to testify against Abu Abbas if he is tried for terrorism. The daughters of Leon Klinghoffer have said they are ready to do the same. Unlike Klinghoffer, Danny, Einat and Yael were not American citizens. But Klinghoffer was killed on an Italian ship in Abbas’s attempt to free the killer of my family in Israel. We are all connected by the international web of terrorism woven by Abbas. Let the truth come out in a new and public trial. And let it be in the United States, the leader in the struggle against terrorism.
Smadar Haran Kaiser is a social worker. She is remarried and has two daughters.
Re: “The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking.”
If the Israelis had just shot them dead up front, this would not have been a problem. This is a good argument for not bothering to take prisoners and, unlike uniformed soldiers who are conducting operations under the laws of war, terrorists do not even have a right to be taken prisoner.
Comment by Bill Levinson — July 17, 2008 @ 1:25 am
It’s from Rosner’s Blog today in Haaretz. Rosner is twisting the truth.Ashkenazi is Olmert’s appointee, it’s his responsibility to do what Olmert and his gang want him to do.
..
but at least we know or think we know there is at least one arm of the administration still working for Israel and that is the Mossad.
So who’s judgment to trust? Olmert’s or the Mossad? A no-brainer.
I hope Israelis can figure out who their friends are.
Looks like Rosner is in Olmert’s pocket as well, what I would call a elite apologist, whoever the boss is he will do the propaganda. And Haaretz is in their pocket as well. If one peruses the news stories, the polls, the the “editorials” that help people “understand” the situation , you can see they are all subtly designed to guide readers to “correct” thinking.
…
What the whole Israeli public need s now is shame, deep unrelenting shame, they need this rubbed in their faces relentlessly until they will act. They are the only ones who can save themselves.
Comment by Max — July 17, 2008 @ 3:21 am
Israel is beyond shame; the leftist concept of PC and fear of America and being left alone is what motivates most Israelis today. I don’t agree but neither am I in the majority.
Comment by yamit82 — July 17, 2008 @ 3:30 am
Infamy, by Naomi Ragen
Comment by Shy Guy — July 17, 2008 @ 4:24 am
[...] http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=1573#more-1573 [...]
Pingback by ISRAELI PEOPLE WILL TAKE REVENGE ON OLMERT LIVNI BARAK FOR THIS « 4international — July 17, 2008 @ 10:24 am
Well, Karla Faye Tucker was put to death by the state of Texas even though the prison staff believed that she had really reformed and regretted the two murders that put her on Death Row. I am therefore not impressed by Abu Abbas’ purported remorse.
After his plane landed, we (the U.S.) should have just popped Abbas full of 5.66 millimeter holes without giving him a chance to surrender. Then we would not have any problems with him today.
Comment by Bill Levinson — July 17, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
That Jews face this kind of horror in their own country is abominable. Kuntar should have had his brains blown out upon capture. Instead this subhuman monster was given a college education and allowed to marry and receive conjugal visits from his equally depraved wife. And Einat and Yael Haran never had the chance to grow up, go to college and marry. It doesn’t pay to be civilized and humane in a world where evil is rewarded. Israel needs to be as ruthless as her enemies and kill rather than imprison terrorists.
Comment by Laura — July 17, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
1260 foot pounds divided by Kuntar’s weight is the length of the solution.
Comment by Bill Levinson — July 17, 2008 @ 8:38 pm
Interesting that nobody here has observed that arch-criminal Mahmoud Abbas, the protagonist of the story above, is a protegé of the USA, whose government portrays him and his bloody companion Arafat as ‘moderates’ and goes as far as putting extreme pressure on Israel to give land to those filthy Arab Nazis.
That no one inquires on this on a leading pro-Israel website as this one is an obvious symptom that Jews still believe that God alone will save them from their enemies. It should be obvious to everyone, Jew and non-Jew alike, that no normal human being will ever feel compelled to help someone who repeatedly tries to kill himself. Israelis are committing collective suicide. Smadar suffers from that syndrome. How can a mother who lost her family to a criminal of Kuntar’s dimension support a ‘peace agreement’ with Arafat, with full knowledge that Arafat was Abbas’ twin political brother? It takes extraordinary ignorance or sheer stupidity for someone with her past to say that.
The fact of the matter, or, very simply put, the only thing that matters when clouds and mist are cleared is that the US is firmly determined to destroy Israel, and both American and Israeli Jews are helping them achieve as much. Very few people are courageous enough to tell it openly. Most Jews can hardly believe it because they have been brainwashed to view the US as a friend of the Jews and their state, contrary to all evidence flying on our faces.
Wake up chaverim!
Comment by Alex Eisenberg — July 20, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
The way I see it.. Israel insists on moving the bar lower and then the US scrambles to come up with a way to accomidate what Israel has done.
I dispaired quite profoundly last year when Rice initated the Annapolis Conference… i saw it as an act of betrayal.. though it seems nothing concrete has resulted from it, so if it led to any real damage remains to be seen… other than that
Did the US force Israel to conduct secret talks with the PLO and Arafat in the early 1990s?
Did the US force Israel to recongnize the PLO as the legitimate agent for the Palestinian people?
Did the US force Israel to allow the PLO to establish a government in Judea and Gaza?
Did the US force Israel to withdraw from Southern Lebanon?
Did the US force Israel to withdraw from Gaza?
Did the US force Israel to begin serious talks with Syria and Turkey to give up the Golan?
Did the US force Israel to make a deal with Hezbellah and trade the mutilated corpses of brave Israeli soldiers for that of the worst kind of living criminal?
The US certainly is not perfect and the State Dept is usually acting in neither the US nor Israel’s best interest.. but I suggest Israel is doing just fine going down the path of suicide on its own.
Calamity is coming due to this insanity.
Comment by VinceP1974 — July 20, 2008 @ 9:44 pm
Dear Vince,
The answer to all of your questions is a big YES. It is preposterous to imagine that corrupt Israeli politicians would go as far as committing national suicide if not compelled by a very big international force. It takes extreme political naiveté to believe that, I’m sorry to tell you.
Israeli politicians are no less or more corrupt than Pakistani, Turkish, Brazilian or Argentinian politicians. They all suffer from the same disease, namely the capacity to oppress their own people on behalf of a cabal of billionaires who run the so-called “global economy.” This is nothing new for Jews, even if they pretend to forget their own history. It would have been much harder for Rome to destroy ancient Israel were it not for the full collaboration of the Jewish priestly class (the Sadducees) with Rome against their own people. Same today. In fact Jewish leaders go out of their way to murder fellow Jews if such is needed to keep their positions of power - the co-responsibility of the Israeli Labor elite in the murder of Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust immediately comes to mind (not to mention their murder of every person in position of power who risked indicting them).
But corrupt leaders in small countries plagued by permanent war (like Israel) alone are not capable to force their people into suicidal policies without much help from imperial powers. Let’s talk reality. It takes lots of propaganda and money to convince ordinary Israelis that the US is a friend, and that US policies, however genocidal against Israel, must be trusted and accepted. Of course Israeli leaders are corrupt and real criminals, but it is the US and its European partners who lash their Israeli puppets into absurd policies. Ordinary Israelis don’t react partly because they are unaware of things, but Jewish ghetto mentality - which never receded despite popular belief - also plays a huge role, as Israelis try to stage to the world that they are more democratic than democracy has ever been in concept and practice (the old “be nice to survive” ghetto mentality, which was also such among the former Jews of Islam).
Also, the idea that the State Department is responsible for the wrongdoings of US foreign policy, as if it had the autonomy to act without presidential sanction can only puzzle those who know nothing of how power works in the US. I don’t know who invented that diversionary absurdity, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were a fellow Jew completely infected with the ghetto virus. The State Department always works hand-in-hand with the president and all his comrades. In fact it simply follows the orders that emanate from the White House.
Calamity is coming because the common interests of the US, Europe and Islamic ruling elites need Israel off the map. And they pay their Israeli pawns very well to do the service.
Comment by Alex Eisenberg — July 21, 2008 @ 1:43 am
While we are required to do as much as possible to protect and defend ourselves, it is clear that the disaster awaiting us is no less the will of G-d than was the holocaust, the 2000 year exile and the destruction of Jerusalem - twice. The present situation is an amazing miracle. Yes, miracle. The people who were supposed to be a “light unto the nations” have become the world’s dumbest bunny. For all of Israel’s military potential, it cowers from oversized bottle rockets fired from modern day Philistines, who could be obliterated in less than a week and forced to raise their last pair of white underpants in surrender.
We have one of the most vile and corrupt societies, from the head of the government down to the most worthless of TV and newspaper reporters.
Everything is wrong!!!
Oh, I’d love G-d to swallow the entire Knesset building, during a fully attended session, down the same hole in the earth which swallowed Korach, Dattan and Aviram, but it’s just not happening, is it? I’d love Iran to have several of those major earthquakes it’s had in recent decades, this time at all the right locations. Lord knows, literally.
I personally, would be happy to join a throng of 1 million fellow jews marching on the prime mister’s home and office with torch fires and pitchforks in hand, to chase the Frankenstein monster away from my land, but there are only a handful of us with the gumption and that means being tossed away in some Shabak 2×2 windowless cell until further notice.
We either need a modern day Matityahu & Yehuda Maccabee to lead the way or we have to admit that Hashem has played a perfect chess game against his highly rebelious nation and has us check-mated.
There is much here that is prophetic. Not that we want it to be but that the prophecies appear to be actualizing, whether we like them or not.
Chazal didn’t have good things to say about these times of Chevlei Mashiach. Even in Shabbat’s Zmirot, we’re reminded weekly at the table:
“Me’ein Olam Habah
Yom Shabbat Menucha.
Kol Hamit’angim Bah
Yizku L’rov Simcha.
Mei’chevlei Mashiach
Yutzalu L’rvacha.
Peduteinu Tatzmiach
Ve’Nas Yagon Va’Anacha.”
“A semblance of the World to Come
is the Shabbat day of contentment.
All who delight in it
will merit much gladness.
From the birth pangs of the Messiah
they will be rescued to relief.
Make our redemption florish
that grief and sighs may flee.”
And therein lies the hint of what’s wrong with us as a nation in total. Shabbat is the catalyst that can fix it. I dare us all to try. It’s our choice. We’ve always had choice. We’ve been warned over and over.
Comment by Shy Guy — July 21, 2008 @ 2:09 am
This is simply historically untrue.
The policies of the State Dept. have often been at odds with US presidents and drove Presidents nuts trying to carry out a different agenda.
And it’s no coincidence that some of the biggest western Arabists and anti-Semites are graduates of the US State Dept., The British Foreign Office and the French Quai d’Orsay. No coincidence at all.
Comment by Shy Guy — July 21, 2008 @ 2:17 am
Alex, it is you who ignores evidence and relies on your own rigid blinkered thinking when you make ridiculous statements such as:
Just how do you define the word “friend” so as to exclude the U.S.?
Comment by Bill Narvey — July 21, 2008 @ 8:02 am
Dear Mr. Narvey,
Thank you for eulogizing my thinking. Rigidity is not necessarily bad, especially when one rigidly clings to historical truth. As you know, truth is as rigid as diamond. It doesn’t allow room for political correctness or flexible sophistry.
The fact that you always talk of evidence without providing any does not help your comments.
How do I define “friend” as to exclude the US? Answer: how do you define “friend” as to include the US? Have you ever had a friend who forces you to bring a den of vipers into your house? Doesn’t it fit the concept of enemy much better than that of friend?
Comment by Alex Eisenberg — July 29, 2008 @ 1:48 am
Dear Shy Guy,
You wrote this: “The policies of the State Dept. have often been at odds with US presidents and drove Presidents nuts trying to carry out a different agenda.”
You seem not to understand two things: (1) how the US government is organized; and (2) the difference between truth and propaganda.
Let’s begin with (1): the State Department cannot be “at odds” with US presidents, nor carry an agenda other than that of the president. The state department has no autonomy to do it. It must follow the president’s order. Even more so as “Under the Constitution, the President of the United States determines U.S. foreign policy. The Secretary of State, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, is the President’s chief foreign affairs adviser. The Secretary carries out the President’s foreign policies through the State Department and the Foreign Service of the United States.” [source: State Department] Could it be clearer than that?
Now(2): given the above, it should be clear that the idea that the State Department tries to carry out agendas other than those of the president must be propaganda. It is the president himself who picks a secretary of state of his own choosing. And it is the president himself who fires a secretary of state if he so needed. Such presidential powers are guaranteed by the US constitution.
Israelis have been particularly targeted by US intelligence to consume that propaganda, which has become as popular among Jews as its twin propaganda that the US is Israel’s best friend. If you take the time to read about the US intelligence apparatus, you’ll perhaps understand that such propaganda is modeled after Nazi propaganda, and, not coincidentally, it is part of the process of Israel’s destruction by Western and Islamic powers.
Comment by Alex Eisenberg — July 29, 2008 @ 2:56 am
Alex welcome to the club of rigid thinkers and even worse. Narvey I a sure remembers You!!
Comment by yamit82 — July 29, 2008 @ 3:21 am
Comment by Shy Guy — July 29, 2008 @ 3:54 am
I think Shy Guy and Alex are both correct. A lot depends on who and how strong The sitting Americn president is and how strong is his Sec, of State i.e, Kissinger, Haige,Dulles etc, and How strong on Foreign Policy a Prsident is Nixon, Reagan, Truman, come to mind.
Comment by yamit82 — July 29, 2008 @ 4:04 am
Shy Guy,
Since you haven’t yet understood my point, I’ll try to be even more explicit. You wrote:
I never said there is no mutual influence between the State Department and the president. It is obvious that those who are accepted in the halls of power are only accepted because they have proved to be good contributors to the status quo (you would never be hired for a high position in a company before proving your competence and, most of all, if you don’t show enthusiasm for the company’s ideology).
However, what makes you so sure that an apparent differing between president and State Department is real? Did any US president go public to trumpet his differences with his high-level subordinates? Did you learn it from the media or university professors? Do you seriously think that the president of the biggest world power improvises his speeches? Would any single US president be so extraordinarily moral as to not use his position of power to stage pronouncements that will swerve the public in ways such as to keep or increase his class’s power? Do you really believe that you can get to know what the real exchanges between US president and US State Department are, just like you read about Michael Jackson’s sexual preferences in a gossip magazine? Whatever you say about the relationship between previous presidents and secretaries of state must have been learned from the mainstream media, which, at least from 1947 on, are by definition BS. Powerful leaders tell the media what they want the media to tell you. And the mainstream media will not contradict the president, because they are owned by the same people who help presidents be elected and participate in the institutions that design American policies (such as the CFR). If you don’t realize that, then you are still Alice in the Wonderland.
It should be clearer now what I meant. As a general you don’t bitch about a sergeant’s insubordination. If the media construe such a picture, it’s all theater.
You should realize that the USA is not Israel, where people ask all details of your private life before saying nice-to-meet-you. The distance between the US ruling elite and its citizens is a thousand (or more) times longer than its counterpart in Israel. The only reason why Israelis embrace national suicide is because there has been a massive propaganda campaign - both external and internal - to convince Israelis that because the US is a ‘friend,’ Israeli leaders can get away with all sorts of crimes against their own people as long as it is said to be the US’s will. Israeli leaders’ prostitution has become so normal that they don’t even need anymore to explain that they are being lashed out by the US and Europe into obedience. They turn the cruise on and lash out themselves, and the Israeli public say amen like sheep. This is unique in history. An entire nation committing suicide despite being well-armed.
Comment by Alex Eisenberg — July 30, 2008 @ 2:02 am