Samir Kuntar- a hero
July 21st, 2008Last Wednesday prisoners exchange between Hezbollah and Israel in which Israel got the remains of the two soldiers whom Hezbollah snatched from their military jeep in a cross t border raid that aimed to eventually swap them with Samir Kuntar, who has been languishing in Israel jails for thirty years. Samir Kuntar, now forty-eight years old, participated in daring military operation of the Palestine Liberation front, whose purpose was, according to reports, to capture Israelis to exchange them with Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
For most Americans, Israel is a little country, with an image of being an oasis of democracy and sunshine surrounded by sea of bloodthirsty evil Arabs who are out to squeeze life out of it. If they can.
For this sea of Arabs, however, it is the other way around, ever since Jewish immigrants started coming by the boat load to the shores of Yafa and Haifa of what was then Palestine, Israel has been holding the Arabs by the throat dealing them fantastical defeats humiliating them at every round and at every battle.
The exchange of prisoners and soldiers’ remains between Hezbollah and Israel, last Wednesday though not the first, was by all account the first time ever the entire Arab Nation, from the Atlantic ocean to the Arab Gulf felt a sense of vindication and a measure of justice while the Israeli felt the bitter taste of their own medicine, at least for once.
‘Gone are the days defeats” said the ever popular charismatic Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah to a million plus crowd gathered in Beirut to see the freed prisoners and to tens of millions more of Arabs who watched the beaming Nasrallah hugging=2 0the former prisoners and greet them before he disappeared to give a speech via video conference.
The jubilant Lebanese headed by president Michel Suliman and the entire Lebanese political class gave Samir Kuntar and four other Hezbollah fighters captured by Israel an electrifying heroes welcome.
For the rest of the Arab World, Hezbollah is viewed as a highly efficient organization with a military wing that perhaps, from a military point of view, is the best small fighting force in the world today, can bring them a victory over an enemy that had been the source of their torment for the past 60 years.
What Arabs were witnessing on TV screens, scenes they were unfamiliar with in that for the first time, victory celebrations and the return of their prisoners and the bodies of almost two hundred of former fighters.
In Israel the scene was a stark contrast to the victory parades in Lebanon. Israel felt a rude awakening, perhaps for the first time in which Israel does not hold a victory parade after one of its wars. The Israeli leaders felt a specially humiliating defeat in releasing their longest held prize, Samir Kuntar who was sentenced to multiple life times of 542 years, and whose release required the signature and the pardon of Shimon Perez the president of the country and the father of Israel’s nuclear bomb.
What Hezbollah did was remarkable by all accounts. In the year 2000 it succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon; it held several prisoners swaps with Israel that resulted in releasing its prisoners and several hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and withstood a relentless s bo mbardment of Beirut in 2006 to force it to give up its Israeli soldiers.
To put this in perspective; Egypt the regional heavy weight and who signed a peace tre aty with Israel in 1979 did not bother to claim or investigate the fate of thousands of its missing soldiers during the past wars with Israel, some of them are still buried in secret cemeteries called the “cemeteries of numbers” because Israel put only numbers on the graves without names or nationality or any other markers.
Jordan is another country that signed a peace treaty with Israel still has 26 of its citizens and soldiers held prisoners in Israeli jails some of them are Jordanian soldiers who were captured in 1967 war. The Jordanian government is still not making any real efforts to get its prisoners release or claim the bodies of its fallen soldiers. Israel is also holding 11500 Palestinian prisoners,one Saudi man, several Syrians and Yemenis and other Arabs in i ts jails .
Lebanon, for its part, the smallest country y bordering Israel, and the weakest one and without a functional army, was able at achieve feats through Hezbollah that no Arab country as powerful as Egypt or as rich as Saudi Arabia was able to achieve.
The message that Hezbollah is sending here is that it liberated its land from the Israeli grip; it got back its prisoners and the remains of their soldiers without dealing directly with Israel or sign a peace treaty with Israel. As far as the other Arab countries that have diplomatic, open and secret ties with Israel, their peace resulted in Israel still occupies Arab lands and continues to hold thousands of Arab prisoners.
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That’s some of the weakest posts I’ve ever read on MEY. It’s just retelling that damn old story of Israel and the Arabs, fighting. I’ve always liked MEY because it did everything, but not that.
Ever heard of self-criticism?
Well it seems that all views were represented.
Ray said Kuntar is not a hero.
Arabista questioned whether or not he is a hero.
And Ali is saying that he is a hero.
That’s everything! And I think all of these views are worth reading and exploring.
Esra’a, of course all views were represented. But I’m not accusing MEY of being unbalanced, I’m criticizing this particular article. And I do it mainly for one reason: That it is not about dialog.
Of course I dislike the jingoism of these ideas, but I dislike much and still can accept it. What it is that I’m calling weak is, that it is repeating the old story of “good” Arabs and “bad” Israelis without questioning it, without even thinking of the possibility that it probably isn’t correct.
Well, not every author here has to be a Ray Hanania who always seems to be balanced, and it is good that there are some more controversial contributions, but not if they’re not offering a dialog.
How fascinating…I’d really like to see some of the military memorabilia of the valiant Hezbollah army, y’know, like uniforms, their famous bases, the amazing battles where they and the enemy fought face to face, division to division. Some of the military patches and swatches from their uniforms would be great too, the ones that differentiate officers from enlisted men, special forces, engineering and medical specialists.
They have all that stuff, right? It’s not like they are some kind of plainclothes guerilla mafia that terrorizes and divides their country under a cowardly cloak of secrecy like the CIA…
Is it?
My mother in-law thought he looked so savage. I saw another Saddam out of jail. A murderer is a murderer. 33 days war and many people killed to get this guy out of jail? What is going on in this Middle East?? We have bipolars ruling us people, perhaps we are bipolars too, because we keep watching.
simon thanks for your comments, I fully agree.
Its a shame that such ignorant and hateful views are being represented here, it stains the wonderful aims that MEY has been working for.
I could barf when I read “What Hezbollah did was remarkable by all accounts” There is nothing about Hezbollah that could even remotely be viewed as heroic, exemplary or remarkable!!!
Free speech is all good and fine but it should not ever justify this type of senseless and useless speech that truly only widens the divide and has no purpose than breeding prejudice and hate.
How can anyone think Samir Kuntar is a hero?? In 1979, Smadar Haran, her husband Danny, and their two daughters, ages two and four, were at home in their apartment in northern Israel. They were asleep in their beds around midnight when they awoke to gunfire and grenades exploding. Terrorists, sent by terrorist leader Abu Abbas to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty at Camp David the year before, were breaking into their building. Desperate to hide, Smadar carried her two-year-old into a crawl space above their bedroom. So terrified was she that her baby girl would cry out and alert the terrorists to their hiding place that Smadar held her hand tightly over the girl’s mouth. Too tightly. By the time they were rescued hours later, the little girl was dead. Smadar had accidentally smothered her own child. But the horror doesn’t end there. Kuntar Smashed a Four-Year-Old Girl’s Head Against a Rock Until She Was Dead. While Smadar and her child hid in the crawlspace, Danny and the four-year-old ran out of the apartment for the safety of an underground shelter. They didn’t make it. The terrorists took Danny and the little girl down to the beach where one of them, Samir Kuntar, shot Danny in front of the girl. His goal, according to Smadar, was that the sight of her father being killed “would be the last sight she would ever see.” Then Kuntar smashed the little girl’s skull against a rock until she was dead. Last week, in a deal brokered by the Israeli government with the terrorist group Hezbollah, Samir Kuntar, a cowardly child killer, walked out of an Israeli prison. Israel Didn’t Cave to Terrorists in 1985 But It Did Last Week
The deal the Israeli government made with Hezbollah included the exchange of the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in return for five live terrorists in Israeli prisons, including Kuntar. And Kuntar was no ordinary terrorist prisoner. Abu Abbas was so impressed with Kuntar’s savage child-killing tactics that Abbas masterminded the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 – including the killing and dumping into the ocean of the defenseless, elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer – to secure Kuntar’s release.
Israel had a kingdom (King David) and a palace and Solomon’s temple in Israel 3300 years ago. Since then, they were persecuted and most fled, but some stayed. Many returned after being persecuted again by similar Jew haters, the Nazi Germans. The Jews have a right to live in their land. They were there first. They have a right to defend themselves against the never-ending Islamic bombings and murder attempts. The Jews and Israel were there first. Since returning after WWII, they took a rock-filled, unused, worthless desert and worked hard to make it bloom. Only then did the “Palestinians” decide they want it. The Palestinian refuges were created by their own corrupt leaders as media bait and by the Arab nations that would not take them in after THEY voluntarily fled the land in 1949 to get out of the way for their Islamic/Arab armies to come in and murder all of the Jews. But that didn’t happen, Israel protected itself and won that war. They deserve to live in their land and to declare the capital as Jerusalem. No other nation has the UN telling them where they can put their capital. Israel produces Nobel prize winners, physicians, scientists, researchers, engineers, and new technology that continuously benefits the entire world. The Islamic/Arab nations that surround Israel and unjustly and constantly seek to destroy her have 1000 times more land, but they’re so greedy and full of satanically inspired hate that they want to take Israel’s little postage stamp piece of land that is 1/1000 the size of their land. How can people who have been told the truth think that this mindset is right? The Islamic nations don’t tell their people the truth. They don’t allow free speech and free press. They control everything so they can teach lies and teach their children to hate and kill. They teach their children that butchers like Kuntar are “heroes”. That’s what’s wrong.
Are you people insane? This is not a “hateful” article just because it expresses an opinion you disagree with. In an environment where Arab fighters are typically forgotten, and prisoners abandoned by their lousy governments and “representatives,” and the only dead people the press care about are rich billionaires like Rafiq al-Hariri, it’s no wonder that people are enthusiastic about an organization and movement with more populist inclinations and concerns, like Hezbollah. Samir Kuntar was not a leader in any organization, he is not a rich billionaire, he is just one of the average people who fought for Palestinian rights against Israeli occupation and was arrested, along with the other prisoners that were released and the other 200 bodies as well.
As for dialog, Simon: What a better way to shut it all off by shifting away from the topic and discussion at hand, and instead accusing the author of being against the “spirit” of this community! I’m not surprised that all these people who complain about lost opportunities for dialog, as if anybody can’t just start one right away, are saying the opportunity is lost because somebody disagrees with them. Can you try to start a dialog in your next comment, ie, engage in a discussion with the author of this article by speaking to him directly, rather than just accusing him?
As for Samir Quntar: seriously, anybody who wants to claim that he’s “not” a hero is really arguing that he “should not” be considered a hero: and for that, you are part of a small group of people who are ashamed about being anti-imperialist. The huge celebrations in Beirut speak for themselves, and it has nothing to do with what Samir Quntar may or may not have done (do you really trust occupation courts?). It has to do with the fact that this guy spent 30 years of his life in an occupation prison. If you want to be a hero, maybe you should spend half of your life in an Israeli jail and then come out moralizing and setting yourself as the example.
With your logic, then the young Israeli soldiers who were imprisoned or have died for their cause should be equally considered heroes. This is essentially what you are defining as a hero.
There are millions of people in the region against Hezbollah and are scared shitless of them, and not at all because they are crazy liberals or Westerners or Zionists like some of you may claim. It’s simply because radical militancy is retarded and sad and will rob us of the kind of freedoms that we all deserve. Like Israeli soldiers, they are resorting to violence (because the machine guns in their logo suggest otherwise?) and in turn causing more violence, however indirectly it may be. They’re not heroes. And people who don’t call them heroes aren’t part of a small minority who should be isolated and laughed at, we too have serious concerns concerning the legitimacy of an organization whose primary support comes from criminal governments that have mass murdered millions of innocent people throughout history, such as that of Iran. No, not heroes. Just a bunch of radical extremists with guns claiming to want freedom by making other people pay with their blood. Really, that makes you better than the Israeli criminals? Why don’t you call them heroes too then?
I want and wish the best for the Palestinian people. I just don’t agree with the tactics of trying to gain this freedom, I believe it will only get worse. A huge consequence is that the international world will be siding with the Israeli army and legitimize Israeli concerns when the Palestinian people, as a nation, aren’t a threat – just the people who claim to represent them, and then, yet again, they will be the ones paying the price, with their dead children and dismantled homes. What for? They deserve much better, and they will get it, but I don’t believe that they will get it under Hezbollah or any support from Iran, whose involvement in this is political and not out of concern for the Palestinian people.
Arab fighters like Kuntar aren’t and were never forgotten. But other Arab fighters – all these academics, intellectuals, human rights activists – who were abused and left abandoned and TRULY forgotten in these Arab and Iranian prison cells, what about them then? These are the real Arab fighters who are “typically forgotten,” not Hezbollah militants.
Is it because they did not spend 30 years in an Israeli prison? If they spent 30 years in an Arab prison for fighting for a noble cause, they are what? Um, nothing, unfortunately. They mean nothing to the Arab media, nothing to the Western media, nothing. No one even campaigns for their release, certainly not any religious extremists. These are the real heroes who are forgotten. Not the people outside parading with guns right now.
I don’t understand why you call it radical militancy when it is probably more disciplined in its use of violence than both the US and Israeli militaries combined. I am not defining what is a hero: I am just not pretending that people believe in these universal heroes for all of mankind. Of course Israeli soldiers are considered heroes by Israelis. I dare any Israeli or American who is saying that real heroes do not use violence to say that soldiers in their countries are not “heroes,” but are in fact monsters–since nobody here is arguing that Kuntar is not a hero, without also condemning him as a monster at the same time.
I would second Simon saying that this article is one of the weakest on MAY so far. I am saying this not just because i disagree with the stand it takes (which i do), but because it makes it very easy to do so.
Most of the articles on MAY, particularly those that present views you are not fully agree with, make you think and challenge opinions and knowledge claims you have previously held. That’s the beauty of this initiative. Unlike those articles, this one is presenting a simplistic picture without much context or thoughtful analysis. This makes the argument it presents very easy to disagree with, or more so to dismiss it altogether.
It is good to know that this opinion is out there (in case you haven’t followed any media recently), but it is sad to see it here – a place that, at least in my view, hosts a more thoughtful debate.
As long as Israel is to maintain her superiority along with her suffering human rights record, such view continue to exist. This post, whether weak or not, reflects the way many people think, either in Arab world or else.
“As long as Israel is to maintain her superiority along with her suffering human rights record, such view continue to exist.”
The same can be said vice-versa. Many westerners argue that the burden of change and reform lies with some of the nations in the Islamic world. After all, countries like Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have wonderful human rights records. Bottom Line: Many Middle Easterners find the West’s criticism of their governments to be hypocritical. Many Westerners find criticism by Middle Eastern nations to be hypocritical. The same defective though process utilized by both sides is supported when each “team” chooses independently which political issues on which to focus.
I like this site because it seems to encourage self-criticism on BOTH sides of a given issue. For example, I have seen Israelis and Arabs criticize their respective nations. I feel that self-criticism is the first step to owning up to your actions and taking responsibility for change. Thats not to say you cannot identify unjust behavior in others…However, do not judge others before you judge yourself. No one is perfect, and you must strive to improve yourself in the same way you strive to improve others. That being said, I feel that the midset behind posts like this, which glorify a murderer simply because his enemies had done wrong, are counterpoductive and only lead to prolonged conflict if followed by those in power. If I blame you you will blame me back. Then again, sometimes the people in power want prolonged conflict…but that is another issue.
Madmax:
I do not disagree with what you mentioned. I just tried to emphasize that “Superiority + Unfair Treatment of Others” is somehow more troublesome.
“I just tried to emphasize that “Superiority + Unfair Treatment of Others” is somehow more troublesome.” True.
I would say the two things not only compliment each other but aslo can be related. Superiority -> unfair treatment in some sense. People have to feel entitled to privaledge in order to accept it. Slave masters in America thought themselves above the slaves. Unfair treatment everywhere stems from what you describe as superiority. It manifests itself differently in different places. Maybe the Israelis are more overt about it. But I can’t say they are the only ones with the problem. After all, humans are bad by nature. It takes effort for them to do good while evil comes with ease (or so it would seem these days).
like it or not sameer kuntar is a hero.Hizbollah has done what all the Arab armies together ha failed to do during 60 years of humiliation ansd despair.Now has come the time when Israel has to pay for the crimes it has committed against helpless and unarmes Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.live and see.
“For this sea of Arabs, however, it is the other way around” – right. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
If Samir Kuntar is a hero then Mother Theresa was an evil criminal. He bashed the head of a little girl! Is that heroism?
Man, some people are really stupid.