MURDERER OF ISRAELI CHILDREN TO BE SET FREE

Blogmaster’s rant: This contemptible act speaks volumes about the resolve (lack thereof) of the present Israeli Government and gives Hizbullah, Hamas, Fatah and other terrorists the green light to kidnap and murder more Israeli soldiers. Finally, they have found a way to force Israel to negotiate with terrorists! There will be more kidnappings… we have opened the door and have no one to blame but ourselves. May Kuntar soon die a slow and agonizing death.

Peres pardons Kuntar

"I want to stress the obvious – in this decision there is no forgiveness or absolution for the murderer's heinous actions. I will not forget, and I won't forgive… I have reached this difficult decision after speaking with the Shahar, Keren and Haran families – the families of the victims of the despicable murderer Samir Kuntar. I, together with all the people of Israel, feel their pain, which is unbearable." President Shimon Peres

KUNTAR VOWS TO KILL MORE ISRAELI BABIES…

Kuntar, who was jailed in the Hadarim Prison in the Sharon region 29 years ago, after murdering the Haran family members and two police officers during a terror attack on the northern city of Nahariya, made the promise in the following letter to the mass murderer and leader of the Hizbullah Shiite terrorist organization, Hassan Nasrallah. The letter was first published in the Palestinian Authority's official daily newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida.

"My dear and respectable master and commander," Kuntar wrote in the letter to Nasrallah. "Peace be with you and with our shahids (martyrs). "I give you my promise and oath that my only place will be in the fighting front soaked with the sweat of your giving and with the blood of the shahids (martyrs), the dearest people, and that I will continue your way until we reach a full victory. I send my best wishes and promise of renewed loyalty to you, sir, and to all the jihad fighters,"

Samir Kuntar

The World Should Know What He Did to My Family

By Smadar Haran Kaiser

Sunday, May 18, 2003; Page B02
NAHARIYA, Israel

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.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company

3,320 Years Ago...the problem still exists!

Time to “Leave Egypt”.

by Steven Shamrak.

I wrote this article 5 years ago. Unfortunately the problem still exists.

Every year Jews celebrate the exodus from Egypt and freedom from slavery. It took place 3,320 years ago. It was a fundamental event in Jewish history. At the same time, it symbolizes not just freedom from physical slavery. The Passover reminds us that internal freedom of mind and spirit are even more significant. This freedom allows us real freedom of choice.

Jews have nothing to apologise for. We have the right to live in peace on Jewish land in our own country. We lived in Gallut (exile, slave mentality) for too long. It is time to say – “NO more”!

I am ashamed and feel sorry for those Jews who have no self-respect and are helping enemies to destroy Israel. Why do they hate themselves so much?

I do respect non-Jewish people who do not know and do not care about the Arab-Israel conflict. They are honest hard working people who have their own problems and interests. At the same time, there is a danger when opinions are formed under the influence of selectively presented information, provided by mainly a press that is biased against Israel. People become attached to the belief system they have adopted and it is difficult to change it. For Jews the understanding of the conflict and support for Israel is existential! I would like to remind all of them:

1. Israel is on a front line of the war between Arab-Muslim expansionism and Western democracy. This war has already shifted to America and Europe.

2. According to the UN’s own legal opinion: Judea, Samaria and Gaza do not belong to any country at the moment. Therefore, it is wrong to call them ‘Occupied Territories’. They used to be a part of Jewish land 2000 years ago and were allocated by the League of Nations for the creation of Eretz-Israel in 1922. There was never an Arab country in Palestine.

3. So-called Palestinians are Arabs and Muslims who moved to the territories during the last 130 years, after the Zionist pioneers started to revitalize the land.

4. Arabs have no intention of living in peace with Jews. When former president of Egypt Nasser was asked: Why do you continue to fight Israel after so many defeats? His answer was: “Because. We need to win only one war!” Please make no mistake, the Arabs’ aim is total destruction of the Jewish state!

5. Arabs do respect charisma and strong leadership. It is time for Israel and her government to show it and end terror.

6. Enemies and so-called friends have never treated Jewish people as equals. They will never support Israel unconditionally regardless of facts. They do not care about facts and deliberately distort or falsify them (remember the fake massacre of Jenin and how much noise they made about it).

7. After 60 years of wars and terror, it is time to become an Independent nation with self-respect and be equal among equals. No more double standards!

8. Israel was created to fulfil a 2000 year-old national inspiration of Jewish people. Jews have the right to regain control over all Jewish land. The time is NOW!

At the same time, I am ashamed and feel sorry for Jews who advocate destruction of Israel. Why do they hate themselves so much?

Enemies Know Jews Well - Plan for Demise of Israel!

“The PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine," Abbas Zaki, the PLO's ambassador to Lebanon, told in an interview to Lebanon's NBN TV. The enemies of Israel, regardless of their political or religious shade, are not hiding their plan, which remains the same, for the future of Israel and Jews – total obliteration of the state of Israel and “Throw Jews to the Sea!” And they are betting on current Jewish apathy, political correctness and self-destructiveness of Israeli society, as well as an inept, corrupt and self-hating leadership. For how long will we continue kidding ourselves by participating in this bogus peace process?

According to a recent poll, 65% of Israeli Jews oppose the State of Israel making any further withdrawals from Judea and Samaria (the land commonly known in the US as “the West Bank”), while only 24% support more withdrawals. By continuing the policy of surrender of Jewish land to the enemy Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his fellow Oslo traitors, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Tsipi Livni etc - all oppose the will of Israeli populace and are obliterating the Jewish National dream.