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Westerners were shocked at Samir Kuntar’s reception in Lebanon. Arab presidents and prime ministers greeted him, al-Jazeera even threw a birthday party for him. But actually there is nothing surprising about it given the Arab world-view.

What I do find surprising, on the other hand, is the way our leaders keep flunking “Arab Thinking 101″.   

Being a Terrorist Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
By Barry Rubin

The number-one mistake people make trying to understand the Middle East is refusing to believe folks here think differently from themselves.

Virtually every development in the Middle East should remind us of this reality.

Yet as Captain Ahab hunted the white whale, as prospectors hunt for gold, as…well, you get the idea, so is the hunt for the great Arab moderate. There are Arab moderates, some very smart and brave people. The problem is none are in positions of power and all must shut up or face repression and being defined by fellows as enemies of the people.

The view of the Middle East held in much or most of the Western media, academia, intellectual circles, and large sections of governments is a fantasy having nothing to do with the region.

One should work against dangerous extremists with the Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Kuwaiti, UAE, and Iraqi governments as well as the Lebanese pro-independence forces, though these all have multiple faults. But you must know the limits. And you can’t work with the Iranian, Syrian governments, Hamas and Hizballah or Muslim Brotherhood, even against al-Qaida which is ultimately–despite September 11 — a far smaller threat.

Still, one must face the fact that the last half-century’s most basic lessons have evaporated, partly due to Western policy mistakes — of excessive softness, not toughness — but mostly to the incredible power of the region’s political and intellectual system.

What keeps the region crisis-ridden, extremist, undemocratic, and unstable is not merely a system imposed by evil regimes on an innocent public. Yes, regimes continue their self-serving Arab nationalist, semi-Islamist, anti-Western, anti-Israel, demagogic messages urging the masses to support their local dictator. But this is what the public wants to hear. Rulers would be in far more trouble if they told the truth.

The glorification of the terrorist Sami Qantar is widely seen in the West as showing something is deeply wrong in the Arabic-speaking world. Yet there’s also much denial. The New York Times explained Qantar’s attack had gone terribly wrong when he murdered Israeli civilians. In fact, this was the raid’s purpose.

In another article, the Times intoned: “The United States, Israel and some of their European allies have begun to recognize that their policy of trying to defeat their enemies by isolating and vilifying them has failed.” Yet it was Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas that dispatches the Qantars on missions against not only Israeli but also Iraqi and Lebanese civilians.

If the extremists should not be vilified should they be praised? If they should not be isolated should they be embraced? Is the correct policy the feting of murderous Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad in Paris or parleying with the genocidal-oriented Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran? Why did the U.S. government welcome the Syria-Iran-Hizballah victory in knocking down Lebanon’s moderate government? Who’s the villain in Iraq, the United States or the terrorists?

Well, for the Arabic-speaking world, the true heroes are still the terrorists. What horrified me most is not radicals cheering Qantar but that most relative moderates feeling compelled to do so. At the airport to greet him were leaders of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian Druze and Christian groups as well as the ambassadors from Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Morocco.

To avoid being discredited, relative moderates must affirm that anyone who murders Israeli children is a hero. That’s the measure of how far — despite daily headlines to the contrary — the region is from Arab-Israeli peace.

Yet it’s untrue the prisoner exchange has strengthened or encouraged the radicals. The truth is even worse: No matter what happens they’ll do exactly the same things. If every operation and casualty is a victory, a profit-loss calculus doesn’t apply. They’ll kidnap if there’s a prisoner exchange; they’ll kidnap if there’s no exchange. Triumph is continuing the struggle. Violence, death, and instability is cause for celebration.

Charles Harb, a Lebanese professor, claimed in the Guardian, “The Secret of Hizballah’s Success” is that its ability to get back some prisoners and bodies or force Israel out of south Lebanon “is in stark contrast to what ‘Arab moderates’ could show for in the same decade they spent negotiating with the Israeli state.”

The Saudi-backed, London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat, however, reminded readers that Hizballah’s success cost “$5.2 billion in losses and 1,200 dead” in the 2006 war. In addition, the south Lebanon war took almost 20 years, and Israel would have withdrawn far sooner if it had not been trying to block attacks against its territory.

The claim that Arab moderates have gained little through negotiation is also quite wrong. By negotiating with Israel, Egypt got back the Sinai, reopened the Suez Canal and western Sinai oilfields, and received about $60 billion to date in U.S. aid. The PLO got the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank, putting more than two million Palestinians under its rule. Thousands of its prisoners were freed (more, of course, were taken because of its continuing violence), many billions of dollars in aid were obtained, and it could have had a Palestinian state if it so desired.

So who came out better, Egypt and the PLO (especially if it had really stuck to negotiating) or Hizballah?

Psychologically, the Arabic-speaking world says Hizballah because the “honor” gained through fighting and not yielding the dream of total victory trumps material benefits. Better martyrdom than compromise, better resistance than prosperity.

As long as this is true, there’s no hope for peace; even those who know better are dragged into shouting militant slogans. This doesn’t fit Western concepts of pragmatism, expectations that militants are just aching to be transformed into moderates, or that settling grievances through concessions defuses hatred.

That’s why policy prescriptions based on those premises are disastrous. While the West concludes that trying to defeat enemies by isolating and vilifying them has failed, the other side concludes its policy of trying to defeat its enemies by violence, vilification, and intransigence is working. That means more of the same: many decades more of the same.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Arabs, Extremism, terrorism

Ha’aretz reports:

A Palestinian bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem on Tuesday, wounding at least 24 people, just weeks after a similar attack in the capital left three dead.

The driver was identified as a 22-year-old resident of East Jerusalem who held an Israeli ID card. Police sealed off possible escape routes into the predominantly Arab area of Jerusalem and were searching for two suspects who fled the scene, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Another day, another jihad-by-heavy-equipment.

Time to ponder the words of A. D. Gordon:

We [the Jewish people] have become accustomed to every form of life, except to a life of labour–of labour done at our own behest and for its own sake. It will require the greatest effort of will for such a people to become normal again. — People and Labour, 1911

Now it is true that every people have many individuals who shun physical labour and try to live off the work of others… We Jews have developed an attitude of looking down on physical labour…. But labour is the only force which binds man to the soil… it is the basic energy for the creation of national culture. This is what we do not have, but we are not aware of missing it. We are a people without a country, without a national living language, without a national culture. We seem to think that if we have no labour it does not matter - let Ivan, John or Mustafa do the work, while we busy ourselves with producing a culture, with creating national values and with enthroning absolute justice in the world. — Our Tasks Ahead, 1920

The early kibbutzniks took Gordon seriously and learned how to farm, how to build, and how to defend themselves, things that most Diaspora Jews had forgotten. The Zionist idea that Jews would possess the land only when they were the workers as well as the owners of it was called “kibush ha’avoda“, the Conquest of Labor.

Israel is at a turning point today (see Daniel Pipes, “Samir Kuntar and the Last Laugh“). Lots of things have to change to get the country on the right path, but it wouldn’t hurt to start with a Reconquest of Labor.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Conquest of Labor

The J Street organization, which bills itself “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement” has released a new survey of the American Jewish community.

I want to discuss just one particular ‘finding’ from this poll, because it shows how J Street and others use polling deceptively.

Perhaps, more remarkable is [American Jews’] attitude on the basic dichotomy that often captures the debate – that is, when push comes to shove, does military superiority or a peace agreement better provide Israeli security.  On this fundamental question…Jews favor a peace agreement by a 50 to 34 margin…

J Street’s technique is to conflate two questions, one trivial and true and the other significant but false. The polling data naturally supports the trivial one, but the interpretation claims to have proven the significant one.

Here’s the question that gave rise to the numbers above:

1. Israel cannot rely on peace agreements with its enemies to provide security, and in the long run, Israel can only achieve real security by maintaining its military superiority; or,
2. Israel must always maintain its strong military, but in the long run, Israel can only achieve real security through peace agreements that end conflicts and establish internationally recognized borders.

The first thing that you notice is that these questions don’t present clear-cut opposing positions.  Alternative 1 says that “Israel cannot rely on peace agreements” but alternative 2 says that “Israel must always maintain its strong military”. If Israel could rely on peace agreements, then why would it need a strong military?

What the question basically comes down to is this: “Which would be better, a strong military with peace agreements that end the conflict, or military superiority without such agreements?” And the obvious, trivial answer is  “of course it would be better to have an agreed end to the conflict!” And this is what 54 percent of American Jews believe.

But this trivial proposition is not the one that J Street claims to show. Rather, they want us to believe that a majority of American Jews think that a ‘peace agreement’ provides ‘better security’ than military superiority.

And that’s not all. The question posits abstract “peace agreements that end conflicts”. But this kind of agreement, the holy grail of Israeli-Arab peacemaking is nowhere on the table today. The question is so hypothetical as to be meaningless.

There’s more, lots more, including this false dichotomy:

After we presented a mixture of hawkish and pro-peace messages, we re-asked this series of questions and the “firm support” number was unchanged.

Did it occur to the writer that it is quite consistent to be “hawkish” — that is, to believe that “military superiority” is necessary to the continued existence of the state — and to want peace? And that it is reasonable to think that the “peace efforts” that are presently under way are actually more likely to lead to war than peace? So maybe it’s not so clear who is pro-peace and who is not.

And — oh yes. One minor methodological point.

Gerstein | Agne contracted the research company YouGovPolimetrix to administer the survey by email invitation to its web-based panel, which is regularly updated and consists of 1.2 million Americans.

This poll is not a random sample, the sample was allowed to select itself! Self-selection bias is one of the most elementary errors that can be made in opinion research.

To slightly twist a remark by Mark Twain, there are lies, damn lies, and opinion polls.

Technorati Tags: J Street, polls, American Jews, Israel

News Item:

[British Prime Minister Gordon] Brown told reporters that Britain will always be a genuine friend of Israel, and guaranteed that the Jewish State’s security is of top concern for the United Kingdom. He added that he understood the obstacles [in the region], but “also the opportunities” that lie ahead.

Britain hasn’t been a friend of Israel since the Balfour Declaration (1917), which it has been trying to take back ever since. Britain turned its back on the Jews in the 1930’s when it closed the door on Jewish immigration to Palestine just as Hitler began his genocidal project. Later, near the end of the mandate, it tilted sharply toward the Arabs and aided them in their war against the new Jewish state.

Earlier Sunday, Brown called on Israel to stop settlement construction, and offered additional financial support and police training to the Palestinian Authority government.

Britain here demonstrates its genuine friendship with Israel by arming and training its enemies, just as it did for the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948.

The British leader said economic prosperity was the key to peace, and urged an easing of Israeli travel restrictions in the West Bank that have hindered commerce.

He promised British support in developing housing, industrial parks and small businesses…

Brown said he supported those who understand that “the prospect of prosperity encourages people that the return to violence is something that is an unacceptable price to pay, and something that should be rejected.”

Of course, it’s all due to ‘Israeli restrictions’, not mentioning the reason that these restrictions exist. If there weren’t ‘restrictions’, would the Palestinian economy thrive? Take, for example, Gaza when Israel totally withdrew all her forces, and Jewish donors presented the Palestinians with a profitable system of hothouses growing flowers for the European market. There were no ‘restrictions’, but in an orgy of hatred the hothouses were destroyed and the Palestinians went into the rocket business full time.

As if it had anything to do with economics! Palestinian politics is not the politics of rational decision-making, in which the goal is to improve the lot of the population. Rather, it is a contest between extremist groups, gangs with guns competing to see who can kill the most Jews, which group can get the most with the least compromise, and who is most likely to bring the about day that all of Israel is replaced by an Arab state, the nakba reversed.

It’s hard to believe that sophisticated people like Gordon Brown actually believe that they can move the Palestinians away from violence and toward a desire for peace with aid of any sort — particularly military assistance (Palestinian ‘police’ are more like an army than a police force). Certainly the billions that have already been pumped into the Palestinian hole have not done so in the slightest.

My conclusion is that they do not actually believe this, but present it for public consumption; the real motivation is to appear to be doing something that will lead to an Israeli withdrawal from the territories. This is demanded by the Arab world and by a large segment of Brown’s constituency.

Brown’s first stop in Israel was Yad Vashem, the country’s official Holocaust memorial, where he attended a ceremony for the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany.

Sympathy for dead Jews is cheap, even free. Standing up for the self-determination and security of live ones is another matter entirely, one on which Britain historically has a very poor record.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gordon Brown, Britain, Palestinians

Mahmoud Abbas appoints Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh leader of short-lived unity government (2007) as the Original Terrorist looks on approvingly from above

Barack Obama is embarking on a Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East. Among other places, he will go to Ramallah to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Why?

If Mahmoud Abbas were a great leader, a Palestinian Nelson Mandela as it were, then it would make sense. But he’s not: he’s a man who thinks the murderers of children are heroes, and  his goal, unlike Mandela’s desire for reconciliation, is the ethnic cleansing of the Land of Israel of Jews.

If Mahmoud Abbas, although not a Palestinian Mandela, were at least a representative of his people, then it would make sense. But the majority of Palestinians openly support Hamas, and most of those who follow Abbas are paid to do so.

In fact, Abbas is no more or less than a second-rate terror gangster that the Bush Administration — in need of a Palestinian ‘leader’ in order to meet its commitments to Europe and Saudi Arabia — has chosen to prop up, with the help of a compliant Israel.  Without US money and IDF protection, Abbas would be gone in a flash.

The Bushies say that we have to do this, otherwise we’ll get Hamas.  But the truth of the matter is that we will get Hamas anyway, unless Israel finds the will (and gets a green light) to go after Hamas and wipe it out.

The NY Times claims that Obama has 300 foreign policy advisers. You’d think that at least a few of them would be clear-sighted enough to understand this. After all, why continue a “failed Bush policy”?

But if Obama is elected, chances are — judging from his puerile misunderstanding of the nature of the common enemies of the US and Israel  — that we will be lucky if his policy is no worse than Bush’s.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas, Barack Obama

Now the Hezbollah deal has been consummated and Israel has received the bodies of its soldiers. Child-murderer Samir Kuntar is free, enjoying a hero’s welcome in Lebanon, feted not only by Hezbollah’s Nasrallah but also by the President and Prime Minister of Lebanon, and the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

I was strongly opposed to the deal because of its sheer irrationality. Didn’t it invite more kidnappings? Didn’t it ensure that the price that will be paid for Gilad Schalit will be even more outrageous? Didn’t it legitimize the terrorist Hezbollah even further?

But maybe it presents an opportunity to break through the fog of lies created by our enemies — lies about their own goals and motivations and about the nature of Israel, Israelis and Jews.

To everyone who thinks that terrorism against Israel is the product of ‘extremists’  and that Israel needs to make peace with ‘moderates’ like PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora, etc.: How moderate can they be when they applaud terrorist murderers Samir Kuntar and Dalal Mughrabi, hold them up as heroes and examples?

To everyone who’s said that the conflict is primarily about human rights: Do you still believe this?

The contrast between Israeli and Arab society has never been so stark. Listen to an al-Jazeera TV host tell us what a Palestinian state would look like:

Ghassan bin Jiddo: Twelve men, led by a woman called Dalal Al-Maghrabi, managed to establish the State of Palestine, after the whole world had denied them their right to do so. They turned a bus, going from Haifa to Tel Aviv, into a temporary capital of the State of Palestine. They raised the white, red, and black flag at the front of the bus, singing, shouting, and dancing like children on a school trip.

There were real children on a trip on that bus, and 13 of them died in the temporary capital of Palestine, shot or burned to death by Mughrabi and her men. This is the peaceful Palestinian state that Arab societies yearn for. And this is the kind of declaration of statehood they cheer about.

Hezbollah, Fatah, Hamas, et al. have all said that the deal is a great victory for the ‘resistance’, showing how much stronger and more resolute they are than the Israelis, who stupidly care enough about the bodies of soldiers that they would suffer enormous humiliation and strategic damage to get them back.

On the contrary.

It illustrates the difference between civilized people and…something else.

There will be another confrontation between Isarel and Hezbollah, and soon enough with Hamas as well. Israeli soldiers will go into battle knowing the nature of the nation standing behind them as well as the nature of the enemy.  The results will speak for themselves.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Hezbollah

Barack Obama is the target of this well-aimed blow, but his thinking is exemplary of that of the majority of so-called “opinion leaders” in the US: Journalists, academics, and politicians. 

Mr. Obama, Meet Mr. Jihadi
By Barry Rubin

Barack Obama says regarding his thoughts after 9/11:

The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

and that my friends is what you get with a Harvard education.

It is sort of like the famous scene from Indiana Jones in reverse.

You may remember that Jones is confronted by a sword wielding powerful warrior (Afghan-type clothes) who swings his sword at him showing off his great skill. Jones pulls out his gun and shoots the guy once. This brought a big laugh when I saw the film in a theatre. This is called: Western technology wins.

Now here’s my version. Jones, the epitome of modern sophisticated man in his expensive clothes and superior education, confronts the man with a brilliant series of arguments as to why it is in the warrior’s interest to focus instead on raising his living standards, make peace, and get his own state. The warrior pulls out a small knife and cuts off Jones’s head. Jones’s colleagues then say that Jones had it coming due to his past sins, that we must understand the suffering that led to this violence, this shows the need for more negotiations and concessions, etc.

This is called: asymmetric warfare.

While Obama poses as the great cosmopolitan there is something very much in common between his statement on the September 11 terrorists and what he has to say on the rural and small town Americans, who he believes are attracted to their views only through low living standards, ignorance, and the follies of religion.

No one can think in a manner different from him. No one can hold another belief system and act on it. They are merely evincing, to use the Marxist term for it, false consciousness. He will educate them both directly by material goods and by proper information.

Ironically, this is the epitome of imperialist thinking and it is also intolerant and demeaning in the way that historic racism was. To run a country you must understand that other people have their own set of beliefs and interests; that they think differently from you; that you just cannot buy them off; that their behavior is not just a result of your mistakes in the past but of their own history and culture (which determines even how they react to your own behavior).

Not to mention the fact that the September 11 hijackers mostly came from wealthy families and the wealthiest of them all was Usama bin Ladin.

He might have grown up partly in Indonesia, he may have lived as a Muslim until age 10, but Obama’s mentality is extraordinarily unsuited to understand the Third World, Middle East (or other dictatorships), terrorists (and their far more numerous supporters), or even the American people as a whole.

Perhaps Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran put it best, if I might paraphrase him: Anyone who thinks we staged a revolution because of the price of watermelons is a fool.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, terrorism, 9/11

News item:

[Palestinians] heaped praise on Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar, who killed four people in 1979, and Dalal Mughrabi, the Fatah woman who led the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre that claimed the lives of 36 people.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza took to the streets to celebrate the prisoner deal. Chanting slogans in support of Hizbullah, many distributed candy and pledged to continue the fight until all Palestinian prisoners were freed.

Palestinians also demonstrated in support of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been charged with genocide in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently visiting Malta, welcomed the prisoner swap and sent greetings to Kuntar.

[A top Fatah official] described Kuntar as a “big struggler” and Mughrabi as a “martyr who led one of the greatest freedom fighters’ operations in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Samir, Mahmoud Abbas here. I just wanted to congratulate you on getting out of the Zionist jail. All of us Palestinians are proud of your big struggling against Zionist oppressor 4-year-old-girls.”

“I hope it doesn’t bother you too much that you are sharing the spotlight with Dalal Mughrabi, who, although a woman and probably a whore, killed 27 Zionists (13 of whom were children), as well as Hassan al-Bashir, although the millions that he murdered were only black Africans who are worthless except as slaves.”

“But you have to admire someone who commits a big genocide, don’t you, Samir? Did you know that I was an admirer of the greatest freedom fighter of them all, Adolf Hitler? I even wrote a book defending him.”

“We are having a great party today, just like we did on 9/11, celebrating the defeat of the racist Zionists. Keep up the struggle!”

The Palestinians: truly a class act.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, genocide, Samir Kuntar, Abbas, Dalal Mughrabi, terrorism

Technorati Tags: Regev, Goldwasser, Israel, IDF

News item:

Samir Kuntar and four Lebanese prisoners captured in the Second Lebanon War will receive an official state welcoming when they are released by Israel on Wednesday as part of the prisoner swap with Hizbullah.

The five men will be greeted at Beirut’s airport by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and President Michel Suleiman…

In Kuntar’s home in Abey, streets are decorated with banners welcoming the return of the former member of the radical Palestine Liberation Front. “Samir Kuntar is the conscience of Lebanon, Palestine and the Arab nation. Abey welcomes the hero, prisoner Samir Kuntar,” reads one sign. [my emphasis]

Incredible. They are simply psychotic with hatred. Smashing the heads of children is national policy. Only the Nazis compare.

Meanwhile,  the President of the State of Israel illustrates that he has no understanding of what this is about:

“We do not want murderers to go free,” [President Shimon Peres] said, “but we have a moral obligation to bring home soldiers whom we sent to defend their country”, and as painful as it is for Nina Keren the mother and grandmother of Danny Haran and his daughter Einat who were killed in Nahariya by Samir Kuntar in 1982 [sic], he also had to consider the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev who had done so much and had been waiting for two years to have their boys come home. — Jerusalem Post

Peres  has never been more wrong. It is not about balancing the interests of the Haran, Goldwasser and Regev families. Not at all.

It is not even about the State of Israel. It is about the Jewish People and the need to show the world that murdering Jews because they are Jews will not be tolerated or excused.

Hizbullah’s commander in south Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, said Tuesday that Wednesday’s prisoner exchange showed Israel’s “humiliating failure in confronting the resistance militarily and politically.”

He is right and Peres is wrong. Kuntar should have been executed in 1979, but there’s still time to correct the error.

Update [16 Jul 1025 PDT]: Corrected the date of the Haran murders to 1979.

Kuntar is free. Read a devastating analysis of Israel’s policy of trading prisoners with terror organizations here.

Update [16 Jul 1040 PDT]:  News item:

Abbas congratulates family of Samir Kuntar

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday sent his regards to the families of Samir Kuntar and the other four Lebanese prisoners scheduled to be transferred to Hizbullah.

Abbas praised the prisoner swap and congratulated the Kuntar family.

Israel should immediately terminate negotiations and break relations with the Palestinian Authority, which has showed itself to be a terrorist entity.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Kuntar, Lebanon, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority

Now that the obscene trade with Hezbollah is almost a done deal — supposedly it will take place on Wednesday, with brutal child-killer Samir Kuntar and others crossing the border into Lebanon at Rosh haNikra — we can start being afraid of what will be given up to Hamas in trade for Gilad Schalit.

This is much more problematic, because Schalit is almost certainly alive, while Hezbollah will be returning only bodies. Once again, Israel is being forced to make a “Sophie’s choice” between alternatives that are both horrible. Leave Schalit to die in captivity — or guarantee further kidnappings while releasing murderers who will certainly kill again.

And as always, there is an element of psychological torture involved.

YNet reports:

According to the report, Israel and Hamas previously had agreed that during the first stage of the prisoner swap 350 Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange for Shalit’s transfer to Egyptian custody. In the second phase an additional 100 prisoners will be freed upon the soldier’s arrival in Israel, and 500 more Palestinians will be returned two months after Shalit’s release.

The Palestinian source said Israel has also backed down from its agreement to release all of the female Palestinian prisoners and is particularly against freeing Amna Muna, who was charged and convicted for her involvement in the murder of 16-year-old Ofir [R]ahum in January 2001.

Amna Muna is another great hero of the Palestinian  ‘resistance’. Like Bus of Blood murderer Dalal Mughrabi, she is loved and venerated as an example for Palestinian womanhood. Muna (also spelled ‘Mona’ or ‘Mouna’) was 25 and working as a journalist in Ramallah when she met Ofir in an Israeli chat room. Posing as a tourist or new immigrant (accounts vary) named ‘Sali’, she established an online relationship with him over a period of months, and ultimately arranged a meeting. Ofir traveled from his home in Ashkelon to the bus station in Jerusalem, where Muna picked him up. She drove him to a secluded spot near Ramallah, where they met her confederates, several Fatah terrorists who shot Ofir 15 times and buried his body.

Here’s an excerpt from their last chat, the day before the murder, from Newsweek:

ofir 15/01/01 i don’t know if iI have enough to come back to ashkelon

sali 15/01/01 16:04 i told you I will bring you back to tel aviv in my friends car but she will be with us..is it ok coz I am afraid to drive at night

sali 15/0101 16:35 you don’t know how much I am waiting for wednesday but we have to say bye till wednesday

ofir 15/01/01 16:35 bye

sali 15/01/01 16:35 love you dear

In prison she has become something of an activist, recently leading a hunger strike for better treatment of what are called Palestinian political prisoners. There’s no doubt in my mind that she will go home — if not in this prisoner exchange then in the next one — to a festive Fatah celebration.

There is a way to stop this, at least in the future, and that is to establish a death penalty for terrorist murderers. Perhaps now Israelis have had enough, and it will be possible. The European Union would scream bloody murder (so to speak), but I wonder how long it will take before they are placed in exactly the same position?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Amna Muna, Ofir Rahum, Samir Kuntar, Gilad Schalit, death penalty, terrorism

In July of  2006, Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah forces crossed the Lebanese border with Israel, killed 8 Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. Israel responded with an incursion that developed into a war in which 119 IDF soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians were killed. Over 1000 Lebanese were claimed to have been killed (this figure is in dispute), 500-600 of them Hezbollah fighters. Almost 4,000 Hezbollah rockets landed in northern Israel, injuring thousands of civilians, destroying millions of dollars worth of property and wrecking the economy of the area.

Because of the lack of preparation of the IDF and incompetence on the part of Israel’s leadership, the war’s initial goals (although the official goals changed from day to day) of returning the kidnapped soldiers, breaking Hezbollah’s grip on southern Lebanon and eliminating its military capability were not met.

34 days later, the war ended in a cease-fire and UN resolution 1701, which was supposed to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and keep it from reoccupying South Lebanon. The UN, as expected, was unable to enforce it, and Hezbollah has been fully rearmed — by Iran via Syria — and its troops are firmly ensconced in the south, even where UN ‘peacekeepers’ are deployed.

In addition to the military and diplomatic failures, Israel allowed Hezbollah to manage the content of news reporting during the war, resulting in huge propaganda victories. World-wide reporting of ‘atrocities’ was used as a justification for terrorism, such as the murder of a Jewish woman in Seattle.

Hezbollah has also taken de facto control of the Lebanese government and army.  The new Lebanese president, Gen. Michel Suleiman, although a Christian, is considered to be aligned with Syria and is supportive of Hezbollah’s militant stance against Israel.

One of Suleiman’s first acts as president was to support Hezbollah’s demand for the strategic Har Dov (Shabaa Farms) area to be transferred to Lebanese — i.e., Hezbollah — control. Although the UN certified the border between Israel and Lebanon in 2000 and placed Har Dov in the Golan Heights, the resurrection of this issue is a clear indication that the balance of power in the region has changed.

But this is not all. The outcome of the war reawakened Syria’s ambitions to recover the Golan Heights without having to give anything in return. It prompted Washington to press its program to force Israel to give up the West Bank to the Palestinians, which it formalized at the Annapolis conference, and which it has been actualizing by arming the terrorist Fatah organization. And it emboldened Hamas to follow a Hezbollah-like strategy.

Finally, to close the circle, Israel has agreed to a practically and psychologically disastrous swap with Hezbollah, which not only includes the release of unrepentant mass murderer Samir Kuntar, but also several Palestinian prisoners and the bodies of several Palestinian terrorist heros including ‘Bus of Blood’ perpetrator Dalal Mughrabi. In return, Israel will get the bodies of the kidnapped soldiers, thus ensuring further kidnappings, and guaranteeing that hostages need not be kept alive to be good bargaining chips.

Israel’s Winograd commission apportioned blame for the massive failures of the war in various places. Dan Halutz, the IDF Chief of Staff and Amir Peretz, the Minister of Defense, were forced to resign as a result. But Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, has managed to hang onto power despite his failure in the war, despite a continuous series of bad and worse decisions, despite being universally despised by Israelis and despite being accused of all manner of deceit, corruption and malfeasance.

Now that Hezbollah has been fully rearmed, now that the situation in the South can only get worse as Hamas takes advantage of the truce to prepare for even more violent conflict, and now that the Iranian nuclear program is about to reach the point of no return, now is the time for Olmert to be replaced.

Please, do it now, before he has the opportunity to make any more critical decisions for the State of Israel.

Ehud Olmert, courtesy of Israel Matzav

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