5768.10. 22 22 Tamux cont,
Friday July 25th 2008
6. The death penalty for terrorists like Samir Kuntar.
7. Sami Al-Quntar - I Will Kill More Israelis
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6. The death penalty for terrorists
Jul. 21, 2008
Shmuley Boteach , THE JERUSALEM POST
The sickening specter of a monster like Samir Kuntar being welcomed
home in Lebanon as a conquering hero should turn the stomachs of all
who repose faith in humanity. Even for a generation neutered to
horror stories, his crimes stand out. In April, 1979, after killing a
police officer and then shooting Danny Haran at close range in the
back in front of his four-year-old-daughter Einat, Kuntar proceeded
to smash the head of the little girl on beach rocks and then crushed
her skull with the butt of his rifle. The coup-de-grace was when, in
an attempt to hide her surviving child Yael from Kuntar, Smadar Haran
accidentally suffocated her while attempting to quiet her whimpering
so as not to reveal their hiding place.
I still remember, as a boy, encountering the rabbinical teaching that
humiliating someone in public is worse than actually killing them.
What? Worse than murder? Years later, it made sense to me. When you
embarrass someone, you make them wish they were dead. You have, in
effect, made them into their own murderer. This is the legacy of
Kuntar. True evil corrupts all around it and is capable of
transforming even the most loving mother into an accomplice to
murder. One can only imagine the anguish that Smadar Haran, who has
since thankfully remarried, feels as she watches Israel's northern
neighbor roll out the red carpet for the heartless killer who
exterminated her family.
But the bizarre story of the release of Kuntar does not end there and
includes the fact that while a prisoner in jail he married an Israeli
Arab woman who campaigned on his behalf. Although he later divorced
her, she was paid a monthly stipend by the government for being the
wife of an incarcerated prisoner.
All this would be comical if it were not so tragic.
IT IS time that we articulate what few wish to, namely, that Israel
must finally institute a death penalty for convicted terrorists.
To be sure, human life is of infinite value and every human being is
equally a child of God. No country upholds this statute more than
Israel, which is why it is prepared to set killers free just to
retrieve the bodies of its fallen soldiers. Israel could have
defeated Hizbullah and Hamas with ease had it not always limited its
overwhelming firepower to protect innocent civilians. A country this
virtuous naturally balks from putting anyone, even terrorists, to
death.
But there exist those fiends whose crimes are so heinous that they
have erased the image of God from their countenance and have
forfeited any reasonable right to walk God's earth. Worse, keeping
terrorists alive in prison just invites further kidnappings of
innocent civilians and soldiers who are hunted down by Hamas and
Hizbullah to exchange for their terrorist brothers.
Here in the United States there is an impassioned and legitimate
debate as to the humanity and righteousness of the death penalty.
Those who argue against it maintain that mistakes are made and
innocent people are meted out the most severe and irreversible
punishment imaginable. They, of course, have a point. A moral society
shudders before it takes life and only does so when there is an
essential certainty that the defendant in question is guilty of
unspeakable crimes. Indeed, no major legal work has ever been harsher
on the death penalty than the Talmud which states: "A Sanhedrin which
kills once in seven years is considered murderous. Rabbi Elazar ben
Azariah said: Once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon
said: If we had been in the Sanhedrin, no one would have ever been
killed..." (Mishna Makot 1:10).
BUT SURELy these humanitarian considerations do not, cannot, apply to
terrorists like Kuntar who infiltrate a country looking to dash
children's brains against rocks. And keeping them alive once they are
caught simply draws a bull's-eye on countless other innocent
civilians who become magnets for trade. This, of course, is exactly
what occurred with Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. Indeed, keeping
terrorist mass-murderers alive in prison bespeaks a contempt for
life, demonstrating as it does that civil societies lack the moral
courage to draw a line and declare that the lives of mass murderers,
after a fair and impartial trial, will always be forfeit.
Few Americans flinched when Timothy McVeigh was executed in June 2001
for having murdered 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing six years
earlier. Israel itself put Adolf Eichmann to death in May 1962 for
being one of the supreme architects of the Holocaust. The allied
nations of the world came together to conduct the Nuremberg Trials of
major Nazi war criminals, hanging 10 of the convicted on October 16,
1946. Their purpose was to broadcast to all humanity the fate of
anyone who would ever attempt such crimes again.
As for those who argue that if Israel puts its terrorist captives to
death the same will be done to its soldiers once captured, I ask,
does anyone seriously believe that it would be otherwise? We once
believed that Goldwasser and Regev might likewise come home alive,
and for two years Hizbullah manipulated the emotions of the country
to believe just that. But like so many other Israeli prisoners before
them, they ultimately came home in a box.
I am not suggesting that Israel take unilateral action and simply
hang captured terrorists. They should be given a fair trial, just
like Kuntar, in which he was found guilty and sentenced to more than
500 years in prison. But once found guilty and allowed an appeal, if
their conviction is upheld, they must be executed.
There are times when a country must temporarily violate a principle
to ensure it is upheld. Police cars speed to catch those who
themselves speed on highways, thereby endangering other motorists.
Surgeons cut open people's chests with knives to save their blocked
arteries and stopped hearts. And just governments must sometimes take
the lives of unrepentant terrorist mass-murderers to protect and
uphold the infinite value of human life.
The writer is the international best-selling author of 20 books, most
recently The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331047048&pagename=JPos
t%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
7. Sami Al-Quntar - I Will Kill More Israelis
Special Dispatch | No. 1999 | July 23, 2008
Lebanon/ Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project
Released Lebanese Terrorist Samir Al-Quntar Vows to Fight Under Hizbullah:
Allah Willing, I Will Kill More Israelis
Following are excerpts from TV programs with released Lebanese terrorist
Samir Al-Quntar, which aired on various TV channels in July 2008.
To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1819.htm.
Al-Manar TV, July 16, 2008
Samir Al-Quntar: "The weapon of a position that has been turned into a
culture builds the homeland of the resistance. It has become the culture of
the generations that will realize the dream of annihilating that plundering
entity. Allow me to commemorate a great legendary commander, the martyred
hero and mujahid 'Imad Mughniya. I would like to say just one thing: Hajj
'Imad, we will only be worthy of the blood you sacrificed when we force this
enemy to long for your times." [...]
Al-Manar TV, July 17, 2008
"At this time yesterday, I was in the hands of the enemies. This time
yesterday, I was still in their hands. But right now, there is nothing I'd
like more than to face them again. I ask Allah to make this happen very
soon. Whoever thinks that the liberation of the Shaba' Farms of the Lebanese
lands can bring an end to this conflict is deluded. Take my word for it.
Even if we let them be, they will not let us be." [...]
Al-Jadid TV, July 18, 2008
Samir Al-Quntar: "There is a disease in this region called 'the state of
Israel,' which we refer to as 'the plundering entity.' If we do not put an
end to this disease, it will follow us, even if we flee to the end of the
world. So it's better to get rid of it." [...]
Al-Manar TV, July 17, 2008
Samir Al-Quntar: "If we consider the history of the conflict... When you
read books written by the Zionists about the wars of 1967, 1948, and 1973,
you feel that no value was attributed to the lives of the Arabs. Arab
soldiers would fall, others would go missing in action... There was a kind
of disdain for their lives. This was evident in the lack of seriousness in
dealing with cases of Egyptians, Lebanese, and others who went missing in
action in the conflict with the plundering entity.
"Hizbullah, however, has been searching for missing people - martyred or
alive. They had no reason to carry out a capturing operation for my sake
other than their belief in the value of human life. I remember that
Secretary-General [Nasrallah] once said: 'If Samir Al-Quntar is in prison,
it means Lebanon in its entirety is in prison.' This reflects the value of
human life...
"Today, everybody talks about human rights, democracy, and modern
development... Human rights begin here - in caring for the individual in
society. The individual is everything. To be honest, we used to envy our
enemy - how it would go to the end of the world in order to retrieve a body,
and how it was ready to go all the way to free one of its captured soldiers.
Today, Allah be praised, we have the resistance, which retrieves the bodies
of the martyrs, and every single prisoner. It does not leave prisoners in
jail or bodies in the hands of the enemies." [...]
Al-Jadid TV, July 21, 2008
Sheikh 'Atallah Hamoud, head of the Lebanese Society for Prisoners and
Released Prisoners: "This is a gift from the Islamic resistance to the
liberated hero, Lt.-Col. Samir Al-Quntar. Mujahideen like Samir Al-Quntar
and his brothers do not care about themselves, because they have dedicated
themselves to the resistance, the cause, and the homeland."
Narrator: "The special gift from the resistance merged with the words of
Al-Quntar, who vowed that his gun would play a role in avenging the blood of
the martyrs."
Samir Al-Quntar: "This is the most beautiful gift, except for freedom
itself. I'd like to salute the Islamic resistance and Secretary-General
Nasrallah for their trust. First, this is the Islamic resistance's way of
reaffirming their faith in me as a fighter. Second, this gun will play a
role, Allah willing, in avenging the blood of 'Imad Mughaniya." [...]
Future TV, July 22, 2008
Samir Al-Quntar: "If you are asking whether I killed Israelis - I did, Allah
be praised."
Interviewer: "Including children?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "No. I am proud of this, and Allah willing, I will get the
chance to kill more Israelis. As for the children, that's another story. A
girl was killed during the operation, in the crossfire. In all the
operations that involved capturing Israeli hostages, the hostages were
killed by the bullets of the Israeli forces. In the operation of Dalal
Al-Maghrabi, the [Israelis] fired like crazy on the bus, and killed a large
number of Jewish hostages. In the Ma'alot operation, hostages were taken at
a high school. [The Israelis] used anti-tank missiles to storm the school,
killing many. The same thing happened in my operation. When we fired at
them, in response to their fire, they began shooting in our direction like
crazy. They are the ones who killed the hostages."
[...]
Interviewer: "What did you study [while in prison]?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "Social studies and humanities."
Interviewer: "Did you complete your master's degree?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "No. I tried and took six courses, but they stopped it,
saying it was forbidden. Other brothers completed their master's degree, but
they prevented me personally from doing so, for reasons unknown to me."
Interviewer: "Are you considering completing your master's?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "No. Allah willing, I will do a different one."
Interviewer: "In what?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "A master's degree in resistance."
Interviewer: "What form will it take?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "Military..."
Interviewer: "So Samir Al-Quntar is declaring tonight that..."
Samir Al-Quntar: "I've already declared this."
Interviewer: "You declared that you would be a member of the resistance, but
today you are declaring that you will be a resistance fighter, and that you
will carry out military missions for the resistance."
Samir Al-Quntar: "Without the slightest doubt."
Interviewer: "The Islamic resistance?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "Yes."
Interviewer: "Is that a done deal?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I say it three
times."[...]
Al-Jazeera TV, July 19, 2008
Samir Al-Quntar: "At 02:00, they asked us to prepare for departure. When we
left, the Israeli media filled the corridor, taking pictures of us. They
wanted us to wear clothes that they brought over. These clothes were so
ridiculous that anybody seeing us wearing them would burst into laughter, no
matter what."
Interviewer: "What kind of clothes?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "Long underwear..."
Interviewer: "Do you mean pajamas?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "If only they were pajamas... I asked the brothers to wait.
I called the man in charge over and said to him: We will not go out in these
clothes. I gave them back to him. He said it was not his decision, and I
said: So call off the deal. I said: Call off the deal. We are returning to
our cells. He said to me: You've waited 30 years, and now you want to call
off the deal over this? I said to him: Yes. They started making calls, and
then the warden came. I said to him: I want you to call off the deal
immediately. We are returning to our cells. He had told me there was a
decision that we must wear these clothes. I told him that we have maintained
our honor for 30 years, and we refuse to be humiliated in the last half
hour. When they realized we were serious about this, they started making
calls, and eventually, they backed down. Then we left in a long convoy..."
Interviewer: "So you defeated them even at the last minute."
Samir Al-Quntar: "Yes."
[...]
Interviewer: "To the best of your knowledge, who made the decision to
assassinate you?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "The decision was made by a senior officer, who was the
head of the research division of military intelligence. His name is Amos
Gilad. Today he is a very influential advisor, and his decisions are passed
easily in the Defense Ministry - the Zionist Ministry of War. He made the
decision, and I think it has political backing. As for me, I vow to make
them pay the price for my martyrdom in advance."
[...]
Interviewer: "Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with
you. You deserve even more than this. I think that 11,000 prisoners - if
they can see this program now - are celebrating your birthday with you.
Happy birthday, brother Samir."
Samir Al-Quntar: "Thank you."
Interviewer: "Go ahead... There is a picture here... If the camera can show
this... Let's cut it... Does the camera show this clearly or not? We have a
picture here... This is the sword of the Arabs, Samir. Don't cut the
picture, cut on the side."
Samir Al-Quntar: "Here's Abu Qassam [Marwan Barghouti]."
Interviewer: "Marwan is here."
Samir Al-Quntar: "Abu Qassam is here with Ahmad Sa'dat. That's our prison
warden..."
Interviewer: "This one?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "Yes."
Interviewer: "What is the warden's name?"
Samir Al-Quntar: "His name is... Never mind."
Interviewer: "This is when you were released. Here you are with Wafiq Safa."
Samir Al-Quntar: "Yes, this is Wafiq Safa. This is the most beautiful
picture - with Hassan Nasrallah. This is the most beautiful picture. There
cannot be anything more beautiful. Me and the secretary-general - the most
beautiful picture of me ever taken."
For assistance, please contact MEMRI at memri@memri.org.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent,
non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle
East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background
information, are available on request.
MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with
proper attribution.
MEMRI
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