Israel Matzav

Samir al-Kuntar flees from honor

I am sure that many of you remember Samir al-Kuntar, the Lebanese-'Palestinian' hero who in 1978 murdered a 4-year old girl by smashing her head against rocks on a Nahariya beach. Kuntar was released four years ago in exchange for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, in one of the stupidest 'prisoner exchanges' Israel has ever made.

Last week, Kuntar was in Tunisia to be honored by the beneficiaries of the 'Arab spring.' But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. A group of Salafis came to protest Kuntar's appearance because of his support for Syria's Bashar al-Assad, and the murderer of a 4-year old was a little less gutsy when the opponents were his own size. He fled.

The Tunisian website Tunisie Numerique reported that a Salafi mob stormed last week’s ceremony, accusing Kuntar of a pro-Shi’ite position favoring the Assad regime and its slaughter of more than 20,000 Syrians. Kuntar, 50, escaped the meeting hall through a back exit and several people were hospitalized.

In an email to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, wrote, “This is yet another illustration of the false religion in the West that simplistically blames the violence and threats in the Middle East on the myths of Palestinian victimization. Samir Kunter is one of the worst symbols of brutality and terror targeting Israel, but the hatred unleashed by the radical Sunni-Shia conflict is far stronger.”

Steinberg, heads NGO Monitor in Jerusalem, added, “Indeed, as this incident shows, the internal Islamic religious wars merely use the Arab- Israeli conflict as another battleground.”

American Mideast experts and bloggers quickly picked up on the Sunni-Shia violence surrounding Kuntar’s visit to the northern Tunisian city.

In his blog Pressure Points, Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted, “There is so much dishonor to go around here that there is no point attempting to distribute it fairly; the conduct of every single party is shameful.

But it would be nice to hear a word from the ruling party in Tunisia, the Ennadha Party, or from its newly elected government, about the idea that the murderer of children is a fit guest of honor in the new, democratic, humanistic Tunisia.”

Read the whole thing. It's long past time for Kuntar to get his virgins.

Labels: Islamic terrorism, Samir al-Kuntar, Tunisia

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:25 AM