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Terrorism

'Don't free terrorist who destroyed my family'


By Stan Goodenough
June 27, 2008

A majority of ministers in the Olmert government support the release of Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar in exchange for the return of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizb'allah in 2006.

This is according to The Jerusalem Post, which Friday reported that 15 ministers had conveyed their intention to vote for Kuntar's freedom in the cabinet debate that is set for Sunday.

While Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had yet to indicate whether or not he will support the exchange, another 10 ministers are thought likely to vote in favor.

Before the vote is taken the Cabinet will reportedly be informed whether the IDF soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, or even still alive.

Kuntar's release is an extremely controversial and painful issue in Israel.

Among those who oppose it are Mossad chief Meir Dagan, and one of Kuntar's victims - Smadar Haran Kaiser.

On June 18 Kaiser, The Washington Post published an opinion article by Kaiser headlined "[The world should know what he did to my family](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A2740-2003May17 )."

"It had been a peaceful Sabbath day" when Kuntar unleashed hell on her world, Kaiser wrote, as she recounted what happened:

"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."

While she had never sought to take revenge for what happened to her family, Kaiser said, she was "determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison."

But the Goldwasser and Regev families want their sons back and they have lobbied their government to let Kuntar go free.

Education Minister Yuli Tamir said Thursday she believed Israel "must make every move to bring them [the soldiers] home."

While the price was "painful and intolerable ... it shouldn't be an obstacle," Minister-without-Portfolio Ruhama Avraham-Balila told the Post.

A senior MK in the opposition Likud Party, Yuval Steinitz, said that were he in the government he would oppose the deal.

"I think this deal is a disaster," he said when contacted by the Post, and it was particularly so because "we have strong evidence that [Goldwasser and Regev] are dead."

It was a mistake to "start any kind of negotiation before you get solid information about the fate [of the captives]."

If Israel "bargained for corpses" terrorists would have no reason to provide information about future captives or to keep them alive.

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