From The Boston Globe, Editorial 18/7/08:
A strange kind of hero
...there is something morally repulsive in the hero's welcome given .... Samir Kuntar ...[who] executed a father, Danny Haran, in front of his 4-year-old daughter. Then he killed the little girl by smashing her head against a rock with a rifle butt.
This is the creature Nasrallah hailed as a resistance hero, the figure Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called a "huge hero who sacrificed 30 years of his life for the Palestinian issue," the celebrity that Lebanon's president and prime minister saluted as a liberated freedom fighter.
All wars are inhumane. But not all warriors lose their humanity.
From the New York Daily News Editorial, 16/7/08:
A deal with the devils
The injustice was too painful to contemplate. There he was, a terrorist guilty of inhumanity in the extreme, walking free to the cheers of comrades in arms. And there they were, two black coffins bearing the remains of Israeli soldiers, held by Hezbollah for just this purpose.
To be swapped, the blameless dead for the guilty living.
To be traded as chits in conscienceless extortion.
To be used in vile celebration of murder.
Wednesday's exchange between Israel and Hezbollah could not have been more searing.
...It was only when the families of Goldwasser and Regev saw the delivery of the two coffins that they knew for sure that their sons and brothers were dead, killed under still unexplained circumstances.
The tears were heartbreaking, and Haran's widow was noble beyond comprehension in giving her blessing to the exchange with the hope it would serve a greater good.
Meanwhile, Kuntar and the others were feted as heroes in Lebanon, where President Michel Suleiman offered congratulations to Hezbollah. The spectacle was revolting.
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