Archives for July 2006

It is not easy to watch the events in Israel unfold from a distance. It may seem strange or sound silly to some people, but I find it very troubling. There are friends and family to be worried about and all of the other usual concerns.

So I go through my little checklist of things that I do to make myself feel better and find that they ring a little hollow. Sure I have my own troubles and challenges but I am not worried about bombs or missiles being dropped on my head.

And it all comes back to a desire to get on a plane and go to help. You know this is one of those times in which reality really smacks you in the face. There is so much more to say and suddenly the words just won’t roll off the keyboard.

Let me try and sum it up here. I truly don’t wish ill on the innocent and I feel badly for those who are going to pay a terrible price for things someone else did, but I don’t see too many options.

Nasrallah and company need to be eliminated and their names erased from memory. G-d speed to our soldiers and those that protect our safety.

I have a problem with Hezbollah but then again I have a problem with any person or group that thinks that it is ok to murder with impunity. Hezbollah used to say that if Israel left Lebanon they would stop attacking Israel.

Well Israel did just that. Six years ago they conducted a complete withdrawal, at least the UN and much of the world approved it. Hezbollah did not because they needed an excuse to keep fighting and now they have attacked Israel yet again.

Hezbollah claims that they kidnapped the soldiers as a way to force a prisoner exchange.

“Immediately after the Hezbollah attack, the organization’s Al-Manar television station began broadcasting clips calling on Israel to release Lebanese prisoners held in Israel in return for the soldiers.

The group in particular emphasized the release of Lebanese militant Samir Kuntar, jailed in Israel since a 1979 attack in the northern town of Nahariyah, in which he entered an apartment and murdered three family members and an Israeli police officer.

Al-Manar also broadcast video clips of previous Palestinian and Lebanese attacks on IDF troops.

“Fulfilling its pledge to liberate the [Arab] prisoners and detainees, the Islamic Resistance… captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine,” the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah said in a statement.”

Let me provide you with more background on the terrorist Samir Kuntar:

“Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas’s terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar‘s name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty, crueler even than the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was shot on the Achille Lauro and dumped overboard in his wheelchair. Kuntar‘s mission against my family, which never made world headlines, was also masterminded by Abu Abbas. And my wish now is that this terrorist leader should be prosecuted in the United States, so that the world may know of all his terrorist acts, not the least of which is what he did to my family on April 22, 1979.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. 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.

It is hard to read this without choking up and harder yet not to be angry. Hezbollah has crossed too many red lines. It is time for them to pay for these actions and it is time for their supporters to receive the bill that is due for carrying their debt.