Family Security Matters » Publications » Exclusive: Emboldening Terrorists: 'Moderates' Kowtow to Hezbollah

Make no mistake about it: the recent prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah is a victory for Iran and its allies. The crux of the deal is this: Hezbollah gained the release of five imprisoned Lebanese terrorists in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah in a July 12, 2006, cross-border raid that triggered the 2006 war with the Jewish State. The most immediate impact will be to embolden another Iranian-backed terror group: Hamas, which says it will drive a harder bargain for the return of Israel Defense Force Corporal Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas in a June 25, 2006, cross-border raid into southern Israel. As a Hamas source told the Israeli Ynet.com news service: "The deal proves that patience and fortitude will lead to us seeing celebrations here [in Gaza] similar to those in Lebanon."

The prisoner exchange occurred two weeks before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcement that he will not be a candidate for re-election, and it is another reminder of his regrettable geopolitical legacy: Olmert's failure to defeat Hezbollah in the Lebanon war two years ago has helped create an emboldened, more dangerous terrorist group. Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak told Vice President Cheney last Monday that the number of missiles in Hezbollah's possession has doubled or tripled since the war two years ago, and their range has been extended significantly. Barak acknowledged the obvious: that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 - the ceasefire resolution which followed the 2006 fighting - did not work. The unavoidable conclusion: Under Olmert's leadership, Israel failed in Lebanon, and last month's prisoner exchange was just the latest chapter of failure there. The highlight of the Israel-Hezbollah exchange was the release of Lebanese Samir Kuntar - who carried out one of the most barbaric terrorist attacks in the history of the Arab-israeli conflict. Kuntar was part of a terror squad which infiltrated the northern Israeli town of Nahariya on April 22, 1979. The terrorists shot and killed a policeman, then broke into an apartment and dragged Danny Haran, a young father, and his 4-year-old daughter onto the beach. Kuntar shot Haran to death in front of the child before smashing her skull with his rifle, killing her as well. The child's mother, who had been hiding in closet during the terrorists' rampage, accidentally smothered her infant to death in an attempt to keep him quiet.

Within Israel, there was deep division over whether to release Kuntar (less so for the other four Lebanese who were members of Hezbollah captured during the 2006 war with Israel.) Since the founding of the state nearly six decades ago, Israel has a tradition of going to extraordinary lengths to secure the return of its soldiers, dead or alive.

The problem is that these prisoner exchanges come with a terrible cost - the release of terrorists who return to the battlefield to kill more Israelis. According to the Almagor Terror Victims Association, a private Israeli group that lobbies on behalf of terror victims, at least 854 of the 6,912 Palestinian terrorists released in confidence-building measures between 1993 and 1999 were subsequently arrested for acts of murder and terrorism. Since the year 2000, 180 Israelis have been murdered and hundreds more injured by terrorists released from Israeli jails. Almagor provides a number of examples, including Abbas ibn Muhammad Alsayd, who after being released from prison in 1996 was involved in perpetrating a series of attacks in which 30 people were murdered and 155 wounded. Another terrorist beneficiary of Israel's generosity was Ramez Sali Abu Salmim, who blew himself up on Sept. 9, 2003, at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem, just seven months after his release. Seven people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the attack. (For a detailed analysis of this problem, see also "Hizbullah's triumph: The long- term implications of Prisoner Exchanges," by Justus Reid Weiner and Diane Morrison," published July 15, 2008 by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.)

There was no such debate in Lebanon, where Kuntar was welcomed as a conquering hero - with euphoria reminiscent of celebrations that marked the end of World War II in the United States. Kuntar was driven by motorcade to his hometown. He was photographed in Hezbollah military garb and vowed to wage war in the tradition of Imad Mugniyeh, the Hezbollah master terrorist assassinated in Damascus earlier this year, whose "credits" included the deadly 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in which 241 Americans were killed. But the barbarism of his crime did not keep prominent Lebanese politicians, among them "moderates" like Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, President Michel Suleiman, and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, from proclaiming Kuntar a hero and welcoming him back to Lebanon. "I would like to thank all those who contributed to the release and congratulate the resistance [Hezbollah] for this achievement," Suleiman said at an official ceremony welcoming Kuntar home. "To Samir Kuntar and his friends, I say that it's their right to be proud of their people, their country and their resistance. Your return is a new victory."

Ironically, until he was released by Israel, Kuntar was not a member of Hezbollah. While Hezbollah consists almost entirely of Lebanese Shi'ite Muslims, Kuntar is a member of Lebanon's Druze minority, and Hezbollah did not even exist when he murdered the four Israelis in 1979. So, why did so many Lebanese join hard-core Hezbollah supporters in pouring into the streets to welcome home a terrorist who murdered a child by smashing her head against a rock? Part of the reason was simply fear - of Hezbollah. In May, that organization staged a de facto coup that made it the uncontested dominant power in Lebanon. When the Lebanese Cabinet went on record against a secret telecommunications network that Hezbollah was using to spy on its fellow Lebanese and fired a Hezbollah ally who was running the main Beirut airport, Hezbollah launched a mini-blitzkrieg. It took over government buildings and launched military strikes with guns and rockets that destroyed Sunni Muslim militias that tried to defend the government - a raw, brutal display of Hezbollah's military supremacy inside Lebanon.

Within days, the Beirut government capitulated, rescinding the denunciation of Hezbollah's espionage network and reinstating its ally at the airport. The Lebanese crowds demonstrating their reverence for Hezbollah and its new hero, Kuntar, have embraced the terror and savagery represented by Hezbollah and Kuntar - a fact that should be kept in mind with regard to all of the nice-sounding talk about "resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict" that Americans are treated to by media elites and the State Department.

Moreover, Palestinian reaction to Kuntar's release raises serious questions about the substance of efforts by Olmert and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to achieve a peace agreement with "moderate" Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah organization. Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli organization that monitors the Arab press, reported that Palestinian Authority television and newspapers controlled by Abbas ran hours of broadcasting honoring Kuntar and praising Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who died in a 1978 bus hijacking that was the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history. Thirty-seven vacationers, among them 12 children, died in the attack. Her body was released to Lebanon as part of the Kuntar prisoner exchange. PA television, for example, said that Abbas "congratulated [sic] yesterday's exchange of prisoner[s] and bodies of Martyrs. The president sent blessings to Samir Kuntar's family." Fatah spokesman Ahmad Abdel Rahman declared that Fatah "sends warm blessings to Hezbollah" for "their historic victory" over Israel in the 2006 war. The Palestine Liberation Organization ambassador to Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, led a delegation to visit Kuntar in his home village. In an e-mail to WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein, Zaki repeated his in-person statements to Kuntar, which included the following: "I am proud that this delegation has you in our minds and hearts....You went to Palestine as a hero, and when you left you were a proud man." Zaki called for "victory" in the "struggle to liberate all of Palestine," and said: "If the Palestinians knew how to fight and negotiate like Hezbollah, Israel would have been in huge trouble."

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Exclusive: Emboldening Terrorists: 'Moderates' Kowtow to Hezbollah