And then a hero comes along

Assad awards convicted murderer, terrorist Syria's highest medal
Nov. 25, 2008

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday awarded Samir Kuntar the country's highest medal for spending nearly three decades in an Israeli jail.

Kuntar has the dubious distinction of being the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel. He was imprisoned in 1979 after he was convicted of an atrocious attack - killing a man in front of his 4-year-old daughter, and then killing the girl, crushing her skull with his rifle butt.

Here is the story of Kuntar's in Smadar Haran's own agonizing words (full article here):

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.

Kuntar and four Hizballah terrorists were freed in July in exchange for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasswer and Eldad Regev, two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizballah in 2006. Fair exchange, hey?

Kuntar praised Syria saying that "when I was arrested 30 years ago, she was firmly struggling against Israel and, when I visit today, she still is."

"Soon Assad will fly the Syrian flag over the Golan Heights," he declared.

And Israel is seriously talking "peace" with Syria??