This morning's Guardian carries an interview with Samir Kuntar (Samir Qantar), abridged from the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. In presenting the piece the Guardian says that he is...
... reviled as a child-murdering monster in Israel...
Given these recent posts of mine, I won't need to tell you that it's a view I share. But there is, in any case, a telling remark from Kuntar himself that may help others to decide what kind of a man he is. From passages in the full Ma'ariv text (which I have seen), passages that are not in the abridged version, it is clear that killing civilians wasn't something that troubled him. He knew before embarking on the operation that led to the killing of Danny and Einat Haran that he and those he was with would be killing civilians; they saw every Israeli civilian as a 'soldier'. They admired those responsible for the attack on Ma'alot in 1974, when 21 Israeli children were killed. So much is, by now, merely par for the course. But Kuntar reveals a special sensibility in this passage, which does figure in the Guardian version:
Smadar [Einat's mother]... could not understand that it wasn't personal. I didn't come [from] Lebanon with a note that said 'Haran family.' I came as part of a conflict in which I was convinced I had to participate. I did what I did for my people, for my country. If I sit in jail for a hundred years, I will never change my opinions. This is what I believe.
(In the full version Kuntar adds, for good measure, that he didn't steal, or break into a car.) The mother of the dead child does not understand; she takes it personally. And Kuntar cannot understand that. He is unable to make the mental transition from 'Israeli civilians' to the mother of a particular child - as if the generality could exist as a target of attack without involving anything 'personal'. (See now also here.)