I have been watching al jazeera lately and kept seeing this guy in Palestine that apparently just got released and didnt think anything of it. Hes been on Tv every single day . What I didnt know is what he did apparently before Hezbollah.
He apparently bashed the head of a 4 year old in with a rifle but and shot her Israeli father and was responsible for the the suffocation death of her 2 year old sister. Hardly some kind of hero in the liberation struggle. Why he is being held up as some kind of hero all over Al Jazeera is beyond me> I certainly think he is a dirtbag...

The article

Kantar, who has earned the title of longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel, was only 17 when he and three other members of the Palestine Liberation Front infiltrated Nahariya by sea from Lebanon.

Danny's wife, Smadar, recounted the fear and horror in a Washington Post article in May 2003.

"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," Smadar wrote about the militants who raided her home.

Smadar hid on the top floor of the house with the couple's younger daughter, Yael, aged two. Desperate that the toddler's cries would give them up, Smadar smothered Yael with her own hands.

"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." But instead the toddler choked to death.

Israeli soldiers and police chased the militants as they fled with Danny and Einat to the beach where "one of them (militants) 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 Kantar," Smadar said.

Two militants were killed in a shoot-out with the Israeli forces, while Kantar -- shot and wounded five times -- was arrested along with the fourth member of the commando Ahmad Abras.

Kantar and Abras were sentenced each to 542 years for murder.

Abras was set free in 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah has repeatedly demanded the release of Kantar, a Druze who was captured three years before the militant group was founded in 1982.

Israel said on Sunday it will release five Lebanese prisoners on Wednesday, including Kantar, in exchange for two soldiers captured by Hezbollah two years ago.

An Internet website devoted to campaigning for his release said that Kantar earned a degree in sociology from a Tel Aviv college in 1992.

"The courses were sent to him and he sent his home-works, or 'cell-works' back to the college," it said.

"There isn't a prison in Israel that Samir Kantar has not visited yet and been submitted to its means of torture," the website said, adding that despite 28 years in detention his militant views have not changed.

"To him, the detention center was just another place for battle."

Kantar's fate has often been linked to that of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad, whose warplane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 during the country's civil war.

Israeli authorities have said information on Arad's fate was a precondition for a swap with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has handed Israel a report it had drafted on the fate of Arad, in which it said the airman had died in captivity. However, Israel remains sceptical over the validity of its findings.

What a chopf#ck

I feel very stupid because I can't follow that article to figure out who did what.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Here is another profile from the prespective of the Gulf news http://www.gulfnews.com/Region/Middle_East/10229078.html

Funny how none of the articles mention him bashing in the head of a 4 year old with a rifle but and her poor mother witnessing it and having to smother the 2 year old to keep him from coming back for her. I am so sorry but this guy is a dirtbag who went to prison for attacking an innocent family during a night time raid. These people were not soldiers. Killing her dad is one thing. Bashing a little childs head in with the back of a gun until it cracked is another. Hes a killer and he would have never made it out of an American jail. Period

they called it OPERATION NASSER... What it really was was some guys in boats, sailing from Lebanon to Nahiriya Israel. When they arrived , they went to a familys house close to the beach and killed the father, beat the baby to death and left to wreak more havoc. I am sorry. He was caught right after. This hardly qualifies as heroic. Notice the articles says NOTHING about who he killed or what he did on this so called mission

JERUSALEM (AP) - The man at the center of Israel's prisoner swap with Hezbollah on Wednesday is an unrepentant Lebanese gunman who has spent three decades in prison for one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history.
Samir Kantar was one of four militants who made their way in a rubber dinghy from Lebanon to
Israel's northern shore around midnight on April 22, 1979. In a hail of gunfire and exploding grenades, they charged into an apartment building in the coastal city of Nahariya, 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the Lebanese border, where the Haran family lived.
Smadar Haran sought refuge with her 2-year-old daughter, Yael, and a neighbor in a crawl space. Her 28-year-old husband, Danny, grabbed their 4-year-old daughter Einat, hoping to dash outside to an underground bomb shelter, when the attackers burst into their apartment.
Father and daughter were herded down to the beach, where their assailants hoped to pack them into the rubber boat and take them as hostages to Lebanon, according to a recently declassified transcript of Kantar's trial, published this week by Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper. But the dinghy had been punctured by gunfire, and the would-be hostages were killed instead.
The Israeli court found that Kantar shot Danny Haran in front of his child, then killed her by hitting her head with his rifle butt. Kantar, who was 16 at the time, has consistently denied killing the child or smashing her skull.
An Israeli policeman also died in the attack. So, too, did Yael. To keep her from crying out and revealing their hiding place, Smadar had kept her hand over her daughter's mouth _ accidentally smothering her.
Police killed two of the attackers and captured the other two. Kantar, a Lebanese recruited by a militant Palestinian faction, was sentenced by an Israeli court to life in prison.
Israel was preparing to set Kantar free Wednesday as part of prisoner swap with Hezbollah that involves the return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for Kantar and three other militants. Israel will also hand over the bodies of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters killed in fighting with the Jewish state.
Abu Abbas, the Palestinian militant who masterminded the 1979 raid, said it was carried out to protest Israel's peace agreement with Egypt a year earlier. It was codenamed Operation Nasser, after the late Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser, a champion of Arab unity.
Over the years, Kantar has expressed no remorse for his actions, confidants say.
«If I were to spend another 20 years in prison, I will not write an apology letter for the Nasser operation, since the struggle continues,» his brother quoted him as saying.
After suspected Lebanese terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Syria in February, Kantar wrote a letter to Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group, vowing that «my place will be at the battlefront,» his brother Bassam said.
A neighbor of the Harans, Moshe Sasson, 62, is still living the trauma of Kantar's attack.
Sasson said he awoke to the sounds of gunshots, grabbed his two young daughters, and sprinted toward his apartment building's bomb shelter. While still running down the stairwell from his second-floor apartment, he said he found himself face to face with Kantar.
Kantar, he said, reached for the girls, shoved Sasson, made him kneel down and slammed a handgun into the back of his skull. Suddenly, the hall lights went out. In the dark, the girls ran away and Sasson scrambled for cover, he said, crawling through the underground bomb shelter as the sounds of gunfire and grenade explosions filled the building.
He hid under a parked car, where he watched Kantar drag Danny and Einat Haran toward the beach.
The judges who convicted Kantar in 1979 wrote in their verdict the 4-year-old suffered «skull fractures and fatal brain damage» when Kantar and another defendant struck her in the head.
«Kantar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her,» the judges wrote, according to the court transcript.
Israel's justice system has a reputation for independence.

I just read the wikipedia about him. If he did indeed do what your articles state he did then he's a piece of sh!t but this is Israel we're talking about. He was adamant that he did not kill the 4 yr old because after he killed the father he himself was shot and was bleeding too badly. Who's telling the truth? I don't know. War sucks.

I believe it but things like this were going on rampantly during this time . Believe it or not , the militants are ALOT NICER NOW THEN BACK THEN. I knew about this attack years ago. The only one worse was Ma alot. In these days there were frequent border crossings and killings. I just was pissed that they were gloryfying this MORON like he was some kind of hero that did all this stuff great. He was a total himar and a baby killer. He has no place on Al Jazeera

The Ma'alot massacre was an attack, carried out in Ma'alot, Israel by members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, that occurred on May 15, 1974, the 26th anniversary of Israeli independence. In this massacre members of the DFLP murdered 22 religious high school students from the city of Safed.
Other massacres in the 70s

The Avivim school bus massacre was a terrorist attack that took place in Israel on May 8, 1970 near Moshav Avivim on the border with Lebanon. Palestinian gunmen from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) attacked the town's school bus, killing twelve people, mostly children.

Early in the morning, the bus departed from Avivim heading with its passengers to two local schools, as it did every morning following the same route. This route had secretly been scouted by the Palestinians in the weeks leading up to the assault, and a careful ambush was prepared. As the bus passed the ambush point, just ten minutes after leaving Avivim, it was attacked by heavy automatic gunfire from both sides of the road. The driver was amongst those hit in the initial barrage, as were the two other adults on board, all three being killed as the bus crashed into an embankment, the gunmen still firing into the vehicle.

By the time rescue parties from Avivim arrived, the assailants were gone, and it also took some time for ambulances and military vehicles to arrive, allowing the attackers time to escape, unfortunately failing to arrive in time to save some of the wounded children who died at the scene. In all nine children (aged between six and nine) and three adults, all civilians, were killed in the attack. Nineteen other children were seriously wounded by the gunfire.

The attack is often mentioned alongside the 1974 Ma'alot massacre, also carried out by the DFLP, in which 26 civilians, most of them high school students, were murdered.

The gunmen were believed to be operating from southern Lebanon, and it was the increasing volume and violence of attacks such as this which prompted Operation Litani, the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon in 1978.

http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2008.html

Gives you a ton of perspective..

It still doesnt justify turning this donkey into some kind of freedom fighter or hero.... He shot a dad and beat a 4 year old to death.. So what.. Why does he deserve airtime on AL JAZ

Does this justify the guy that bashed a 4 year olds brains in?

He doesnt deserve to breathe, let alone have air time. Chopf##k !

Absolutely not. hanginginthere was citing examples of Palestinians killing children and I thought perhaps we should look at all of the innocent Palestinian children who are murdered each and every day. I'm a libra so I like things to be weighed properly.

And anyone who truly does bask a 4 yr old's brains in needs to be given the death penalty. Period. Do you really think if he DID do it that Israel would have let him go in this deal instead of someone else? They said no one with Israeli blood on their hands would be set free, right?

this kind of deal is hardly unprecedented in israel when the tables are turned. in 1990, israeli ami popper asked a bunch of guys waiting at a bus stop in rishon lezion for their id cards so he could be sure they were arabs. he then murdered 7 of them, shooting them right there at the bus stop. in 1999 he had the fabulous good luck to have his 7 life sentences commuted to just 40 years. he's supposed to be out on parole in 2023, which would make his actual time served only 33 years. for 7 murders.

"Nehemiah Mishbaum, who threw a grenade into an Arab butchers' market, killing one, will now walk free after 11 years." - Israeli killers' sentences reduced

the coverage and treatment of the release of kantar is hardly unique either. just google "asher weisgan" or "ami popper", etc. and you'll find plenty of demented fans of these israeli murderers, who openly support and applaud their atrocious acts. as well, Four Arab Israelis shot dead by a soldier opposed to the closure of the Gaza Strip settlements are not victims of "terror" because their killer was Jewish, Israel's defence ministry has ruled, and so their families are not entitled to the usual compensation for life. The ministry concluded that the law only recognises terrorism as committed by "organisations hostile to Israel"

nevermind.

I don't have sympathy for anyone who kills innocent people. There is no excuse for it and they deserve harsh punishment. That goes for both sides of that conflict.

Double

EXACTLY I dont understand this post from the beginning So a crazy man did a horrific thing JUst like the guy in the news last week in USA that shot his wife , killed his kids Or the one who did that last year and so on

Either way its horrible No excuse

If you want to debate Israel and Palestine lets have a thread for that it will go on and on and on But this has nothing to do with it