Israeli media these days is filled with stories about the prisoner swap and in almost every one of these stories there is someone calling the Lebanese people disgusting or pathetic or monstrous because they are celebrating the return of a brutal child-killer who bashed the head of a 4-year-old with the butt of his rifle. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself said, “I pity the people who are celebrating at this time the release of an animal who crushed the skull of a little girl of four.” And I agree… Anyone who celebrates such a brutal man would likely be disgusting, pathetic or monstrous.For this argument to work, however, two conditions need to be met: (1) the Lebanese people should be aware of the details of the 1979 Naharia attack and (2) they should believe it. And here’s the catch: they don’t.
I don’t have any kind of statistics on the matter, so I might not be able to convince you, but believe me when I say that a lot (if not most) Lebanese have never heard the four-year-old child head-bashing story. I know this because, among the people I know (who are educated middle-class people with multiple university degrees, who live outside Lebanon), many were surprised to hear the story. I myself had not heard that story until after the July 2006 war when my sister (who was living in the US at that time) mentioned it to me to argue against the capture of the two Israeli soldiers.
For those who have heard that version of the story, many of them do not believe it. And why should they? It is important to note that Kuntar himself maintains a different story. His version, as told by his brother, claims that he was on a mission to capture Dan Harran, a nuclear scientist, and other hostages if possible, in order to exchange them in a prisoner swap. The operation went wrong and the policeman was killed in the ensuing gun battle and Harran and his daughter were killed in the crossfire. After his release he also described in more detail the events of that story, claiming he wouldn't have even kidnapped Haran's daughter if the latter hadn't insisted she stays with him. But regardless of which version of the story is true, it is easy to assume that on the Lebanese side, most people are going to believe Kuntar’s story.
The bottom line is that when passing moral judgment, we must look at how people behave given their own beliefs, not someone else’s. The Lebanese people aren’t a bunch of disgusting pathetic monsters. They believe they are celebrating the return of one of them who has spent 29 years in jail after being captured while on a mission to serve his cause. What the Israelis think of that person and what they believe he did is irrelevant.
Photo by Getty Images/AFP
