I am just back from Jerusalem where I went with my five year-old grandson and his father (who had two films at the city's film festival, one of which I will write about soon.) My hotel room had a serenely beautiful view of the Hinmon valley below and Mt. Zion across it. What the room did not have until the night before we left was reliable wireless service. So I thought I would give you all a vacation from my writing. I know this will please at least the clinical masochists who are usually in agony by my second sentence and writing a response by my third. Thus, I also get a vacation from them.
Arriving in New York, I picked up the Times and began to read it in the cab taking me to Manhattan. Two pieces caught my eye, one on the front page. The first one, "Prisoner Deal Opens an Israeli Wound," by Dina Kraft (who is covering the country while Ethan Bronner -- with whom I had a very friendly and less contentious dinner than I expected -- is on vacation) is a searing account of the murder by Samir Kuntar of a young father and two of his daughters, two and four, in Nahariya 29 years ago. Kuntar. Immediately after killing the father, Danny Haran, Kunter turned to the four year old and smashed her head against a rock. By the way, this terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was 16 years old when he committed his horrific deed, not the first and not the last evidence that the revolution enlists youngsters into its bloody ranks.
The family of Ehud Goldwasser also lives in Nahariya, like Haran's widow, the mother of two children. As you will recall, Goldwasser was one of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah just before the Lebanon war in 2006. He and his comrade, Eldad Regev, were returned to Israel this morning in coffins, although multiples negotiations had been going on for months and months through diplomatic channels and the freelance intrusion of stupid and malicious people like Jimmy Carter in the assumption that they were still alive. This lie is just another part of the routine of cruelty by which both Arab revolutions -- the national liberation one and the jihadist one -- operate.
The second story, "Hero's Welcome Expected in Lebanon for Captive of Israel," was by Craig S. Smith and datelined Beirut. At least Kuntar's mother "turns defensive when asked about the child. 'Certainly it bothers me,' she said in [an] 2006 interview. 'She wasn't guilty of anything.'"
The hero's welcome first welcome in Lebanon is described in an AP dispatch, and it was repulsive. Greeted by virtually all the top brass of the country (including the opposition), Kuntar has announced his intention to reenlist in the war against Israel.
Bradley Burston has a piece in today's Ha'aretz showing how intrinsic sadism is to the entire Palestinian story and to the story of their allies.
As I get back to the notes taken during my trip, I shall show why the peace effort is not founded in reality in that its partners are crazed fanatics, nothing less and maybe even more.