Every Israeli who knew the terrorist murderer Samir Kuntar said he was a real psychopath. The career of the Druze terrorist indicates an opportunistic personality that was seeking to kill. Kuntar earned his way on to the Palestinian Authority's wall of fame by murdering two police officers and two members of the Haran family in 1979. He smashed the skull of 4-year-old Einat Haran with the butt of his gun. Even recently Kuntar was busy planning and executing terrorist attacks against Israel, and after his death was awarded the Palestinian title of "shahid" -- just like the rest of the stabbers, car-rammers, shooters, and other terrorists Israel eliminates. Kuntar's first murders did not keep him awake at night. The opposite: Imprisoned in Israel, he grew fat and content and completed a university education. When he was released as part of an exchange deal with Hezbollah, he married a Shiite woman and left the Palestinian wife he had married before he was imprisoned. At the same time, he abandoned the Druze people, joined Hezbollah, and re-launched his terrorism career, which he finished by being buried as a Shiite Muslim. Kuntar was a hired sword who during his lifetime, and even more after his death, became a hero in the Palestinian pantheon. At the end of a tortuous path, during which he acted in the service of both Iran and Hezbollah on behalf of murderous Syrian President Bashar Assad, Kuntar was killed in an amazing military operation in the Jaramana quarter of Damascus. Hezbollah has accused Israel of his death. A long, brutal list It appears that from the time he enlisted in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at age 16, Kuntar's commanders saw him mainly as a beast of burden. Because of his limited achievements and problematic behavior, he had to kick his way up the ladder. He eventually "graduated" and joined the Iranians in an attempt to create another terrorist front against Israel on the Golan Heights. After his release from prison, Kuntar became a symbol. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah eulogized the "Lebanese Palestinian hero," as he called him, and added the crime of Kuntar's assassination to a long, vengeful list the organization is ticking off against Israel. Nasrallah promised retribution "at a time and place to be chosen." For anyone who was wondering, even without a list like that, Hezbollah would carry out terrorist attacks whenever it can. But it seems that now, because of its bloody entanglement in Syria, the group will prefer to execute them outside the Syrian and Lebanese arena. As a result of Kuntar being killed, the political wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (a rejectionist organization, mainly identified with the secular Left), put out a mourning notice in which it declared that his assassination was a crime against the members of the resistance. "The blood of the fallen is not spilled for nothing. The crime will add to the determination of the fighters and the enemy will pay the price of its crimes," the message read. According to the PFLP people, the enemy's desperate attempts to attack the camp of the uprising, while exploiting the circumstances of war and its support of terrorism in Syria, will not grant it the stability it wishes for. The notice makes it clear that the more Israeli hostility and arrogance increase, it will lead to an escalation of the struggle against the occupation, at any price. Waves of doubt After Kuntar's death, his Palestinian ex-wife provided an interesting characterization of his activity when she said that the terrorist "didn't fight against Israel, but against the Syrian and Palestinian people. "Indeed, it was no coincidence that the radical Sunni Islamic movements celebrated his death, as an enemy of the Syrians. But see the irony: It's the people of the Palestinian Authority who see this terrorist, who worked alongside Hezbollah, Iran, and Assad, as a role model for youth as a combatant and a martyr. It's not by chance that at the time Kuntar was killed, the Palestinian Authority is running a false public relations campaign saying that Israel executes innocent Palestinians in the streets. The old, idyllic script of prison -- including dental care, stipends for families, and eternal glory as a released prisoner -- has become complicated. The victims of terrorism, what audacity, kill the terrorists on their own terrorist ground. The editor-in-chief of the Maan Palestinian news agency, Dr. Nasser al-Laham, argues that killing Kuntar caused educated Palestinians to have doubts about Russia. Since the Russian plane was shot down by the Turks, he complains, Russia committed that the skies above Syria would be as clear as the skies over Moscow. So how did the Russians allow the Israelis to carry out a political murder in Damascus without retaliatory action by Syria, Russia, or other Arab entity? Al-Laham believes that Israel allows itself to do more in Arab Beirut than it does even in Palestinian Authority territory, but those who criticize its actions there do not ask how it can attack in Sudan, Lebanon, and Syria. He has a sense that Israel has thrown off all restraints on its "animalistic" behavior and allows itself to bomb and kill at will. According to al-Laham, these crimes are creating a generation of Arabs that for the next 30 years will want nothing more than to bomb Tel Aviv. Similar statements have been voiced by the Communist Party of Israel and Hadash -- Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, a Jewish-Arab Communist political party. These slanderers can be understood, at least assuming that they agree with the pathetic "if I were Palestinian, I'd be a terrorist" approach. But the truth is that in contrast to what is happening locally, our opponents don't function as agents of influence enlisted to attack the policy of their elected government or to shame us in the world. They aren't breaking their silence in the service of foreign agendas or countries, but rather are fervent supporters of Palestinian terrorism, out of a murderous belief in their righteousness. Quite a difference. The Israelis who fight for the existence of the state in a region of bloodshed are forced to adopt some of the norms of survival, which allow minorities a reasonable existence in a sea of murder and terrorism that surrounds them. In this spirit, the assassination of Kuntar (like the assassination of the Munich murderers) is in the spirit of the Bedouin saying that "a Bedouin who takes revenge after 40 years have passed says, 'I acted in haste.'" Kuntar was waiting to die. His assassination in Syria can serve as a message for the people of the Palestinian Authority, to the Hamas terrorists, and to every other terrorist nearby -- if his death was, in fact, at Israel's hand, as per the accusations -- about Israel's military capability, its patience, and the quality of its intelligence and agents in the field, as well as the lethality of its precise weaponry. All these give the long arm of the IDF unprecedented power of deterrence. The long-awaited assassination of Kuntar, as part of renewed terrorist activity against us, is a message and a promise to the Palestinian murderers (including those who were released from prison as part of the exchange deal for Gilad Schalit) that getting even is part of the principle of revenge, a legitimate principle, especially when it comes to a recidivist criminal.
