One man's terrorist is another man's hero...

What the Times describes as a kidnapping raid that "went horribly wrong" seems to be anything but.

Perhaps Israel’s most reviled prisoner, Samir Kuntar, will return to a hero’s welcome when he crosses into Lebanon this week, 29 years after he left its shores in a rubber dinghy to kidnap Israelis from the coastal town of Nahariya. That raid went horribly wrong, leaving five people dead, a community terrorized and a nation traumatized. Two Israeli children and their father were among those killed.

Out of 21 paragraphs in this story at least half are used to explain poor little Kuntar's background. His life and upbringing. No paragraphs describe the life and upbringing of the Israelis he murdered. The Times does not discuss the short life of the 4 year old girl who's head he smashed in with a rifle nor do they spend any time describing the girl's father who they shot before her eyes (just before killing her). They don't spend any time mentioning the dead man's other daughter who died as a result of the raid (she was accidentally smothered by the girl's mother while in hiding for their lives). I guess that "background" information is irrelevant to the story of this poor courageous man, this hero.

There is also this gem.

But much of Lebanon, its Shiite majority in particular, regards Mr. Kuntar as a courageous fighter who has sacrificed much of his life in the nation’s struggle against Israel.

Yes indeed. Mr Kuntar is quite the courageous fighter shooting an unarmed father in front of his 4 year old daughter and then crushing her skull killing her. What a man! That others in Lebanon celebrate this man speaks volumes about those in Lebanon as a people and as a society.

I also like how the Times chooses to describe the other terrorists that were killed in the raid "his colleagues". Colleagues, as though they were all members of the same chess club or something instead of cold blooded, murdering terrorists.

Mrs. Kuntar (the terrorist's mother) turns defensive when asked about the child. “Certainly, it bothers me,” she said in the 2006 interview. “She wasn’t guilty of anything.”

Well there you are wrong Mrs. Kuntar, she (and her father) were guilty, guilty of just being Jewish and for many Arabs, that is all it takes to justify their deaths.