The New York Times makes Kuntar the victim

Wednesday's New York Times included an appalling, sickening article in which the 'gray lady' attempted to turn Lebanese mass murderer Samir al-Kuntar - who bashed in the head of 4-year old Einat Haran HY"D with a rifle butt - into a victim of a 'difficult childhood' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). In the process, the Times also pretends that Kuntar landed on the beach in Nahariya in the middle of the night 29 years ago intending to have a barbacue or a cup of tea with its residents rather than inteding to murder as many Jews as possible.

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.

Note that the Times says "five people dead." But Kuntar was only responsible for four murders: Policeman Eliyahu Shahar and Danny Haran, who were both shot by Kuntar, 4-year old Einat Haran, whose head Kuntar bashed in with a rifle butt, and 2-year old Yael Haran who suffocated while hiding from Kuntar in a crawl space. The fifth person who died that night? One of the terrorists. In the despicable leftist universe of the New York Slimes, the terrorists and their victims are all the same.

As far as what Kuntar planned to do that night in 1979 that went 'horribly wrong,' here's his own trial testimony from 1980.

“I reached Nahariya beach at 2:30 in the morning,” he testified on January 6, 1980. “We tied our boat to a rock. We had instructions to avoid opening fire, to take hostages and bring them to Lebanon. I was commander of the cell. I planned to knock on the door at one of the houses. Majeed and I walked towards the building. I told him to ring the bell but not to speak, because I planned to speak English with the people living there. When we went in, Majeed buzzed one of the apartments, and Majeed spoke to the woman in Arabic and she answered him in Hebrew. He made a mistake and she didn’t open the door.

“I then heard the sound of a car driving up and stopping… I opened fire, then we went up to one of the apartments, where we pulled out a man and a girl so we could take them with us. I decided we should take the girl with us to ensure we’d stay alive, and then return her from Lebanon to Israel via the Red Cross.

The deaths of the hostages were something that lawyers would describe as foreseeable, and something for which a court in just about any country in the world would hold Kuntar criminally liable even if he had not murdered them himself. But in fact, he did murder them himself.

In court, prosecution witness no. 4 testified that he saw Danny Haran stand up and shout, “Cease your fire, don’t shoot. My little girl is here.” Immediately thereafter he saw Danny shot by Kuntar. Testimony was also given in court by a doctor who ruled that Einat’s death had been caused by a direct blow with a blunt instrument, something like a stick or a rifle butt.

...

“Kuntar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her,” wrote the judges in their verdict. “The other defendant also struck her head forcefully. As a result of the blows, Einat suffered skull fractures and fatal brain damage, causing her death. They murdered the hostages - a helpless father and daughter, in cold blood.” They wrote in the sentence, “By these acts the defendants reached an all-time moral low… an unparalleled satanic act… the punishments we are about to impose on the defendants cannot begin to match the brutality of their actions…”

But what's more appalling about the Times' piece is that despite the crime's brutality, the Times makes an effort to paint Kuntar as the victim of a 'difficult childhood:'

Mr. Kuntar was born to a Druse couple on July 20, 1962. His parents soon divorced, and his mother died when he was a boy. His father left to work in Saudi Arabia, leaving Mr. Kuntar in the care of his second wife, Siham, in Abey, a mountain village 18 miles southeast of Beirut.

Neighbors remember him as a quiet child. But as the eldest son without a father at home, he was difficult to control, they said. He stopped attending school when he was 14, a former teacher said.

Lebanon’s civil war was just erupting at the time he left school, and many boys from troubled families were drawn into the conflict.

“He never told me when he was going or where,” Mr. Kuntar’s stepmother said in a 2006 interview. “He disappeared for days.” She said that she soon discovered that he was training in the camps of militant groups.

“I used to tell him to study, don’t get involved with this, but I was not too strong,” Mrs. Kuntar said. “His father wasn’t here.”

Mr. Kuntar fell in with Marxists, the family says, but his political convictions were never very strong.

“He switched a lot from one group to another,” said Bassem, his younger brother, reached Monday by telephone in Beirut. “He wanted to be a part of a military operation against Israel. For him this was the goal.”

The family said that in 1975 Samir Kuntar fought briefly in Beirut where he met Muhammad Zaydan, better known as Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front in the city at the time. Mr. Kuntar joined the group the next year. (Mr. Zaydan’s most notorious exploit was the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in a bid to gain hostages to exchange for Mr. Kuntar.) In 1978, Mr. Kuntar went to the Israeli-Lebanese border after Israel invaded southern Lebanon in March of that year. His stepmother and brother said Mr. Kuntar returned deeply affected by the deaths he had witnessed.

In early 1979, Mr. Kuntar disappeared again. His family did not learn of his whereabouts until the Israelis announced his capture in Nahariya after a shootout that left two of his colleagues and a policeman dead.

And you thought after 19 wealthy Saudis murdered 3000 Americans on 9/11 the US media would drop the 'poor terrorists' meme? Not the Times....

More comments on this story from Soccer Dad.

Cross-posted to Israel Matzav.