Still the Samir?

Given the sympathy that the Washington Post once showed for Samir Kuntar in a news story, the editorial An Unwelcome Hero was welcome, if flawed.

If anyone ever deserved the title “baby-killer,” it is Samir Kuntar. Yet his freedom has been a popular demand in Lebanon and the cause of Lebanon-based gunslingers for almost three decades. Abbas’s gang hijacked the Achille Lauro in 1985 in a failed effort to win Mr. Kuntar’s release. After Abbas faded into semi-retirement in Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad, Hezbollah took up the Kuntar cause, attempting to get Israel to swap him for bodies of Israelis killed in Hezbollah raids.

That’s correct, however, I’m a bit troubled by the conclusion:

Great changes must take place across the Middle East before a lasting peace can be achieved. Israel must make territorial compromises and foster a dignified future for the Palestinians. But attitudes among Israel’s enemies must be transformed as well. A good place to start would be to declare that people such as Samir Kuntar deserve to rot in prison, no matter what the religion or nationality of the children they kill.

I’m not bothered by their wish that Kuntar rot in jail instead of seeing him executed; the Post’s editors don’t believe in the death penalty. It’s the mantra about great changes and how Israel must make “territorial compromises” and “foster a dignified future,” these are both programs that Israel has been engaged in for the past 15 years. For the Post’s correct complaint about Lebanon and Hezbollah it ignores the bigger problem: Kuntar and terrorists like him are heroes even to the so-called Palestinian “moderates.” For there to be peace in the Middle East great changes are necessary, but the greatest change is the acceptance by the Arabs generally, and the Palestinians specifically, of the Israel’s right to exist. Fifteen years of peace processing and Israeli concessions have not changed that fundamental problem.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.