A Heinous Crime

"If the Israelis think by killing Samir Kantar they have closed an account then they are very mistaken because they know - and will come to know - that they have instead opened several more."
Hezbollah official Hashem Safeieddine

Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, right, speaking next to freed convicted terrorist Samir Kantar at a stadium in Beirut's southern suburbs, July 16, 2008. (AFP/MUSSA AL-HUSSEINI)

Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group that acts as a proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran whose Republican Guard Corps was responsible for recruiting for and founding the Party of God, infusing Lebanese Shiites with the vision of the Iranian Revolution that to die a martyr represents the pinnacle of faith in Islam is seething. Hezbollah is now in the process of celebrating another of their terrorist figures' martyrdom, while damning Israel as the source of his martyrdom.

"[Kantar was considered] a pivot in the efforts of Hezbollah to prepare the Golan Heights for another front against Israel."
Retired Israeli Maj.-Gen.Yaakov Amidror

The man celebrated as a hero in the universal Arab Muslim 'resistance' against Israeli oppression which owes its status to the very fact of the Jewish state's existence, a provocation against Islamic totalitarianism and 'ownership' of the Middle East that mortally and morbidly offends the tiny country's encircling Muslim neighbours, spent three decades in an Israeli prison.

At the age of sixteen, and as a member of the Palestine Liberation Front, he reached hero status by  killing an Israeli Jew, bludgeoning his four-year-old daughter to death, and killing an Israeli policeman as well. The murdered man's wife had hidden within a crawl space inside the home, taking with her the couple's two-year-old daughter, whom she accidentally smothered, attempting to keep her from crying.

The man had been released from prison as part of a contingent of Palestinian prisoners sentenced as a result of their crimes perpetrated against Israel, in a prisoner swap that took place in 2008, between Israel and Hezbollah. On his release a hero's welcome awaited him in Lebanon. A year later, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad awarded Samir Kantar Syria's most distinguished medal of honour.

His killing has sparked renewed declarations of vengeance against Israel, although there has been no official acknowledgement by anyone in authority within Israel that they had a hand in the man's death. Nonetheless Hezbollah officials deemed it fit to fire three rockets into Israel from Lebanon following the death, as a prelude, one might imagine, to what is yet to come.

Kantar had himself stated that he had been delegated by Hezbollah to begin work on Syria's behalf to set up "the Syrian resistance" with a view to liberating the Golan Heights, captured from Syria by Israel in 1967 and annexed as part of Israel, in 1981. The claim by Hezbollah that their man was killed along with eight others in an airstrike on a suburb of Damascus has set the stage for reprisals.

Al-Manar TV, a media arm of Hezbollah, claims that two Israeli warplanes had entered Syrian airspace, firing four long-range missiles at the residential building in Jaramana where Samir Kantar was to be found. Footage it aired of the building post-missile attack showed a destroyed architecture and within, presumably, had been the man set to brainstorm the retaking of the Golan Heights.

Israel had put Hezbollah and Syria on notice previously that it was prepared to engage in the Syrian conflict if two realities were in place requiring Israeli action; one, the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and two; action required for the disruption of any preparations for attacks to take place hitting Israel, such attacks by Israel to be pre-emptive.

Clearly, the activities which Kantar was engaged in satisfied at least one of those requirements for action. It can be assumed that if it was indeed Israel that launched those airstrikes that killed the implacable murderer so celebrated by Fatah, Hezbollah and Syria, communication between Jerusalem and Moscow took place beforehand, in view of the agreement between Russia and Israel to consult when any air activities would be taking place.

Which, if this is what occurred, makes Moscow an accessory after the fact. Perhaps Hezbollah should take this matter up with Vladimir Putin?