An Exchange

Israel released Samir Kuntar, a brutal Hezballah terrorist who murdered a 4-year old child by crushing her skull with a rifle butt, in exchange for the bodies of two kidnapped Israeli solders. Not surprisingly, Kuntar, along with four other released prisoners received a hero’s welcome. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Five Lebanese prisoners freed from Israeli prisons for the bodies of kidnapped IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have flown into Beirut airport to an official welcome by the Lebanese president and his government.

Kuntar to receive hero's welcome in Lebanon.

President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and members of major political factions, including Hizbullah's rivals, were on hand to welcome them in a show of unity and opposition to Israel.

The five were flown by two army helicopters from the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura, and stood in battle fatigues on a stand as the president addressed them as "the freed heroes."

The Jerusalem Post also reports:

President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday sent his regards to the families of Samir Kuntar and the other four Lebanese prisoners scheduled to be transferred to Hizbullah.
Abbas praised the prisoner swap and congratulated the Kuntar family.

The sad thing about this event is that it was absolutely predictable. Once barbarians, always barbarians. And to think, these are Israel’s “peace partners.”

But there’s a much more important element to this sad story. The two kidnapped Israeli IDF reservists, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were alive when they were captured, a fact verified by none other than Jesse Jackson (who tried futilely to negotiate their release) and the Red Cross. They were murdered while being held by Hezballah—a clear violation of international law and human rights.

So where’s Amnesty International and other left-wing human rights groups? Where’s the outrage? For that matter, where’s the media in reporting this story? Sure the MSM has noted that “bodies” were traded for live Hezballah thugs, but they have not mentioned that the bodies were live human beings when they were kidnapped and those human beings were murdered in captivity.

Here's how the New York Times characterized the terrorist attack:

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.

Oh. The terrorist raid went "horribly wrong?" Crushing a little girl's skull was obviously unavoidable after things went "horribly wrong?" Executing civilians in cold blood was mandatory after things went "horribly wrong?"

It seems that whenever Islamist groups commit atrocities, the first option of left-leaning MSM is to try to avoid discussing the issue, failing that, the second is to minimize the barbarity of the act (See the NYT excerpt above), and if the first two options aren't viable, the third is to always introduce phoney causative factors for the resultant barbarism.

In a related story, left-leaning human rights activists have decried the treatment of Omar Khadr, an Al Qaeda terrorist captured in Afghanistan after killing a US soldier. Horror of horrors … the US interrogators made poor Omar cry. Psychic “torture,” no doubt. And from high atop their moral plateau, we get righteous indignation. Crying just isn’t allowed.

But murder of a captive uniformed Israeli soldier? By Hezballah? Better to look the other way. Better to mute any response. After all, from high up on the moral plateau, the only bad guys are us.

Disgusting.