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Friday, June 06, 2003


Reliving Tragedy

I missed this when it was first published and don't remember seeing much in any blogs about it. As a personal story that illustrates the brutality of the terrorists, it's both shocking and moving. It's about an event most people never heard of, please read her story.

Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty, crueler even than the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was shot on the Achille Lauro and dumped overboard in his wheelchair. Kuntar's mission against my family, which never made world headlines, was also masterminded by Abu Abbas. And my wish now is that this terrorist leader should be prosecuted in the United States, so that the world may know of all his terrorist acts, not the least of which is what he did to my family on April 22, 1979.
Especially with the recent release of palestinian terrorists to coddle the PLO leadersip, stories like these ought to be re-told. We should all realize the brutality and the fanaticism of these terrorists. Ask the question, "What are they going to do to build Israel's confidence that their attitudes have changed? Why must Israel be asked to concede anything before they are sure that Peace is really the Arabs' goal?



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