Who, you ask? Samir Kuntar, the terrorist Israel has agreed to release in exchange for the bodies of kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. I hope something changes and Israel does not release this monster back into society. First of all, he vows more jihad and death. He is not remorseful, not to mention he’s still very young — only in his 40s.

Terrorists are not humans to negotiate with. They are not civilized and negotiating with them only brings more death to innocents:

…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.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. “This is just like what happened to my mother,” I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

This terrorist should not even be breathing, let alone be released.

Are we shocked that the MSM would report unfavorably toward Israel? Nah, but they should still be held accountable. HonestReporting.com does an amazing job at exposing the lies and bias from the media:

Since a “ceasefire” has come into effect between Israel and Hamas, media coverage of the conflict has also declined.

In the past, the media has failed to properly report on Palestinian terror and provocations against Israel, instead waiting to report on Israeli responses and counter-terror measures, thus portraying Israel as the sole aggressor. Will the same thing happen this time?

The answer may very well be in the affirmative if the international media has failed to cover these serious violations of the ceasefire over the past few days:

• June 24: Three Qassam rockets land in Sderot; one home damaged, two people treated for shock.
• June 26: Qassam explodes in an open area in Sderot’s industrial zone.
• June 27: Two mortar shells fired from Gaza; one shell hits near Kibbutz Kfar Aza, another lands in an uninhabited area.
• June 28: Several mortar shells fired at the Karni Crossing area.

The BBC is ridiculous:

Despite this, the BBC’s report on June 27, “Gaza truce ‘violated repeatedly’”, led with alleged Israeli violations, waiting until the third paragraph to mention Palestinian rockets and mortars:

A fragile eight-day-old truce between Israel and Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip appears to have been violated repeatedly by both sides.

A UN source says Israeli troops have opened fire on Palestinian farmers several times, causing injuries. Israel says its forces fired warning shots.

Palestinian militants have also broken the ceasefire, firing rockets and mortars into Israeli territory.

Irrespective of the veracity of an unnamed “UN source” (many Palestinians are employed by the UN in Gaza, including Hamas members), why will the BBC not recognize that there is no moral equivalence between rocket and mortar attacks on the western Negev and the firing of warning shots by an IDF wary of potential terrorist activities near the border fence?

Complaints to the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

And to think, the Associated Press wants bloggers to pay for the distortions they print:

Despite the rocket and mortar attacks, Israel has decided to reopen the Gaza crossings after initially closing them in response. The Associated Press, however, in a fit of chronological inversion, employed the headline: “Israel closes Gaza, Palestinians fire mortars”.

Thus, Israel’s border closure is falsely portrayed as the reason behind the Palestinian mortars instead of the other way around.

Comments to Associated Press - feedback@ap.org

The Guardian needs to get straight exactly where the ceasefire applies to:

For example, The Guardian reported that Palestinian “rockets were fired by the militant group Islamic Jihad, which said it was acting in response to the killing of one of its commanders in the occupied West Bank earlier that day.”

While Islamic Jihad needs little excuse to fire rockets into Israel, The Guardian failed to make it clear that Israeli operations in the West Bank are not in violation of the ceasefire.

Comments to The Guardian - letters@guardian.co.uk

And last but not least, Google Earth:

Google Earth is an online satellite mapping service that allows people to view images of virtually any place in the world. It also allows people to add comments about specific places. In a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Andre Oboler found significant anti-Israel propaganda on the site:

• Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent “Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.” Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the “Palestine Remembered” site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained.
• Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation, and sites known to be ruins in 1946 are claimed to be villages destroyed in 1948. Arab villages which still exist today are listed as sites of destruction. The Google Earth initiative is not only creating a virtual Palestine, it is creating a falsification of history.
• The concept of “replacement geography” replaces the historical connection of one people to the land with a connection between another people and the land. The inclusion of virtual Palestine, superimposed on Israel in the core layer of Google Earth, is an example of replacement geography advanced by technology.
• Those wishing to explore Israel in Google Earth are immediately taken to a politically motivated narrative unrelated to their quest. Google should remove the narrative and treat Israel as it treats every other country on the globe. The core layer of Google Earth should be ideology free and not serve as a platform for indoctrination or a campaign to wipe Israel off the virtual map.

The media needs to be accountable for the distortions they spew out daily and HonestReporting does an excellent job.

In the meantime, TiekiRae is hanging out in Israel having a fantastic time. Please keep her in your prayers.

An oldie but a goodie. 

…Even though many of us wish he would. Chuck Hagel is not content to just shut the heck up and go away. No, he apparently wants more than his 15 seconds of fame, regardless of how stupid he makes himself look. Vice President? Psh … dream on RINO.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said Friday he would consider serving as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s running mate if asked, but he doesn’t expect to be on any ticket.

Hagel’s vocal criticism of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has touched off speculation that if Obama were to pick a Republican running mate, it might be Hagel. Hagel said in an interview with The Associated Press that after devoting much of his life to his country - in the Senate and the U.S. Army - he would have to consider any offer.

This proves Hagel is and has always been a RINO, does it not?

In a book published this year, Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate’s strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems “a reckless foreign policy … that is divorced from a strategic context.”

Hagel wrote in “America: Our Next Chapter” that the invasion of Iraq was “the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence.”

Heck, I never knew Hagel wrote a book? Talk about a waste of trees.

He was the only member of his party on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support a nonbinding measure critical of Bush’s decision to dispatch an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.

“There is no strategy. This is a pingpong game with American lives,” Hagel said at the time.

The rhetoric drew the public ire of Vice President Dick Cheney, who told Newsweek in January 2007 that Ronald Reagan’s mantra to not speak ill of another Republican was sometimes hard to follow “where Chuck Hagel is involved.”

Well, Vice President Cheney, I’m fairly certain Reagan wasn’t referring to RINOs when he said that.