Terrorist-Murderer Awarded Honorary Palestinian Citizenship

Societies measure their heroes in different ways. Some societies honor athletes or performers. Others celebrate caregivers and humanitarian workers. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have consistently chosen to honor murderers as their national icons.

The Palestinian Authority has announced that it was granting honorary citizenship to two Arab terrorists who killed Israelis ? a Lebanese terrorist, Samir Quntar, and Jordanian terrorist, Sultan Al-Ajaluni. Both are serving life sentences in Israeli jails.

In 1979 Lebanese terrorist Samir Quntar murdered Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter, Einat. Danny's daughter Yael, aged two, suffocated while hiding in a crawl space with her mother. Quntar is serving multiple life sentences totaling 542 years in prison.

Smadar Haran, wife and mother of the murder victims, described the murder in the Washington Post in 2003:

It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty...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. Around midnight ? the terrorists burst into our building. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat ? I will never forget the joy and the hatred in the terrorists voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. ? 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. .. 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 Quntar.