Kontar voices “envy” for Israel, maintains innocence
Freed fighter Samir Kontar voiced a hint of admiration for Israel during an interview with Hizbullah”s Al-Manar television on Thursday, saying that "we envy" the Jewish state”s "care for their hostages. "To tell you the truth, we envy our enemies, the way they care for a body and will go to the end of the world to recover it, and how they care for their hostages and will go all the way to return them," Kontar said.
Kontar was sentenced to five life terms for a deadly raid in northern Israel in Nahariya in 1979. He was released on Wednesday along with four other Lebanese prisoners as part of a prisoner swap with Israel.
In return for the five prisoners and 200 bodies of Lebanese and Palestinian fighters, Israel recovered the bodies of the two soldiers who were captured by Hizbullah in July 2006 and whose fate was remained uncertain until the day of the prisoner swap.
Kontar also insisted that he did not murder 4-year-old Einat Haran in the 1979 attack.
"I”m innocent. I did not kill the Israeli girl and I”m not defending myself for fear of the enemy," Kontar said, adding that Israel invented the girl”s murder.
According to Kontar, after arriving at the Nahariya coast by sea, he turned toward a three-storey building in a bid to take its tenants hostage.
After entering the Haran family house, he and his men began shooting in all directions before descending to the first floor where they found Danny Haran and his daughter.
Kontar and his men took Haran and his daughter to the beach, where a long battle erupted with the Israeli Army. Two of Kontar”s men were killed and he was wounded.
Kontar said Haran insisted on holding on to his daughter as the fighting raged on.
"Our goal was to hold Haran captive and bring him back to Lebanon," Kontar said, adding that he had read "in the Zionists” report from 1979" that Haran”s daughter was killed in a fire set by the Israeli military.
He also said that during his years in prison he had read "the books of the enemy about the 1967 and 1973 wars with the Arab state," and had felt that the Arab person had been "meaningless in these wars."
He said "a human being is neither respected nor venerated" in these books.