The contrast between Lebanon and Israel....

How on earth can the Lebanese treat this murderer as a hero?

If the Second Lebanon War was characterized by a lack of clarity in execution and result, yesterday brought a rare measure of clarity, and not only to the families of the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah two years ago, who finally learned the fate of their sons.
A Hizbullah member rides on...

When the heart-sickness subsides, we will all have been left with a searing glimpse of the contrast between two very different cultures.

Lebanon yesterday celebrated the return of four Hizbullah terrorists, along with Samir Kuntar, 45, who in 1979 murdered a civilian, Danny Haran, in front of his four-year-old daughter, before crushing her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle. Kuntar has never expressed remorse. "My oath and pledge," he wrote Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in a letter reprinted in a Palestinian newspaper, "is that my place will be at the battlefront, which is soaked in the sweat of your giving, and the blood of the most beloved among men, and that I shall continue down the path, until complete victory." In his hometown of Abey, one sign read: "Samir Kuntar is the conscience of Lebanon, Palestine and the Arab nation."

Mocking the notion that much distinction remains between Hizbullah and the Lebanese government, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and President Michel Suleiman extended an official state welcome, declared a national holiday, and greeted the five freed prisoners at Beirut's airport. (With 11 of the 30 cabinet positions, Hizbullah enjoys veto power in the Lebanese government.)

The celebrations were led by Nasrallah, who has characterized Jews as the "grandsons of apes and pigs."

"If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew," he has said. This from a man who, fearing for his own safety, hardly leaves his bunker.

A more undignified and morally offensive spectacle is hard to imagine.

IN ISRAEL, by way of the starkest contrast, dignity was the order of the day. The country has always respected the rights of its prisoners, even those with blood on their hands. Kuntar, for instance, received a fair trial, due process, and conjugal visits. While in jail, he earned a social science degree from the Open University.