Samir Kuntar - part II

Torture. To die, and quickly.
The first thing I saw was a guy grabbing me by the hair and bringing his foot down on my belly. I was dizzy and couldn't feel anything. I think they must have sprayed something through my nose or something like that. We were still on the beach. I felt my strength returning to me. Two of them picked me up, one on each side of me and started running. Then stood me up and asked: "How many of you are there? Who are you? How did you get here?" I told them we got there by boat. They asked who the commander was. I said: "He died." (What on earth happened to the hero in you, Samir? You were brave enough to kill unarmed civilians, including a little girl, but when they caught you red-handed you couldn't admit you were the God damn leader? You filthy cowardly piece of human refuse!) Some soldiers put me in a jeep and then they got in as well. Then someone else arrived. They started threatening to shoot me. They asked: "Where are they waiting for your return to Lebanon with the hostages?." I gave them the name of some other place, "Rosh ha-Ain" in Lebanon. My team mates also thought that's where we were supposed to be heading back to. In fact we were supposed to back to Jal-el-Baher, near Tyre, where Abu-Abbas and the other big bosses were expecting us. They probably sent a patrol to Rosh-ha-Ain, because they came back to me and told me I was lying. They pointed there guns at me at threatened to shoot me. I said I didn’t care. I told them to shoot me. I wanted to die. I was pissed off because of how I had been captured. I kept asking myself, how did I fall into their hands? (those filthy Jewish hands, right, Samir?). What kept me going was the thought that I wouldn't be able to hang in there. I was sure I was going to die, because of my injury. It was a pretty bad wound.
That's when the torture started. Someone poked their finger through my wound, where the bullet went in. I felt terrible pressure. Then they banged my head on the table. They punched me with their fists. All they wanted to know was where my buddies were in Lebanon.
About an hour later they blindfolded me. They took me to a helicopter. When we were up in the sky the pushed me close to the door, as if they were going to chuck me down. They did it several times. Each time they told me they were going to dump me. Then they'd pull me back inside. After the landing we drove away in a car for what must have been no more than two or three minutes.
I found myself inside a room, some sort of surgery. This is where my story begins. That was my prison, the Tzrifin interrogation unit.
First thing they did, they took away my blindfold. Then they sat me on the table and hit me a couple of times. There must have been two or three civilians and a few soldiers. The civilians were the ones hitting me. They took my clothes off and laid me down on the couch. They started cleaning and dressing my wound just like that, without anesthesia (Samir, baby, you are breaking my heart. Not that a prisoner does not deserve humane treatment. Because they do. I am only thinking what kind of treatment you arabs extend our Israeli prisoners. Where's me hanky?). There was a doctor there, perhaps two. One of them was okay. I remember he had a syringe in his hand, probably some kind of local anesthesia, but the other doctor snatched it from his hand and threw it down on the table. (How can you be sure that he wasn't going to inject you with some lethal drug and that the other one saved your miserable life?). Never in my life had I imagined that there could be a physician like that. (Who in their right mind could have imagined that hell had spat out such a monstrous creature as yourself?)
The cruel doctor started to tend to my wound. I had taken a bullet in my chest, hands and shoulder. It hurt so bad that I passed out while he was working on me. It was a nightmare. When I woke up they put something in my vein. When it was over, some guy whom I had never seen before came into the room. He had a long red beard and knitted skullcap. I thought he was going to cleaning man. He asked me: "Where is Talat Yakoub?" That was the secretary general of my organization. He spoke very good Arabic, the bearded man did. I said: "He might be in Yemen." My organization had very good relations with South Yemen in those days. He took me seriously. He said: "Are you sure?" I said yes. Then he said: "Right, when you are done here, I wish to speak to you again." There were soldiers around me all the time. He stepped out of the room, but came back in: "Where did you say they were waiting for you in Lebanon?" I got angry: "Why do you keep asking me all these questions? What is this world coming to when a cleaning man is interrogating me?" He snapped back at me: "Me a cleaning man? Me?"
They gave me military fatigues, the kind their paratroopers wore in the 60's I think. They slipped a bag over my head, took me for a short walk and then brought me back into the room. I was still hand-cuffed. (Didn't he just say that he had been shot in the hands? No discomfort from the cuffs? Just wondering…). They didn’t give me anything to drink until the next day. I started hallucinating. The religious guy started hitting me (for real or in your hallucinations?). That was "the toughest part of all", the real torture. (You were hallucinating, you just said so).
That was the second day of my interrogation. They started asking me about the little girl. How she got killed. They asked me who shot her. Only later did they start talking about how she died from having her head bashed in with a rifle butt. Abu-Zakan (Abu-Beard, pejorative term for the bearded-man) went away for two hours and then came back again. He said: "No, you killed her." I started arguing with him: "No way!" He said again: "You killed her, and now you are going to sign a confession." I insisted: "No, I didn't kill her." They beat me and tied me outside. You see, my skin is still bearing the signs of being suspended from the wrists. I was cuffed to an iron bar, just like that, with my hands up, for five days. I stood up, then my body went limp, and I fainted, but then all the pressure was on my wrists. Every now and then a soldier would bring a rubber pipe and hit me with it real hard. When he went away, another one would come by. They practiced karate blows on my body. I was blindfolded all the time, I couldn’t see anything. I figure however that it must have been some sort of inner yard. Abu-Zakan, you know, the religious guy, came to see me every now and then and he'd tell me: "You'll talk soon." They never let me sit down or lie down. They'd finish practicing karate blows, and then they'd take me to Abu-Zakan for questioning.
I was beaten for half a day. Then they took me back to the surgery. There they beat me again. They told me that my parents' home had been bombed, that the IAF had destroyed my home while everyone was inside (such a shame they didn't). I believed them. Abu-Zakan kept slapping and punching me. There was a table in the room, with a long wooden bench next to it. They made me sit on it. Then tied me up with ropes and hit me, sometimes with a rubber pipe. Then they forced me to lie down on the floor. Soldiers brought in loudspeakers, put one on each side of my head, next to my ears, and played loud sirens in my ears, over and over again until I fainted.
Abu-Zakan said: "You will write what I'm telling you." I asked him what he wanted. He was the main interrogator. He stuck to me as if he was my God. He said: "I want you to tell me what I told you this morning." I said okay. The torture I had been subjected to had broken me. I wanted to die, but I could see that I wasn't dead. I had reached the point where I was thinking that if they were so cruel to me, what do I care? I'll say that I killed the little girl. Who was she anyway? I thought to myself that they all deserved to die, what was I ashamed of? I signed the confession. He was happy. He gave me some water to drink.
They asked me where I had trained, for how long, all kinds of questions. It was the third day. I didn’t give them anything. Part of What I was telling them were made-up stories. I was still handcuffed to a pipe. They were still beating me. Those were the first five. All I wanted to do was die. Then they started pressuring me to appear on TV. They told me what to say, that my commanders were traitors, drug-dealers. That they ridiculed and used me, that they had taken advantage of my being under age, that I killed the little girl and broke her skull." They wrote it all down for me in Arabic. I refused; I wasn't going to cross my own red lines.
I hated Abu-Zakan. At one point I wanted to kill because of the way he was torturing me. He was cruel, a monster. A settler, I believe. I had seen people like him on TV. You know, he is the spitting image of Rabbi Levinger, except he is a little fatter.
I couldn't take it any more. The beatings, the humiliation, the cursing, the loudspeakers playing sirens in my ears. My hands were cuffed in the front, because of my wounds. I was seated across the table from him. He got up, hit me and went back to his seat again. I picked up the desk lamp and hit him with it. I wanted to kill him, but he pressed his distress button and help arrived instantly. They started slapping and punching me, they used wooden bats and rubber pipes. Then they charged me with attempted murder of a security officer after my arrest.
I was thrown in a cell the size of a wardrobe. I couldn't stretch my legs and I couldn’t sleep. I was cuffed all the time. The walls of the cell were painted red and there was no window, except a small opening in the ceiling, an air-hole. There was a small slot at the bottom of the door, where they'd shove my food in: two slices of bread and a carrot. Sometimes they'd give me a small piece of cheese for breakfast. And water. How did I tell night from day? By the cock crow, and by the sound of traffic, of cars passing by. There was also a donkey nearby. And birds.
There was a big barrel next to me, to relieve myself. They'd empty it every few weeks. Sometimes soldiers would come in for a bit of fun. They'd take me out of the cell with a bag over my face, and they'd make me run until I'd bang my head against the wall. I was still being taken away for interrogation, even after the first five days, but not as frequently.

The trial. Blood on their hands.
One morning, five months after my arrest, they gave me back my clothes, the ones I was wearing for the operation, my pants and my shirt. The shirt was torn, I couldn’t wear it. So they gave me a military shirt. The pants were stained with blood. I was wearing my own shoes. They took me to Jalame, Kishon, near Haifa. First thing they gave me lunch, something quite different, rice and meat. For the first time since April I was eating meat.
From Jalame they took me to Acco police station. There I met Abras, my partner. I was sure he had been killed. We hugged, Abras and I. I asked him why he didn't blow himself up after I had given specific orders to detonate the charge. To this day I can't understand why he didn't do it. I sometimes envy my buddies who were killed in the attack. They were spared so much suffering.
Then they transferred me to Nitzan prison and then to Ayalon Prison, where I shared a cell with Kozo Okomoto. Okomoto was one of the prisoners whose release we wanted to secure by the attack on Beit-Shean. He was finished, he had gone mad. They were giving him all kinds of treatments, you wouldn't want to know. He was very short and thin, and in very poor mental shape. He never spoke.
My trial opened in November, at the Haifa District Court. It lasted three months. For me it was a circus show. I asked that Lea Tsemel defend me, but it never happened. There were 52 witnesses. I testified for an hour and a half, in Arabic. The sentence was passed down on January 20, 1980. I was sentenced to five life terms plus 48 years. During the trial I heard for the first time the names of Eliahu Shahar, Einat and Danny Haran and also Smadar Haran, his surviving widow.
Smadar "adopted" me as her private prisoner, her pet project. She couldn't understand that it was a national matter, not a personal one. I didn't bring a note with the Harans' names on it form Lebanon. I came as part of a conflict that I strongly believed I should be a part of. I was acting on behalf of my people, of my nation. I didn't steal anything, I didn’t break into a car. Even if I spend sit a hundred years in jail I will not change my mind. This is what I think. You are heading straight for the wall. You are playing a lose-lose game. But you are the strong side. You should give up, otherwise it will never work. This is how I see it. I think of myself as a Palestinian. It's like asking an Israeli soldiers if he is sorry he fired. You don't ask a soldier. You say "a terrorist with blood on his hands". This is a very cynical thing to say. (I agree, we should say terrorists with blood on their heads). Your hands are also stained with blood. Every tax-paying Israeli citizen has blood on his hands. All of you have blood on your hands. (How could we let this thing walk free?)
People who decide to commit terrorist attacks, like me, we are not bloodthirsty. You can't say that we woke up one morning, without knowing what the Palestinian people is, having grown up within this conflict, and decided just like that to commit a terrorist attack (you're right, dear, this is where propaganda comes in, all those lies and myths about the Palestinian people and what we did to them. And they have no problems using minors, like you. All fucked up, but still minors). Not at all. And it wasn't sudden either. It was part of a growing process. (Like I said, dear, all that propaganda, every time they'd come up with something new and more inflated.) It blended in well with the political and ideological roots. Neither is it a matter of age. It does not matter how old I was. Young people are more motivated, so perhaps age had something to do with it, but it was not the main things. I was strongly attracted to the Palestinians. I always believed, even when I applied to be admitted into the ranks of the unit, that we shouldn't enjoy life and let the next generation be consumed by the flames of the conflict. I wanted to fight for the rights of the Palestinian people. For me it was the moral, humane thing to do, to sacrifice myself for the suffering of these people, with whom I felt so connected. I was no mercenary.

Prison. Zionism in Hebrew.
Life becomes complicated for one who spends years locked up in jail, like me. Life in prison is not easy. A human being cannot get used to being locked up. All through the years I've asked myself whether anyone else would have been able to go through what I have gone through, and my answer is no. This does not mean that I am expressing regret. No way. I just think of myself as someone able to bear these things. I am not so sure that others would have been able to hang in there.
I survived, however. After the trial I was kept in isolation for half a year. That was the rule for those involved in a "smart" attack. Later on I was allowed to mix with the regulars. In 1984 I was transferred to Nafha prison, where I spent 20 years. I was also kept in isolation in Be'er Sheva, for long periods of time. I learned Hebrew. I started with cigarette packs. I compared the letters in Hebrew and in Arabic. Then I learned a few words. Then I was allowed to take a Bachelor's degree in social sciences at the Open University, in Hebrew, via correspondence. There was a course on the Holocaust. Nobody wanted to take it, but me. I got a 90 in the course on security surprises during WWII. I learned there about Pearl Harbor, about the Barbarossa operation. Then I enrolled for my Master's Degree, but they wouldn't let me finish.
I read a lot. I could barely sleep at night. I don't like sleeping anyway. I live to live life to the full, to enjoy every minute of my life, even if I am in jail. I ordered books via the canteen. Everything they published about the army, security, the wars in the region, Zionism, I made every effort to read them. I am against Zionism, not Jews (A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!). I am against Zionist politics. I think that the establishment of the State of Israel was a mistake, but I don’t hate Jews (A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!). I read Uri Sagi's "Lights in the Mist", Gilad Sher's "Just Beyond Reach", The Zionist Lexicon", books about wars. I've already sent some of these books to Lebanon. I want them there when I go home. You need to learn about the enemy. You can't fight if you don't know everything about the one you are fighting against. I've also seen Israeli movies, "Officer Azoulay", he reminded me of Israeli policemen. I am also familiar with Israeli music and the Israeli experience: Shlomo Artzi "Beneath the Middle East Skies" (sic). (It is in fact " Beneath the Mediterranean Skies").
In the 80's my eldest sister, Sana, died. She was like a mother to me. Of all my siblings it is she that I felt closest to. The news came in a letter that I received from my family via the Red Cross. It is customary in jail that when someone's relative dies, everybody sits with him. I mourned by myself.
My father passed away in 1986, but I found out one year later. We had never spoken since my capture. In his first letter to me, delivered via the Red Cross, he spoke about how he suffered that I was away from him, and because of what he imagined I was going through. I could feel him crying. He reminded me how far away I was from home. He never mentioned Amsterdam. He just said: "Stay healthy, and whatever you need we will send you." His following letters were encouraging.
My father and my eldest sister had been with me all my life. I am certain that my father would have lived longer had things been different (you mean if you hadn’t come to Israel to commit a most heinous crime. I agree, you killed your own father, God have mercy on your miserable excuse for a soul!). It hurt. My father was not a "what if" kind of person. I know that others also paid a very heavy price in this conflict and that my family is not the only one. My father never wrote to me: "Why did you do it?" That was not his style. After 1982, when the Phalanges entered my village, he even sent my brother to join the fighting. He left his job in Saudi Arabia after I was captured. He stayed in Lebanon. His health began to deteriorate, and then he died.

to be continued