A memorial was held in none other than Berlin, Germany, for Hezbollah terrorist commander Samir Kuntar, who was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in December.
The December 28 event was sponsored by the Shia Islamist Al-Mustafa Association in Berlin, and entitled "Samir Kuntar: Leader, Martyr and Symbol."
Kuntar was released from an Israeli prison in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah. He was perhaps the most widely-known and reviled symbol of anti-Israel terrorism for his role in a 1979 attack, in which he murdered 31-year-old Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat. An Israeli policeman was killed as well in a subsequent shootout, and Einat's mother accidentally smothered her two-year-old daughter Yael in an attempt to stifle her cries and prevent them from being discovered by the kidnappers.
In his speech at the event - given in Arabic and translated by MEMRI - Sheikh Hassan Shahrour, head of the Al-Mustafa Association, hailed Kuntar as a "leader and martyr, the liberated prisoner, a man who is a symbol."
"The enemy could not stand seeing the martyr Samir Kuntar free and waging resistance, so they assassinated him," Shahrour said. "Samir Kuntar's blood makes the enemy lose sleep. His pure blood, along with the blood of all the other martyrs, will haunt the enemies of Allah for all eternity."
Relating to Kuntar's notoriety as a child-killer, Shahrour claimed he was in fact innocent.
"Some of the biased media outlets claim that Samir Kuntar was a terrorist, who killed innocent people in the attack. Those who died in the attack were killed in the crossfire with the Israeli enemy. That is what happened," he insisted.
Contrary to his statement, post-mortems and witness statements revealed that Danny Haran had been shot and then drowned in front of his young daughter, after which Kuntar personally executed little Einat by repeatedly smashing her head with his rifle butt, and then crushing the dying girl's head against a large rock.
Kuntar was killed in a missile strike on his apartment on the outskirts of Damascus on December 20. According to intelligence officials he had been placed in charge of Iranian-sponsored efforts to set up an anti-Israel terrorist force along the Golan Heights.