Visitors seeking to explore the possibility of studying online at the Open University came across an unexpected face when visiting the university website's page on famous alumni.
Included among the pictures and descriptions of famous graduates was a picture of Lebanese Druze terrorist Samir Kuntar.
Kuntar,a former member of the Palestine Liberation Front and Hezbollah terrorist organizations, perpetrated one of the most heinous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians in 1979. He kidnapped Nahariya resident Danny Haran and his four year old daughter, Einat, from their home. He took them to a nearby beach, where he shot Danny to death and murdered Einat by repeatedly smashing her head against rocks with the butt of his rifle, crushing her skull, after making sure she saw her father shot..
Another daughter of the Haran family, two year old Yael, was accidentally suffocated during the kidnapping when her mother, Smadar, tried to quiet the toddler's whimpering so Kuntar would not find them as they attempted to hide.
Kuntar also killed an Israeli policeman.
Kuntar was captured and convicted of murder. He studied at the Open University while in prison, and was released as part of an exchange with Hezbollah in 2008 for the bodies of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose bodies had been held by Hezbollah since the beginning of the Second Lebanon War.
Kuntar then joined Hezbollah. He was placed in command of Hezbollah forces on the Syrian side of the Golan Hights where he was assassinated in 2015.
Yair Dan, a young resident of Jerusalem, said: "I was interested in studying communications at the Open University. [When I] wrote Google 'Open University' on representative I saw images of famous graduates. When I saw the picture of Samir Kuntar my breath was taken away. I felt the pain of the Haran family and all the bereaved families. Someone made a mistake and allowed terrorists with blood on their hands to study an get an academic degree. It encourages terrorism and hurts the feelings of all citizens because Google's algorithm caused the publication of his picture."
Tzur Goldin, the twin brother of fallen IDF soldier Hadar Goldin, whose body has been held by Hamas since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, appealed to the university to remove Kuntar's picture from its website.
"It hurts me to see what an arch-terrorist prisoner receives from the state in Israeli prisons while Israeli captives held by Hamas are kept in barbaric and subhuman conditions." Goldin said.