Staying Human: The Heroic Legacy of Vittorio Arrigoni
“Dear
Mary,” wrote Italian justice activist Vittorio Arrigoni to a friend. “Do
you (know who) will be on the boats?... I’m still in Gaza, waiting for
you. I will be at the boat to greet you. Stay human. Vik.”
“Mary” is Mary Hughes Thompson, a dedicated activist who braved the high seas to break the Israeli siege on Gaza in 2008.
Vittorio
Arrigoni, or Vik, was reportedly murdered by a fundamentalist group in
Gaza, a few hours after he was kidnapped on Thursday, April 14. The
killing was supposedly in retaliation for Hamas’ crackdown on this
group’s members. All who knew Vik will attest to the fact that he was an
extraordinary person, a model of compassion, solidarity and humanity.
Arrigoni’s
body was discovered in an abandoned house hours after he was kidnapped.
His murderers didn’t honor their own deadline of thirty hours. The
group, known as the Tawhid and Jihad, is one of the fringe groups known
in Gaza as the Salafis. They resurface under different names and
manifestations, for specific – and often bloody - purposes.
“The
killing prompted grief in Gaza, but also despair,” read an op-ed in the
UK Independent on April 16. “Not only was Arrigoni well known and well
liked there, but it escaped no one that this kidnapping was the first
since that of the BBC journalist Alan Johnson in 2007.”
However,
Johnson’s kidnappers, the so-called Army of Islam (a small group of
fanatics affiliated with a large Gaza clan) held their hostage for 114
days. There was plenty of time to organize and pressure the criminals to
release him. In Arrigoni’s case, merely few hours stood between the
release of a horrifying video showing a blindfolded and bruised
activist, and the finding of his motionless body. The forensic report
said that he was strangled. His friends said that he was tortured.
Vittorio
Arrigoni’s murder was an opportunity for Israel’s supporters. Most
notorious amongst them was Daniel Pipes. He wrote, in a brief entry in
the National Review Online: “Note the pattern of Palestinians who murder
the groupies and apologists who join them to aid in their dream of
eliminating Israel.” Pipes named three individuals, including the
Palestinian-Israeli filmmaker, Juliano Mer-Khamis, and Arrigoni himself,
and then proceeded to invite readers to “send in further examples that I
may have missed.”
Pipes’
list, however, will have no space for such names as Rachel Corrie, Tom
Hurndall and James Miller, for these individuals were all murdered by
Israeli forces. Pipes will also fail to mention the nine Turkish
activists murdered aboard the Mavi Marmara ship on its way to break the
siege on Gaza in May 2010, and the nine activists abroad Irene (the
Jewish Boat to Gaza) who were intercepted, kidnapped and humiliated by
Israeli troops before being deported outside the country in September
2010. 82-year-old Reuben Moscowitz, a Holocaust survivor,
was one of the activists aboard the Irene, as was Lillian Rosengarten,
an American “who fled the Nazis as a child in Frankfurt,” according to a
New York Times blog.
The people
Pipes failed to mention truly represent a rainbow of humanity. Men and
women of all ages, races and nationalities have stood and will continue
to stand on the side of the Palestinians.
But this
story is selectively ignored of pseudo-intellectuals, intent on
dismissing humanity to uphold Israel. They refuse to see the patterns in
front of them, as they are too busy concocting their own.
Writing in
UK Guardian from Rome, on April 15, John Hooper said, “Arrigoni's life
was anything but safe. In September 2008 he was injured (by Israeli
troops) accompanying Palestinian fishermen at sea. Two years ago he
received a death threat from a US far-right website that provided any
would-be killers with a photo and details of distinguishing physical
traits, such as a tattoo on his shoulder.”
The group
that murdered Arrigoni, like others of its kind, existed for one
specific, violent episode before disappearing altogether. The mission in
this case was to kill an International Solidarity Movement activist who
dedicated years of his life to Palestine. Shortly before he was
kidnapped, he wrote in this website of the “criminal” Israeli siege on
Gaza. He also mourned the four impoverished Palestinians who died in a
tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt boarder while hauling food and other goods.
Before his
murder, Arrigoni was anticipating the arrival of another flotilla –
carrying activists from 25 countries boarding 15 ships – that is
scheduled to sail to Gaza in May. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu adamantly called on EU countries to prevent their nationals
from jointing the boats. “I think it's in your and our common
interest…that this flotilla must be stopped,” he told European
representatives in Jerusalem, according to an AFP report, April 11.
Israeli
officials are angry at the internationals who are ‘de-legitimizing’ the
state of Israel by standing in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Arrigoni has done so much to harm the carefully fabricated image of
Israel as an island of democracy and progress. Along with other
activists, he has shattered this myth through simple means of
communication.
Vik signed his messages with “Stay human”. His book, detailing his experiences in Gaza, was entitled Restiamo Umani
(Let Us Remain Human). Mary Hughes Thompson shared with me some the
emails Arrigoni sent her. “I can hardly bear to read them again,” she
wrote. This is an extract from one of them:
“No matter
how (we) will finish the mission…it will be a victory. For human
rights, for freedom. If the siege will not (be) physically broken, it
will break the siege of the indifference, the abandonment. And you know
very well what this gesture is important for the people of Gaza. That
said, obviously we are waiting at the port! With hundreds of
Palestinians and ISM comrades we will come to meet you sailing, as was
the first time, remember? All available boats will sail to Gaza to greet
you. Sorry for my bad English…big hug…Stay Human. Yours, Vik”
Vik’s killers failed to see his humanity. But many of us will always remember, and we will continue trying to “stay human”.
- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated
columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is
My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press,
London), available on Amazon.com.
