Why would Palestinians kill an Italian?

Last night Italian TV reported that an Italian man in Gaza, Vittorio Arigoni, had been abducted and killed by Palestinians. It wasn’t clear why Palestinians would kill an Italian. It turns out that Arigoni was a big Palestinian sympathizer, who was killed by an even more extremist Islamist group. Here’s one story:

Body Of Abducted Italian Activist Found In Gaza

Security officials have found the body of an Italian pro-Palestinian activist who had been abducted in the Gaza Strip.

Vittorio Arigoni was abducted by a Jihadist Salafi group in the Gaza strip aligned with Al-Qaeda. They had threatened to kill him unless their leader, arrested last month by the Islamist movement Hamas which rules Gaza, was released.

Hamas security officials said Arigoni’s body was found in an abandoned house hours after he was abducted on April 14. The officials said two men were arrested.

Arigoni was the first foreigner abducted in Gaza in more than three years. The Italian Foreign Ministry in a statement on April 15 denounced what it called his “barbaric murder.”

Daniel Pipes has a brief item on the murder, entitled “Palestinians Murder Their Supporters,” with a photo of the victim:

Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian would-be Palestinian

Comments

Ken Hechtman writes:

Here’s the AFP story about it. Also the ISM’s own press release.

I’ll make a prediction here. One or two more incidents like this and the international left will pull out of Gaza the way they pulled out of Baghdad four years ago. They don’t mind creating martyrs, but only when it follows the script.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 15, 2011 10:32 AM | Send