MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY
by Hilal Khashan
Fall 2014
In April 2011, Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian activist and “journalist” who had spearheaded the blockade-breaking Free Gaza flotilla was kidnapped from Hamas-held territory and shortly thereafter, killed. His captors and executioners were not a branch of the Israeli special services but members of a local Islamist group, Salafists going by the name Jahafil al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad fi Filastin (Armies of Monotheism and Holy War in Palestine). The Salafists released a YouTube video in which they accused Arrigoni, a secularist, of “spreading corruption” stemming in part from his connection to his birthplace, an “infidel state.”
“He came from across the world, left his country and family and his entire life, and came here to break the siege, and we kill him? Why?” cried one of his Gazan friends. The answer is essentially twofold. For one thing, bias against Christians is embedded in a literal interpretation of Qur’anic verses, and apparently a sizable number of Muslims, and certainly Salafists, take the Qur’an literally. For another, a preponderance of Muslims views Middle Eastern Christians as an extension of Europe and thus a constant reminder of past colonial encroachments and supremacy over them.
……The plight of Arab Christians is un-mistakably bleak. While Western governments have recognized the seriousness of the issue, the modest measures they have taken to address it are incommensurate with its gravity. Some in the international media have addressed the core threat to the vulnerable existence of the region’s Christians, but a chorus of voices from the press protesting the marginalization and the violence is woefully lacking…..
ArchitectGuy on Israel 