Vittorio Arrigoni contacted me as a blogger to exchange links few months after I entered what he called the alliance of bloggers against the Israeli occupation. This was late 2006. He was blogging in Italian and I was blogging in English but he didn't see a problem, he said that through pictures, videos, we can communicate emotions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He was a man without frontiers. I am deeply sad to hear about his killing at the hands of Salafi groups in Gaza. Salafism is a cancer among us Arabs and a cancer for the world. It is eating at our development, our freedoms and at the future of our Palestinian brothers. I hope his killers will be known and tried.
Reading about him today, I wouldn't say, like many, that he was an activist, neither an idealist, Vittorio was after all an innocent and we forgot what it means to be an innocent. Vittorio, by his words and deeds, reminded us what innocence of the heart and mind means. Because we live comfortably with the fact that there is nothing to do against the great injustice that is being done to Palestinians , we have lost our innocence.
May he rest in peace. His memory must stay alive in our minds and our hearts.
Links:
Palestinians mourn Vittorio Arrigoni
Palestinians pay their last homage to Vittorio (video)
Portrait of an innocent
Statement of Vittorio's mother.
Restiamo umani.
''My people decide the truth in sixty countries every morning. And in every one it's different.''
Since March 29th 2006
1 comment:
Very sad to see an innocent soul gone.
I know Vittorio wanted Hamas to release Gilad Shalit - I hope that he is released soon as a goodwill gesture.
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