Being an anti-Zionist or an apologist for Islamofascists is not enough to keep you safe in the Empire of Hamas (aka "Palestine"). One Italian was taught this lesson in a very permanent way last week. Vittorio Arrigoni was summarily executed by Hamas, for which he had been an ardent advocate. He didn't learn those lessons from the past about consorting with murderous ideologues.
Like the Nazis and the Stalinists and the Maoists before them, Hamas will keep anyone alive so long as the ideology is advanced better by that person's life than by his death. But when a point needs to be made, brutal murder of a "friend" is often the result. Arrigoni ceased to be more useful alive than dead when Hamas decided that it needed to send a message that the Italian propagandist was "an enemy of Allah, was spreading Western immorality in Gaza" and "because Italy fights against Islamic countries."
Murderous ideologies produce murderous results, but Arrigoni apparently didn't understand that. He thought that he could live a rather profligate lifestyle amidst bloodthirsty primitives and be safe because he spewed vitriol against Israel and crooned love songs to the Palestinians. Hamas has officially denied official responsibility for this execution, officially, but the executioners are all Palestinian terrorists and at least informal members of Hamas. Hamas officials officially recited the reasons for Arrigoni's death (above), then gave a tepid disclaimer that "we did not order his death."
Arrigoni wasn't the first pro-Palestinian Hamas-supporter to be murdered, and he certainly won't be the last. The extremely violent nature of this particular branch of Islamic thinking is simply alien and unfathomable to muddle-headed leftists and anti-Westerners. The same Western civilization they despise protects them no matter how radical and unpopular their views. Propaganda is an abstract and intellectual exercise for them. But not for terrorists like Hamas. Propaganda is a very real tool of the state, subject to whatever will serve the cause that particular day. Inconsistency and former alliances are of no importance.
Italy has recently taken military actions against Islamic strongmen, and has voiced opposition to Muslim terrorism. Arrigoni was Italian. That's sufficient for Hamas to murder him. Although Arrigoni was not able to support a lavish private lifestyle like Italian leader Berlusconi, he was a known drinker and womanizer. That's also sufficient for Hamas to use Arrigoni as a propaganda warning against Westerners who think they can continue their decadent Western ways and pretend to be friends of Islam.
Arrigoni just couldn't understand the visceral contempt that most of his fellow Westerners feel for people who recruit ten-year olds to murder Israelis in cold blood. He couldn't understand why most of us could never consort with people who intentionally shoot missiles into Israeli civilian populations. He couldn't understand why Westerners want to suppress people who strap explosives to their bodies and blow up weddings, restaurants and children's schools. He understood the ideology, but not the reality. And for that, he paid with his life.
I don't celebrate Arrigoni's "death by naivete." But I do see the same trend here in America, encouraged by an administration that doesn't understand that murder is the inevitable result of Islamic fundamentalism. The left repeats the mantra "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter" without understanding that in that terrorist's mind the fellow-traveling leftist enabler just might be the next in line for execution. Perhaps they should consider Barack Obama's tendency to throw his friends under the bus when they are no longer useful. Though I don't believe for a minute that Obama would murder them, the mindset is the same. You're useful today, but what about tomorrow?
Monday, April 25, 2011
Lie Down With Hamas--Rise Up Headless
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13 comments:
LawHawk,
This isn't the first time this has happened. Is it?
I remember back when a terrorist hacked off Nick Berg's head. Still people don't think it could happen to them. javascript:void(0)
Don't know too much about this Arrigoni. Did he do anything memorable (Middle East-wise) that we would be aware of?
Also, not to speak ill of the dead, but I have a feeling that this guy learned about as much about his executors' true nature in the end as the Soviets who ran afoul of Stalin did about theirs. (Which is to say, nothing at all.)
Joel: This is a slightly different take on a similar subject. Berg was a moderate/liberal who was neither pro-Palestinian nor pro-Hamas (and that could be Hezbollah or Al Qaeda, or the Muslim Brotherhood just as easily). He was much more in the "moral equivalence" crowd. He thought "common decency" would protect him.
Arrigoni was all-out pro-Palestinian and in bed with Hamas. Rather than trust to human decency, he counted on their common beliefs to protect him. But he forgot the other factor--the inability of radical Islamics to count human life as having any value. Only goals matter, and anyone who gets in the way, friend or foe, is just gun-fodder. His underlying but consciously-abandoned Western belief in the loyal "band of brothers" led him to think he was safe. A fatal error.
T_Rav: Arrigoni was well-known in Europe, and known somewhat to Americans who follow Middle East developments in depth. He was a prominent member of the International Solidarity Movement (a pro-Islamic version of the defunct Communist International). He was a very visible proponent of eliminating Israel from the map, and drew crowds in his native Italy as well as the Middle East. The average American wouldn't know much about him, but the American pro-Palestinians and other radicals should, if they value their lives.
Arrigoni ran afoul of the Palestinian Salafist movement. Again, Americans may not be too familiar with that movement. It is a vicious radical outgrowth of Hamas. Its basic belief is that Hamas is too moderate. That is what gave Hamas its cover. It claimed that the Salafists had committed the murder and that they hadn't sanctioned it. But in reality, Hamas controls almost everything that goes on in Gaza. They are known to use the Salafists as their stalking-horses, and then often decry the action taken so as to look legitimate and humane.
In America, the Tea Party considers the Republican Party to be too moderate. But the Tea Party attempts to use persuasion and the ballot box, rather than cold-blooded murder to advance its more stringent agenda. There is no comparison between the Tea Party and the Salafists, but Hamas would have us believe there is.
When those who will not learn the lessons of history have it repeated, their education usually comes about two minutes too late. The discovery of the true nature of his executioners came too late for Arrigoni, and as you said, those who supported Stalin (and Hitler and Mao).
FYI: The picture accompanying the article is just one of hundreds demonstrating Hamas violence. It is not a picture of Arrigoni. He was found hanged in a terrorist "safe house."
Sadly, I think Daniel Pearl fits into the "death by naivete" category too. He thought he was protected by his journalists' credentials. Sadly, he found out too late that he was not.
All I can say is "oh well. . . should have known better."
This one takes the term useful idiots to a whole new level. Still, I have no qualms against driving Hamas "into the sea" to borrow a phrase from a respected national leader.
Bev: I think you're right. "Death by Naivete" would be the umbrella term, with "foolish trust in dubious friends" and "foolish reliance on rules of civilization" as the subcategories.
Tennessee: Yes it does. And the term "useful" ceases to be any protection the moment it become "no longer useful alive."
I'd just settle for driving Hamas six feet under the ground. Then bring in those Caterpillar tractors that the Palestinians fear so much.
Andrew: Agreed. So why the hell don't they learn (at least before it's too late)? It's not as if there aren't plenty of precedents in history for exactly this type of thing. I guess that for doctrinaire leftists and America-haters, willful blindness overcomes common sense.
LawHawk, thanks. I've got a clearer picture of who this guy was now. And now I'm also a little freaked out--what do you have to be to reject Hamas as not radical enough?!
Of course, the "death by naivete" thing isn't new. More than one member of the CPUSA wound up "getting disappeared" in Soviet Russia, after thinking membership in the country whose government they were trying to overthrow would protect them. Wrong.
T_Rav: In barbaric societies like that, all you have to do is look the wrong way at someone, or perhaps in Arrigoni's case, look the wrong way at somebody's sister or daughter. Believe me, Hamas looks like a cakewalk compared to some of the ultra-terrorist groups in the Middle East.
As for the commies, Trotsky managed to make it to Mexico and survive almost twenty years before the long arm of Stalin reached out to touch him. Oddly, one of the major splits was that Trotsky wanted to form independent communist parties outside of Russia which would later merge into the International. Stalin wanted the Soviet Russian Communist International to be the hegemonic communist government, which would spread its tentacles nation by nation. Of course, the real reason for Trotsky's unfortunate demise is that Stalin saw him as competition for the leadership of the party. That's reason enough to murder someone, isn't it?
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