The murder casts a bleak light on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Many Israelis and some Palestinians may talk about eventual peace. But Mer-Khamis, who embodied Israeli-Arab co-existence, splitting his life between Haifa and Jeninin in the end fell victim to those who would uproot both Israel and the Jews from the country, those who won the Palestinian parliamentary general elections in 2006. What the murder tells Israelis is that whatever moderate, or pretend-moderate Palestinian voices enunciate, peaceful intent and propagation will always, ultimately be drowned out, and overpowered, by the fundamentalist true believers and their Brownings.
Mer-Khamis supported a one-state solution; "If the Jews want to live among us [Arabs], ahalan wasahalan [they are welcome]", but the murder doesn't bode well for the prospect of either one or two states living in peace with each other.
Yesterday, another hater was killed in Gaza. ISM activist Vittoria Arrigoni who hated Israel with a passion was kidnapped by Salafist goons and apparently died in a bungled shootout with Hamas thugs. The Hamas Interior Ministry denounced the killing as "a heinous murder which does not represent our religion, values and costume" while the PA condemned the murder for harming the Palestinian cause. Others have blamed Israel but then they always do, don't they?
Whether the murder was just plain evil is apparently not an issue for either Hamas or the PA and, as far as some in our local media are concerned, because the story is a Palestinian bad news story it has been consigned to the Blank Pages.
The Age covered the death of the Italian ISMer with a story from the New York Times but while the article stated Arrigoni "had dedicated his life to people he saw as oppressed" it sort of forgot about the fact that he was also dedicated to destroying the State of Israel and was therefore a warmonger, pawn of the genocidal regime in Gaza.
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