Vittorio Arrigoni (photo by Facebook)

Vittorio Arrigoni was an NGO activist and was found dead in a house in Gaza City. His killing shows that ideological extremism has no consideration whatsoever of human life.

Vittorio Emanuele Parsi wrote in Italian newspaper La Stampa on 15 April 2011 that Arrigoni "was a member of International Solidarity Movement, an NGO that has supported the cause of the Palestinian people for years, is radically anti-Israeli and has openly taken sides for Hamas, the group that after winning the elections strongly advocated by the international communisty has controlled the Gaza Strip with an increasingly authoritarian grip for years. Right the fact that Ism and Hamas worked closely together ended up making Arrigoni a hated foe of both the Israeli rightwing and the ultra-radical Islamism, who regards the Hamas militiamen as "slowpokes". in the end far from favouring the creation of the caliphate preached by Bin Laden and too keen on maintaining their own personal power".

A Sussidiario.net interview to Michael Herzog, editorialist of the Haaretz daily, describes who the Salafites, the group which kidnapped Arrigoni, are: "The salafites are divided in different groups. The one that seems to be involved in this case is Tawhid wal-Jihad, which means 'Monotheism and Jihad'. They belong to the International Jihad amd Al Qaeda, and it is widely known that they identify themselves with these entities. In the Gaza Strip there are other groups which are members of Al Qaeda, and they do not only want to impose the Sharia, i.e. the Islamic law as a leading rule for the daily life of Muslims, something which is featured also in the programme of Hamas. Salafites also want the return to a far stricter, more traditonalist and extremist application thereof. They aren't open to a modern lifstyle, they want to establish an Islamic rule transcending the national State and englobing the whole Ummah, i.e. the Muslim community of all the world's Islamic States. Salafites interpret Islam in a truly extremist way, still more than Hamas".