A BBC newsflash reported on Friday that “the body of an Italian peace campaigner”, who had been taken hostage in Gaza, had been found. Vittorio Arrigoni, a pro-Palestinian activist, was abducted last Thursday. After his Palestinian captors had released a photo of him bound, blindfolded and bloodied, police found him hanged in a Gaza City house following receiving a tip-off.

My late rabbi and teacher, Hugo Gryn, who spent his childhood years in Auschwitz concentration camp, used to say that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who polarize and those who seek to build bridges. Vittorio Arrigoni was clearly one of the former.

A brief glance at his Facebook page shows what kind of a person he was. See here and here

The fact that the BBC should have chosen to refer to Arrigoni as a “peace campaigner” shows how Doublespeak can distort the truth and create undeserved sympathy for a despicable human being, who sought to incite and spread hatred.