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REMEMBER THIS GALLERY OF FACES AND THEIRS ATROCITIES
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Family, friends and Israeli government officials gathered at a cemetery Friday to lay to rest a 16-year-old boy who was murdered near the West Bank city of Ramallah, after being lured by an Internet lover into Palestinian territory for a tryst. Israeli security officials confirmed the killing on Thursday.
According to news sources, Nahum had met his online lover on an Internet
chat site, and the "romance" blossomed as the two corresponded via e-mail.
Ofir Rahum, described by sources as a shy, studious "computer freak,"
was reported missing from his home in the coastal city of Ashkelon on Tuesday.
Israeli soldiers initially discovered the boy's bullet-riddled body by
the roadside of a nearby town the following day.
Nahum's friends subsequently told Israel television reporters that the girl had posed as an American visitor. Eventually, she convinced him to meet her in Jerusalem, instructing him to bring along a large sum of money.
After they met, the girl managed to convince Rahum to escort her
to Ramallah, which has been hard-hit by recent violence between Palestinians
and Israelis. As the couple walked through the town, Israeli army sources
said, a van stopped alongside and three "murderers lacking a human image,"
as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak later described the killers, shot
the boy several times.
Israeli security forces raided the home of Awana's parents in the
West Bank town of Bir-Nabala early Friday morning and arrested Awana, a
freelance journalist and former psychology student.
Mona Awana, 25, the woman believed to have lured Ofir to his death, was apprehended by the IDF and Israel Security Agency at her parents' home in the West Bank village of Bir Naballah. Rahum reportedly was not aware that Awana was Palestinian and believed she was an American living in Jerusalem.
Ofir's parents became concerned when he failed to return home on Wednesday evening and, after questioning his friends, discovered he had not been to school that day. The body, which the Palestinian authorities originally claimed was that of a Palestinian who had been shot by Israeli security officials, was handed over on Thursday to the Israeli authorities.
Rahum is the fourth Israeli to be murdered in the Ramallah area since the outbreak of the current violence over four months ago.
Hundreds attended Ofir's funeral at the Ashkelon cemetery. His school principal, Shosh Erez, described him as an outstanding student and a wonderful person, with a very supportive family. Ofir Rahum is survived by his parents and three sisters.
On Wednesday, January 17th, Ofir Rahum, a 16 -year-old Israeli, went to Jerusalem to meet a woman he believed to be an American tourist. An Internet buff, Rahum bumped into her in one of those numerous chats, where people let their fantasies fly. The woman, Mona Awana, 25, who called herself "Sally" on the Net, lured the young and naive kid into an intimate chat and eventually into a date, which turned out to be a fateful setup. Her friends from the Tanzim, the trigger-happy Palestinian off-shoot of Arafat's Fatah movement, ambushed him and killed him in cold blood.
The introduction of Internet into the Middle East raised hopes that with this wonderful way for people to communicate with each other -- defying borders and secret police -- old enmities would eventually wilt away. Thomas Friedman himself, in his "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," told stories about a Kuwaiti woman whose brother met his future wife on the Internet, and about a Qatari woman who secretly writes for a Gulf news Web site. If only everybody joined the "electronic herd", suggested Friedman, people wouldn't kill each other and drive business away.
Yet the cruel murder of Ofir Rahum shows that the Internet is no guaranty for anything. Chat room fantasies, like the misguided one Ofir conducted with "Sally", can turn out to be unpleasant and even fatal when the partners meet in real life. Israelis are beginning to think that the protracted peace process was just a fantasy, conducted in an American-mediated chat room. When they wanted to translate it into real life, Arafat met them with sniper bullets and bus bombs.
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