After all, you were hunted, hated, and destroyed, just like the forebears of the Israelis whose hands of friendship you slapped away and killed. You and women and children were murdered just like Jews have been murdered. And what happened? You pleaded for life. Just like Jews, you wanted to live. Why didn't you go down fighting? Why didn't Saddam Hussein? Could the death cult only appeal when others are dying?

You got the very same treatment meted out to Jews. Interesting, isn't it, that at the fatal moment you were talking about "the Jews" and not "the Israelis." I thought your circles distinguished between the two. I guess subtleties go out the window when you're about to die.

I'm reminded of the hard-core Stalinists of the 1930s. When the NKVD was about to execute them in the cellars of the Lyubanka, their last shriek, in a Satanic version of the Sh'ma, was, "Long live Stalin! Long live the Party!" To the very end they licked the hand they slayed them. Your maniacal Jew-hatred springs from the same spiritual deformation.

As Hamas aimed their rifles at you and your brother, I wonder if you thought, "The Jews aren't doing this to me -- my own people are. They're treating me the way they want to treat Jews."

It didn't have to be this way. You could have had a state, you could have integrated your economy with Israel's, as was happening before the Intifada. But instead you opted for slaughter of the Jews. And that tactic boomeranged, so now the Jews (Israelis, to be precise, to you they're just Jews) are watching as Hamas and Fatah dole out the treatment given to Jews. I'm sorry your life ended the way it did, Jamal, and that you never, in the words of John Lennon, tried to "give peace a chance."

I will not be saying Kaddish for you.