Dr. Michael Feige. Photo: BGU.

“How could bullets have penetrated this lively man… his humor… sharp anecdotes? How did yesterday’s talk in the hallway become our last?” a close friend of one of four Israelis murdered in cold blood on Wednesday night in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv wrote on social media, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. “Michael Feige, this good man, I can’t believe it.”

Feige, 58, who headed  the Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in the Negev, was killed when two Palestinian terrorists opened fire on the Sarona Market. The Ramat Gan resident is survived by a wife and three daughters, two of whom live abroad, and the remaining one is engaged to be married in the near future.

According to Hebrew news site nrg, a colleague of Feige’s from BGU, Prof. Oren Yiftahel, head of the department of interdisciplinary studies, said. “It is a very sad day for us. He was a very important researcher who delved into delicate subjects and extracted interesting insights from them. He was among the very best, open and attentive, a genuine democrat. He was a rare bird from that point of view. It is a great loss to our university.”

Another colleague, Dr. Avi Picard, called Feige “A dear man, rare in his integrity and honesty, and in his absence of ego. He had a healthy cynicism, and, as a sociologist and anthropologist, he had many profound and interesting insights about seemingly standard phenomena in Israeli society.”

Feige won the Shapiro Prize in 2010, for Best Book in Israel Studies — Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories.

The other three Israelis killed in the shooting spree were: Ilana Naveh, 40, from Tel Aviv; Mila Mishayev, 32, from Rishon LeZion; and Ramat Gan resident Ido Ben-Ari, 41.