Ukrainian refugee to America Iryna Zarutska and Israeli toddler Ariel Bibas both died excruciating deaths at the hands of strangers because of racial prejudice and ethnic hatred. Their youthful innocence inspired scientists to name butterfly species in their honor.
Hamas terrorists kidnapped Ariel Bibas on Oct. 7, 2023, along with his mother and baby brother. Jew-hating jihadis tortured and murdered all of them in captivity. Decarlos Brown Jr. fatally stabbed Iryna, whom he’d never met before, on a Charlotte subway before gloating, “got the white girl.” Ariel’s and Iryna’s tragic murders must never be forgotten, and that is why their names are now also the names of two butterfly species.
Five-year-old Ariel loved butterflies. He was a happy, enthusiastic child living in Israel near the Gaza border. But on Oct. 7, the Bibas family was torn apart. After killing Yarden Bibas’s wife and babies, jihadis gleefully informed Yarden of their murder. Then hordes of Palestinians, including many families, joyfully cheered the coffins of the babies before they returned them to Israel. In an effort to honor Ariel in a permanent way, the Hebrew Language Academy in April renamed the Jerusalem fritillary butterfly (Melitaea ornata) to be the Ariel fritillary.
The Eastern Knapweed Fritillary, once called the “Orange Jerusalem Butterfly,” in Hebrew has been renamed as Orange Ariel in memory of 4-year-old Ariel Bibas, who was murdered along with his mother Shiri and baby brother Kfir by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. Ariel loved… pic.twitter.com/hGD2G59Dz0
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) April 6, 2025
Like Ariel, Iryna Zarutska had her whole life ahead of her. She fled war-torn Ukraine for America, and fell deeply in love with her new country. But career criminal Decarlos Brown killed her because of her skin color, vocally celebrating his race-based killing afterwards.
Footage shows Decarlos Brown Jr. saying, “I got that White girl,” after m*rdering Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte..
— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) September 8, 2025
👀 pic.twitter.com/nCf9ucNONf
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Before he, too, fell victim to bloodthirsty leftist hatred, Charlie Kirk was calling for justice against Iryna’s killer and criminal justice reform (Brown was out on cashless bail). Charlie would have been delighted at the tribute from Harry Pavulaan, an avocational entomologist and president and director of the The Taxonomic Report. According to Newsweek:
The butterfly is called Iryna’s Azure and mainly flies in April in South Carolina. Pavulaan published a report about the butterfly back in September, which explains that the butterfly features light-blue wings on its top or side, but can also have a “distinct violet-blue tint.” Though the insect was first spotted in South Carolina back in 1985, it was not officially named.
Pavulaan told the outlet, “But when I saw the horrific video of Iryna being stabbed and then people ignoring her as she lay dying, that hit a nerve with me. It was the most disturbing thing I ever saw and it now haunts me daily. It's something you cannot unsee.”
Therefore, he “decided that she should be honored with a timeless tribute so that she is never, ever forgotten. People will know this butterfly hundreds of years from now, by Iryna's name.”
A scientist who discovered a new species of butterfly has named it Iryna’s Azure in honor of Iryna Zarutska, saying he wanted to ensure “she is never forgotten.”
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 26, 2025
“Her name will be forever immortalized as a butterfly,” he said.
In 2018, the scientist, Harry Pavulaan, traveled to… pic.twitter.com/SEHXBVxkjk
Butterflies are delicate, beautiful, and fragile, testaments both to the marvelous workmanship of the Creator and to the brevity of life on earth. How appropriate, therefore, that butterflies should bear the names of two wonderful young people who died far too soon and purely because of the way they were born.
