italy 2005

 

Most antisemitic activity recorded in Italy in 2005 was expressed in propaganda and demonstrations. Militants associated with both the leftist and rightist/fascist camps took part in such activity.

 

the jewish community

Some 30,000 Jews live in Italy out of a total population of 57 million. The largest communities are in Rome (15,000) and Milan (10,000), and there are smaller ones in Turin, Florence, Livorno, Trieste, Genoa and several other cities. Jews have been present in Italy for over two thousand years and have developed unique customs and traditions.

The Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane (UCEI), founded in 1930, is the roof organization of Italian Jewry. It represents the community in official matters and provides religious, cultural and educational services. There are Jewish schools in two communities. The Jews of Rome publish a monthly journal, Shalom, and the Milan community puts out the monthly Bollettino della Comunità ebraica di Milano.

In August 2005 Rome City Council announced that it had acquired a plot of land next to the former residence of Benito Mussolini, which will house a museum dedicated to the Holocaust. “A new important place of remembrance will be added to those that recall the darkest years in the history of Rome and the entire country,” declared Mayor Walter Veltroni.

 

political organizations and groups

Right-Wing and Far Right Parties

Lega Nord (Northern League – LN) is led by Umberto Bossi, who was minister for institutional reform and devolution in the Berlusconi government until July 2004. The party received 5 percent of the vote and 5 seats in the 2004 European Parliamentary elections.

            LN has apparently abandoned its claim for a politically autonomous Padania (the northern region of Italy), after obtaining a promise from its coalition allies to enact a series of measures increasing sovereignty. The party espouses ethnic and populist regionalism, strongly tainted by xenophobia. With its aggressive style, sometimes peppered with direct insults, LN kindles social alarm regarding illegal immigration and ‘the Muslim invasion’, and assumes a direct link between immigration from non-European countries and crime and prostitution.

The party newspaper La Padania is close to traditionalist Catholicism, and also, to a lesser degree, to Lefebvrist (followers of Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre who refuse to accept the 1965 Second Vatican Council reforms) fringes of the Church and deals with many issues central to that culture, such as denunciation of ‘Freemason’ plots and defense of Catholicism as the religion of the masses.

While, officially, the party platform is pro-Israel and pro-Jews, some articles in La Padania seem to contradict this position. For example, in 2005 Catholic traditionalist journalist Maurizio Blondet joined La Padania as a columnist. The author of several antisemitic books, Blondet now writes a weekly column called “The Conspirator,” devoted to conspiracy theories. Blondet also publishes anti-Jewish articles almost daily on the online newspaper of the Catholic fundamentalist publishing house Effedieffe (www.effedieffe.com).

In January 2005, the LN student association Movimento Universitario Padano (MUP) hung posters attacking “Jewish Freemasonry” on the walls of the Catholic University in Milan.

 

The Muslim Community

Approximately 800,000 Muslims currently live in the country, accounting for about 1.2 percent of the population. Unione delle comunità ed organizzazioni islamiche in Italia (UCOII; www.islam-ucoii.it) represents ‘organized Islamism’ in Italy, and is a member of the FIOE (Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe), a roof organization for groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. According to unofficial estimates, 700,000 of the Muslim faithful and over 80 percent of Italy’s mosques and Islamic cultural centers identify with the UCOII. Muslims attending mosques are a small minority (between 5 percent and 15 percent).

UCOII does not hide its marked anti-Zionism, expressed, inter alia, in support for Palestinian suicide bombers and their ideology, and rejection of Israel’s right to exist − with Israel almost always referred to as the ‘Zionist entity’ (see, for example, the UCOII websites).

In 1994 the UCOII sponsored a translation of the Koran (Il Sacro Corano Inimitabile, Al-Hikma, Imperia, 1994, then Newton Compton, Roma,1996, 1999 and 2005). Islamist in interpretation, the UCOII version is anti-western, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian and opposes the emancipation of women.

 

The Far Left and the Anti-globalization Movement

Italy’s far left rarely makes use of traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes but adopts a strongly anti-Israel line that extends to demonization and even the delegitimation of the State of Israel. Therefore, while it does not attack the Jews directly, in keeping with its generally hostile approach to Zionism it attributes to Israel part of the negative symbolism that classic antisemitism ascribes to Jews and Judaism. Holocaust denial, too, is practically absent from its cultural framework. However the horror of the Jewish genocide is banalized by comparisons between the modern Jewish state and Hitler’s Germany. At a seminar on “The Left and Israel” (24 Nov.) Piero Fassino, secretary of Democratici di Sinistra, the main Italian left-wing party, stated that the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto as well as many far left clubs have “anti-Jewish positions” (see below). On 18 December, Il Manifesto published an article by Alì Rashid, first secretary of the Palestinian Delegation in Italy, who justified the extremism of Hamas and Iran and compared the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe) to the Shoah.

Parliamentary parties closely associated with the extreme left wing include: Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC), Partito dei Comunisti Italian (PCI) and Federazione dei Verdi (Greens) (see ASW 2003/4). These political forces have often organized events directed against the Jewish state and promoted media campaigns aimed at boycotting Israeli-made products, severing politico-economic relations between Israel and Europe and imposing sanctions on Israel. Many politicians belonging to these three political groupings have frequently denounced ‘Zionist racism’, as well as (then) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, branding him a ‘killer’ and an ‘executioner’.

The multi-faceted anti-globalization front is united through a fusion of pacifism, terzomondismo (third-world liberation movements) and virulent hostility toward the liberal economy, globalization, the US, Israel and the West in general. Fiercely pro-Islam sentiment characterizes part of the movement, sometimes taking the form of support for jihadist terrorism in the centri sociali (social centers frequented by radical left-wing youth).

Thanks in part to the active support they get from much of the culture and entertainment scene, anti-globalization groups enjoy enormous popularity, especially among young people. They draw their inspiration from many sources but have no acknowledged leader. They have no precise point of reference in parliament, although the PRC and the Greens pay close attention to them.

 

antisemitic activity

Most antisemitic activity in 2005 was in the realm of propaganda.

 

Fascist/Far Right/Xenophobic Propaganda

There were several antisemitic incidents associated with the Lazio soccer team, known for its far right position and identification with fascist ideology. On 10 April, Lazio fans waved swastikas and antisemitic banners in a game against the Livorno team in Rome’s Olympic stadium. Some shouted “dirty Jew.” Lazio was fined 25,000 euro for attacking the police after the game. Team striker Paolo di Canio also aroused protests when he gave the fascist salute in January and December 2005; he was banned for one game. Di Canio claimed that he was a fascist not a racist.

Pietro Melis, professor of Educational Sciences at the University of Cagliari, a supporter of animal rights and the Northern League, published an essay “Culture Clash and Scientific Metaculture. The West and the Natural Right” which includes statements such as:

The so-called Jewish temple was actually a big abattoir, where the so-called priests continuously poured the blood of still living animals over the altar. Therefore, it is right to declare oneself antisemitic towards religious Jews; nor can we complain about their death in the Nazi gas chambers.

The text, published in the Annals of Educational Sciences of Cagliari University, was adopted for study during the academic year but was dropped after a point of order raised in parliament by MP Gianfranco Anedda of the Alleanza Nazionale.

In an interview to the newspaper Il Riformista on 10 September Italian economist and MP Guido Crosetto, of Forza Italia, referred to “the influence of Jewish and American masons” in Italy.

           

Islamic/Arab Propaganda

The majority of Italy’s Islamic websites have close ties with the Islamic fundamentalist world, and therefore abound in anti-imperialist rhetoric and strongly-worded anti-Zionism. Sites such as Informazione di cultura araba ed islamica in Italia (www.arabcomint.com), Associazione Islamica Ahl al Bait (www.shia-islam.org), and Arab.it (www.arab.it), Il portale islamico italiano (www.islam-online.it) publish articles, photos and cartoons demonizing the Jewish state and Zionism. Comparisons between the Jewish state and Nazi Germany (and the inference of parallels between Zionism and Nazism) or South Africa under apartheid, as well as the claim of Jewish control of the media, are recurring themes. In addition, some of the negative symbolism which classic antisemitism ascribes to the Jews is transferred to Israel.

When asked to comment on the Muslim Council of Britain’s decision not to attend the official Holocaust Memorial Day event (see UK), Nabil Bayoumi, director of the An-Nur Mosque in Bologna, affiliated to UCOII, said:

Holocaust Memorial Day? Jewish propaganda. There is no use in talking about things which happened 60 years ago. Let’s talk about Palestine, about a whole people exterminated by the State of Israel.

When Jews ran away from Europe, the Arab world provided them with a haven; what did they do in reply? They bit our hand. Jews are all murderers. We must open our eyes and look at the new concentration camp, Palestine. We must have the courage to call murderers by name. The Crusaders didn’t last too long in the Middle East and Jews are digging their own graves. Six million dead Jews, I’d like so much to know if this is true. Personally, I have never seen six million names… and addresses.

Adel Smith, president of the Unione Musulmani d'Italia, concurred:

I fully agree with the decision of the British Muslim Community… The Holocaust has become a business guided by Zionists… The promoters of ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’, which should be rather called ‘Amnesia Day’, have embraced, out of plain hypocrisy, the racist idea, which is typical of talmudic Judaism, excluding any other people and race.

On the TV program Matrix, broadcast on 7 September, Bayoumi said that In Israel there were “no civilians and not even children are innocent… not all kamikazes should be excommunicated, especially the Palestinian ones.”

 

Left-Wing/Anti-Globalization Propaganda

Over recent years Italy’s far left has developed an increasingly anti-Zionist line on the Arab/Israeli conflict, to the extent that the Jewish state is viewed as the source of the world’s problems (see ASW 2003/4 and ASW 2004).

Fringe elements of the far left have even adopted theories of far-right Catholic fundamentalists. Edoneo.org, an anti-globalization website, has a page (http://smart.tin.it/rancinis/FIAMMA.html) devoted to articles by Catholic traditionalist journalist Maurizio Blondet (see above).

Leftist demonization of Israel has resulted in attempts to prevent representatives of the Israeli government (or anyone reputed to be a ‘Zionist’) from taking part in events at Italian universities. Prof. Daniela Santus, lecturer on “Israel-Palestine: Two States, One Problem” at Turin University, had invited an attaché from the Israeli embassy in Rome to speak in April. Left-wing activist students armed with smoke grenades and flares tried to stop the lecture. They shouted that he was a Mossad agent and supported a fascist regime, and that he should be blown up on a bus. Santos, who did not return to the university, was later told by the dean of the faculty that demonstrations would be allowed, unless they were violent. Posters describing Santus as a Zionist were in evidence for weeks.

A well-known professor of philosophy at Turin University, who signed a petition initiated by far left students to ban Israeli delegates from appearing at the university; accused Israel, in an interview to the Turin-based newspaper La Stampa (24 May 2005), of carrying out “a racist and inhuman policy, a downright extermination war which seems bound to end only when the other is annihilated.” He also justified Palestinian suicide terrorism (“Palestinians are forced to explode themselves”).

In February 2005 a lecture delivered by Israeli ambassador to Italy Ehud Gol, on “Perspectives of Peace in the Middle East” at the Law Faculty of the University of Florence, was disrupted by about 20 political science students who shouted, inter alia, “Israeli Terrorists Go Away,” and “Sharon Is a Murderer.”

 

Books

Adel (Associazione per la diffusione editoriale e libraria − Brindisi, reissued The Protocols of Elders of Zion and Ford’s International Jew, both formerly published by AR (Padova) at the beginning of 1970s. In July 2005, Effedieffe published the second revised edition (first edition 1999) of The Secret Rabbinical Teachings by I.B. Pranaitis. It also published Maurizio Blondet’s Israel, USA, Islamic Terrorism, which is based on conspiracy theories.