English
An Insider's Story Of Gaza
The Cynical Use of Israel in Italian Politics
Interview with Fiamma Nirenstein
- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been far from a marginal issue in Italian politics. A few decades ago the Italian Left started to use the conflict as a strategic instrument to build domestic political alliances. The Communist Party, which in the 1990s reconstructed itself as the Democrats of the Left (DS) with which most former communists affiliate, used its criticism of Israel for bridge building with the Christian Democrats. These were Italy's largest parties up to the early 1990s.
- The 1967 Six Day War was the turning point for the Left's stance toward Israel. Until then, Italian Jews' identification with the country's Left was not problematic. Israel was perceived as a socialist country with emphasis on the myth of the kibbutz's importance. This was reinforced by the deep impact of the Holocaust. This mindset well suited the communists as the Soviet Union could be represented as the great victory of good over evil.
- It was only in the early 1990s, with the fragmentation of Italian politics after a spate of huge corruption scandals, that major forces supporting Israel emerged. These were led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the Forza Italia party that was formed in the early 1990s. The new Italian Right has to a large extent relegitimized pro-Israeli positions in Italy. Yet almost the entire Left and large parts of the Catholic world still retain their anti-Israel views.
- Italy presently has a left-wing government. Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema was one of the strongest opponents of Israel when he was prime minister from 1998-2000. The current government may again take extreme anti-Israeli positions.
"It is not by chance that the radical shift in the European Union's stance toward Israel occurred in a declaration at a 1980 conference in an Italian city, Venice. It was issued when the PLO still explicitly said that it wanted to destroy Israel. Nevertheless, the Venice Declaration demanded the creation of a Palestinian state.
"Nineteen eighty-two witnessed another defining moment in the history of the Italian Left's attitude toward Israel. On 9 October, a group of Palestinian and other Arab terrorists shot at and bombed the main synagogue in Rome, killing one-year-old Stefano Tach and wounding thirty-five others. The Jewish community refused to allow participation in the funeral to the anti-Israeli politicians who had inflamed the atmosphere. President Sandro Pertini, a socialist who had also condemned Israel, embracing the Palestinian cause, needed the intervention of Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini of the small Republican Party to be permitted to attend. Spadolini had earlier refused to receive Yasser Arafat when he was in Rome."
Fiamma Nirenstein is a correspondent and columnist for the Italian daily Il Giornale and the weekly Panorama. She has written or edited ten books and anthologies, most of which deal with Israel and the Middle East. Nirenstein also teaches at Luiss University in Rome and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca.
Israel: An Instrument to Build Political Alliances
She observes: "However surprising this may be, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been far from a marginal issue in Italian politics. A few decades ago the Italian Left started to use the conflict as an instrument to build domestic political alliances. TheCommunist Party, which in the 1990s reconstructed itself as Democrats of the Left (DS) with which most former communists affiliate, used its criticism of Israel as an opportunity for bridge building with the now-defunct Christian Democrats and with the Catholic pro-Third World movements. Until the early 1990s, communists and Catholics were Italy's largest forces.
"For decades after World War II there was intense competition in Italy between the two major currents of the Left, the communists (PCI) and the much smaller Socialist Party (PSI). Pietro Nenni, who was the PSI's leader and died in 1980, consistently took pro-Israeli positions. He saw in Golda Meir and her colleagues not only fellow socialists but also pioneers of socialism in a nonsocialist region.
"Bettino Craxi, who led the nowadays largely defunct PSI from 1976 to 1993, had been Nenni's pupil and took over his party faction. Craxi became the most important socialist personality in the post-Nenni period. Over the years he distanced himself from the party's traditional coalition with the communists and joined a number of coalition governments with the Christian Democrats.
"These coalitions created a need for Craxi to show that he still belonged to the Left. To rebuild his credibility as a defender of human rights he formed an alliance with Arafat. To some extent the Palestinian terrorist leader became Craxi's left-wing fig leaf.
"Over the past decade the Italian Left, which has been losing strength, has started to seek alliances with pacifist and other extreme left-wing movements. This coalition was partly constructed at the expense of Israel."
A Confused Reality
Italian politics has been very confused over the past decades, including attitudes toward the Jews and Israel. Nirenstein notes that portraying the Italian political and also intellectual reality requires piecing together many fragments. "One episode that tells much about the origins of this confusion occurred when the Einaudi publishing house rejected the manuscript of Primo Levi's book If This Is a Man, which later became famous.
"This was an editorial decision by Natalia Ginzburg, another left-wing Jewish writer. She considered that Levi was giving an overly Jewish character to the battle between good and evil in the concentration camps. One of Ginzburg's books, Lessico Familiare, tells the history of a wealthy, Jewish, bourgeois family in Turin in the years before the racist laws that began the Jews' persecution by Mussolini's fascist regime.
"Ginzburg describes the family in a light and nondramatic way, as if Jewish identity is something minor and optional. Being a Jew, for her, is a bridge to a much more important larger identity, that of resistance to fascism. The linkage between the two was obvious at a time when the fascists promulgated racial laws. Ginzburg's book, which totally denied Judaism's essence, became an Italian literary icon."
Criminalizing Israel
"Yet Primo Levi, who committed suicide in 1987, and Ginzburg found themselves together in criminalizing Israel. Ginzburg made the often-quoted statement: ‘To the sunburnt sabra, the Hebrew soldier with the weapons in his hand, I prefer the bent Jew who studies the Bible, the fragile, weak, and sick Jew.'
"Such remarks were typical for many Italian Jewish postwar intellectuals.Italian Jewry was looking for a home in the society. The Italian fascists' complicity with the Holocaust meant this could only be found on the Left. In 1988 Ginzburg went so far as to define Israel as a fascist state in the communist daily Unità.1
"Levi was more ambivalent. On many occasions he showed a great passion for Israel. His book La Tregua tells how, at the end of the Holocaust, its group of Jewish protagonists leaves for Israel."
The Catholic Church
In one of her books Nirenstein notes that Italian Jewry is the oldest Diaspora community and that some even claim the Jews are the only true remaining descendants of ancient Rome. This Jewry's history has had many glorious moments. Yet Nirenstein remarks, "It has one vice that sometimes has shown itself to be fatal: its desire to remain in the mainstream."2
She now observes: "After the war the Jews did not have much choice regarding their political alliances. Italy has never fully apologized for its anti-Semitic racist laws. It is more correct to say that Italy has psychologically excised these from its conscience. It is a Catholic country, which means it gives itself absolution for its sins. The country's historiography was partly changed by the historian Renzo De Felice. He portrayed fascism as something very different from National Socialism, as a kind of elite ideology. This is false, even if the Italians behaved less cruelly than the Germans and Hitler was much worse than Mussolini.
"Yet De Felice well demonstrates that fascism was a mass movement, built with a large Catholic population that widely supported anti-Semitism. The Italians still want to proclaim Pope Pius XII to be holy despite his misbehavior during the war. This fits the tendency of the Catholic mentality, historiography, tradition, and population always absolving itself. These people are willing to consider the Nazis as criminals but not to think deeply about their own conduct.
"The Polish Pope John Paul II initiated a very different attitude toward Israel and visited the country. On the other hand, he had a penchant for pacifism and other distorted ideas, such as failing to recognize how evil terrorism is.
"The question is how the present German Pope Benedict XVI will develop. He realizes that the Catholic Church is under worldwide siege by Islam. The Pope knows he has to address this struggle. It is quite possible that deep in his heart he thinks he is obligated to convert all Jews. On the other hand, because of the necessity to confront radical Islam, he might become a much better friend of the Jews than his predecessor."
Until 1967
Nirenstein explains that: "Until the Six Day War of 1967, the Italian Jews' identification with the country's Left was not problematic. Israel was perceived as a socialist country with emphasis on the myth of the kibbutz's importance. This was reinforced by the deep impact of the Holocaust. This mindset well suited the communists as the Soviet Union could be represented as the great victory of good over evil.
"There were other factors that reinforced this attitude. Palmiro Togliatti, the postwar leader of the Italian Communist Party, saw Israel's 1948 war as a major anti-imperialist victory over the United Kingdom, which was philo-Arab. He viewed positively the return of the Jews from the Diaspora. Within the PCI, a Jewish senator, Umberto Terracini, also played an important role. He tried to move the party toward a special relationship with Israel.
"At an anti-Nazi congress in Tel Aviv in May 1967, Terracini said: ‘In the twenty years of social and moral oppression by fascism the antifascist conscience of all Italians of today [has been created].'3 Terracini mentioned the Soviet Union's decisive contribution to Europe's liberation from the Nazis. He added that the principles of socialism, resistance, and antifascism were equally valid for Italy and the Jewish people."
1967: The Turning Point
Nirenstein notes, however, that the 1967 Six Day War was the turning point for the Left. "A typical incident occurred at the communist newspaper Paese Sera. Its editor in chief was Fausto Coen, a Jew. At the end of the war, he prepared the front page with the lead article carrying the headline ‘Victory.' Unità's offices were also in the same building. Alberto Jacoviello of Unità had given much space to the Soviet Union severing diplomatic relations with Israel. Later he also attacked Israel as having initiated a war with the Arab states.
"When Jacoviello came into the office of Paese Sera he saw the headline in question, which was typeset in lead, the method used in those days. With the only arm he had, he threw the article to the floor. For a journalist such as Coen, this is the worst thing that can happen. Later he had to resign.
"Soon many communists were writing anti-Israeli articles in Unità. The journalist Maurizio Molinari, author of an excellent book titled The Left and the Jews in Italy, 1967-1993, describes this very succinctly:
On 14 June 1967, Unità issued its hard and definitive judgment of Zionism: the birth of Israel was no longer the result of the Jewish resurgence in which such a big part was played by Marxists and socialists, but the result of a technocratic and rationalist movement strongly supported by American banks, full of high-class pioneers, born conquerors, which was invading the Middle East.
"In the following months it became clear that the die had been cast. Anti-Israeli articles multiplied in Unità. Romano Leda asserted that Israel's Jewishness precluded coexistence with the Arabs. Piero della Seta, a Jewish communist, saw no other solution than to replace Israel with a binational state. Jacoviello characterized Israelis as foreign conquerors, while Arminio Savioli embraced the Fatah movement's official statements about Israel's destruction and replacement by a Palestinian state in which every reference to Israel would disappear.4
"Molinari also explains how Enrico Berlinguer, then secretary-general of the PCI, adjusted its position to that of the Soviet Union, which sought to reinforce its links with the Arab and Muslim world.
"In every crisis the Italian Left opposed Israel's actions. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, which was initiated by Egypt and Syria, found them on the side of the Palestinians and Arabs. In 1974 Lelio Basso, then a PSI member who later joined the small extreme-Left party PDUP, called to expel Israel from UNESCO. In 1976 when an Air France plane was hijacked to Entebbe, Israel freed the hostages. The Italian Left protested this as a severe aggression against Uganda.
"After the mass murder of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians in the Sabra and Shatila camps in 1982, Arafat visited Italy for the first time. He came to the entrance of the parliament with his revolver in his holster, but the guards stopped him. In 1984, Craxi went to visit Arafat in Tunis-even though Arafat was then already wanted by the Italian justice system for supplying arms to the Italian Red Brigades terrorist organization."
A Personal Story
Nirenstein illustrates these developments with a personal story. "As a young girl I was sent by my family in 1967 to Kibbutz Neot Mordechai in northern Israel. It was a leftist environment. The North Vietnamese were these kibbutzniks' heroes, and they even made donations to them. I spent the Six Day War there. I was then both a communist and a Zionist, like so many other Italian Jewish youth.
"I didn't see any contradiction in this. When I returned to Italy, I found that I was no longer accepted as a Jew because I was unwilling to submit to the new rules and definitions of the Left. I had suddenly become a rebellious, repressing, occupying Jew. In other words, I had been transformed into an imperialist. Many other leftist Jews had a similar experience.
"Around 1968 and the student revolution, Third World sympathies exploded on the campuses. There were also many Palestinian students at Italian universities and their propaganda efforts were very successful. Often Italian students not only had a keffiyeh around their neck but also around their brain. That is still true of many of them."
Lecturing at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in February 2006, Nirenstein said:
In 1982 I signed a petition calling for the Israeli army to leave Lebanon. I was no longer a communist. I had already left the party in 1967 because of the emergence of the Red Brigades' left-wing terrorism. That signature torments me until today. It reflects the false idea to which I had succumbed after tens of years of propaganda that Judaism is leftist. Many other Jews had been affected by that misconception. Among the 150 other signatories were [Natalia] Ginzburg and Primo Levi, as well as the Jewish Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini.
There were some non-Jewish left-wing intellectuals who distanced themselves from the pro-Palestinian positions. Among them were the author Italo Calvino as well as the moviemaker Federico Fellini and the poet and moviemaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. The latter said once after an attack on Israel in Unità that he felt the same pain as if he had been reading the most stupid bourgeois paper. His left-wing position was very clear also in saying that to be true friends of the Arab people one had to help them understand the political stupidity of Nasser's policies.
These were exceptions, however. The intellectual mainstream was that of Eugenio Scalfari, a left-wing liberal who was the founder of the important weekly Espresso, which always took anti-Israeli positions. At a certain point he fired the journal's Jewish editor in chief, Arrigo Benedetti.
The New Right Confronts an Anti-Israeli Bloc
"In the Italian Catholic world there is an important left-wing camp that is also Third Worldist. Officially the Catholic Church has revised its position toward the Jews. It has removed the expression ‘perfidious Jews' from its prayers.
"Yet also for the (Catholic) Christian Democrat Party, Israel became a long-term political instrument. For the left wing of the Christian Democrats, it had to pay the price of their ideology. Israel was branded as imperialist, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab. It became part of the capitalist, modernist, globalized world that the Church strongly dislikes.
"In this complex way a compact but large anti-Israeli bloc took shape in Italy that went from the extreme Left deep into the Christian Democrat sphere. It was only in the early 1990s, with the fragmentation of Italian politics after a spate of huge corruption scandals, that major forces supporting Israel emerged. These are led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the Forza Italia party that was formed in the early 1990s.
"His main ally was former Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, who reestablished the Italian neofascist party as the conservative party Alleanza Nazionale. In that process he eliminated many extreme fascist members and publicly condemned fascist anti-Semitism. Fini finally was received by the Israeli leadership in 2003 as a sign that his neofascist past no longer made him taboo.
"The new Italian Right has to a large extent relegitimized pro-Israeli positions in Italy. Yet almost the entire Left and large parts of the Catholic world retain their anti-Israeli views. These also are shared by liberal intellectuals. It is a tragic phenomenon that intellectuals can no longer cope with reality. Probably never before, not only in Italy but throughout the whole Western world, has the intellectual elite so totally abandoned its supposed role of leading the people in understanding events."
Future Governmental Anti-Israelism
Nirenstein does not rule out that Italy may again take extreme anti-Israeli positions. She mentions her contacts with the former communist leaders now recycled as left-wing democrats. "Piero Fassino, the current DS secretary-the Italian term for party leader-came to Israel in the last period of Arafat's leadership and stayed at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. I met him and we hugged each other as Italians do. Though we now have very different worldviews, we are old friends from the same generation of politicians and journalists who grew up in the communist youth movement.
"I asked him: ‘Why are you going to see Arafat? You know that he is a major terrorist. Not meeting him is the only way to show your disapproval of terrorism.' He answered: ‘Not meeting Arafat is impossible.' Fassino said it with a twinkle in his eye, adding, ‘I know that the Israelis are basically right and that they have constantly been attacked since 1948. But we belong to the Left, and we are Italian, and that means drawing logical consequences connected to our main political line: two states for two peoples, land for peace. Meeting Arafat is necessary.'
"Former DS leader Massimo D'Alema, today foreign minister, was one of the strongest opponents of Israel when he was prime minister from 1998 to 2000. I think he really strongly rejects-even if he tries to suppress it-the Jewish state.
"If he were to read this, he would say: ‘I hate Israel? Are you crazy? Who could hate Israel?' Yet he cannot be fair: he will always as an ex-communist side with the Palestinians, whom even today he imagines to be innocent, oppressed, and exploited. As soon as the new Palestinian unity government was formed, he called for resuming relations with the Palestinian Authority. I think he knows deep in his heart that Israel is right and the Palestinians are wrong. Anybody who knows Italy realizes how illogical this double-tongued approach is. It is an attitude of: ‘We are Italians, not Americans, we do not have to be logical.' It is a sort of traditional refusal of responsibility: you do something wrong, go to the church, confess it, and you'll be absolved.
"Today Italy has a left-wing government. In the summer of 2006, D'Alema as foreign minister visited bombed parts of Lebanon together with Hizballah representatives. Since taking his new position he has maintained that calling Hamas a terrorist organization is too simple. That is one more reason I believe the present Italian government could again take extremist positions against Israel."
Interviewed by Manfred Gerstenfeld
* * * * *
Fiamma Nirenstein, born in Florence, is a correspondent and columnist for the daily Il Giornale after many years at La Stampa. She also writes a column for the weekly Panorama and is the author or editor of ten books and anthologies, most of which deal with Israel, the Middle East, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and Judaism. Her last book is Israele siamo noi (Israel Is Us). Her book Terror: The New Anti-Semitism and the War against the West has been translated into English. For the past five years she has taught an annual course in Middle Eastern history at Luiss University in Rome, and she now also teaches a doctoral-level course at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca. She is a member of the board of the Rome-based Magna Carta Foundation, an associate of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and an associate member of the Hudson Institute.
* * * * *
Notes
1. Maurizio Molinari, La Sinistra e Gli Ebrei in Italia, 1967-1993 (Milan: Corbaccio, 1995), 131. [Italian]
2. Fiamma Nirenstein, L'Abbandono: Come l'Occidente ha tradito gli ebrei (Milan: Rizzoli, 2002). [Italian]
3. Quoted in Molinari, 33.
4. Ibid., 34.
The distance between Rome and Prague
Interview on the Jerusalem Post - by Ruthie Blum
One on One: Making the case for commonality
http://www.jpost.com/servlet
Fiamma Nirenstein rushes into her kitchen to brew some Italian coffee before we sit down to discuss her latest best-seller, Israele Siamo Noi [Israel Is Us; Rizzoli Publishers], which sold out in its first week and is already on its second printing. On the table, amid a mound of newspapers - The Jerusalem Post prominent among them - is a laptop with at least three documents on which she is working simultaneously: one, an article she needs to finish by evening to meet her deadline for the Milan-based daily, Il Giornale; another, a lecture she is preparing for her upcoming trip to Rome; yet another an entry for her popular blog, http://www.fiammanirenstein.com/.
The music of the bubbling espresso pot is accompanied by the repeated Outlook Express jingle signalling she has new mail and the ring of her home and mobile phones.
"Pronto," she answers each, practically simultaneously, talking to one caller in Italian and the other in Hebrew. This she does while ushering me into the salon and gesturing that I take a seat on the couch. The spacious, sunny living-and-dining room may as well be a multilingual Mideast studies library, for all the books on the subject lining the walls, and the dozens more piled high on other surfaces - a number of which she herself has either authored, co-authored or contributed to.
Given the room's decor, it may as well be located in Florence, where Nirenstein was born and raised; in Rome, where she lives and works (and visits her 25-year-old son, Binyamin) half of every month; or in Tuscany, where she spends her summers. The panoramic view of the Holy City from the floor-to-ceiling windows is the only give-away to the location of Nirenstein's home in Jerusalem - which she shares with her Israeli husband, Ofer Eshed, a TV news cameraman.
"Israel is a country of heroes," Nirenstein says in Italian-accented English, now turning her undivided attention to our hour-long interview. "My book tries to destroy the vile myths perpetrated about its being 'colonialist' or an 'apartheid state' on the one hand, and about terrorists 'being militiamen fighting for freedom' on the other."
Nirenstein does this, she explains, by dissecting what she calls the "sick words" that have infiltrated the language and consciousness of an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe - terms she and a group of Italian academics plan on collecting for a glossary, "because such word abuse prevents even the possibility of understanding what Israel is all about."
She comes by her passion for Israel - and familiarity with the conceptual distortions characteristic of "autocratic ideologies" - honestly. The daughter of Holocaust historian and long-time Al Hamishmar correspondent Aharon "Nir" Nirenstein (who came to Palestine in 1936 from Poland, and went to Italy in 1945 with the Jewish Brigade) and Corriere della Sera journalist Wanda Lattes, Nirenstein was an ardent communist in her youth. And, just as Zionism was part and parcel of her upbringing, so too, she says, was she caught up in the "mental corruption" that caused her generation to look to the likes of Che Guevara for inspiration, while attributing the world's ills to "capitalist imperialism."
Nirenstein, who has been reporting from Israel for the Italian print and broadcast media for nearly two decades, after years of being an international columnist (recently, she moved from the Left-leaning La Stampa to the conservative Il Giornale), is a European version of a neocon. Her journey across the political spectrum - like that of her American counterparts - began as a response to the radical climate of the 1960s in her own country. Unlike theirs, however, Nirenstein's was paved with an added complication: To side with anything resembling the right wing in post-World War II Italy meant aligning with the fascists.
Still, Nirenstein asserts, "You cannot run away from reality indefinitely. Ultimately, you have to know what's right in terms of values, and be courageous about standing up for them."
For her, this endeavor has taken the form of examining, reporting on and writing extensively about terrorism - and defending Israel in the face of it. "This costs something, of course," she says, alluding to the bodyguards who pick her up from the airport every time she lands in Italy, and shuttle her from place to place throughout her stay there.
During her most recent stint to promote her book - an appeal to Europeans to emulate Israeli democracy - Nirenstein says she was pleased about the positive reception it received, but stops short of being optimistic. Shrugging and smiling wryly, she sighs: "I'm afraid Europe will only wake up if terrible things happen that none of us would wish on ourselves or on anybody else."
Why is it significant that your book has received so much attention in the mainstream Italian press?
My previous [eight] books have also been given extensive coverage, but what's significant in this case are the headlines. "Israel: A model for all of us," and "Israel: A model for democracy."
Even the newspaper Corriere della Sera - which isn't known for its pro-Israel attitude - titled the review: "Israel - a laboratory of democracy for all of Europe."
I got the sense that this book released a cork in European public opinion. Many people have approached me and whispered in my ear, "I am with you."
Does this mean that the general attitude in Europe is changing?
The attitude in Europe is terrible. It is a public who admires [EU Secretary-General Javier] Solana for telling the Americans that we must be ready to make an agreement with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.
It is a public with ideas like one expressed by a reader of my blog, who wrote that the Israelis are the ones who launch American missiles at the poor Palestinians whose only weapons are stones.
Americans and Israelis may know that the world is unsympathetic to them. But they don't understand how deep the lack of European understanding of terrorism goes, nor how deep the rejection of the word "war."
War to Europeans, regardless of the context, is anathema and has been since World War II. For Europeans, whoever wages a war is a criminal. Even those with a more sophisticated point of view always start from this point. So, for example, another person responding to my blog wrote that for two soldiers who were kidnapped on the Lebanese border, the Israeli army destroyed all of Lebanon by bombing it incessantly and killing women and children.
You see, Israel is the country in the world most covered by the press, yet about which the least is known. This is why I wrote the book. In it, I try to describe what Israel is; what its war is all about; how it is possible to be at war and a democracy at the same time; and most importantly, how Israel is the avant-garde of the Western countries. These are crucial points to convey to Europeans, for whom democracy and war simply do not go together.
Even though World War II saved European democracy?
First of all, there is a lot of revisionism going on now in Europe about the American intervention in WWII - even as far as to view it as imperialistic.
Second, since Europeans consider democracy to be their invention, it should be something they're very attached to - like a beloved wife. But history has demonstrated how they betray her all the time with great pleasure.
Let's face it: Europe is the cradle of all the autocratic ideologies of our time - fascism, communism… There is a real fascination in Europe with assertive autocracies and ideologies. And it goes beyond the usual justification for terrorism - as though it is the result of the poverty and exploitation of victims of colonialism. It's a genuine fascination.
I see the dangerous seeds of a culture of violence in Europe being inspired by the Islamic model - exactly the way that my generation was inspired by [Marxist guerrilla leader] Che Guevara.
There is something that indicates not only a growth of a culture of violence, but worse than that. As we had a sexual revolution, we might now have a violence revolution. You know, beheading people, and all kinds of unthinkable phenomena.
Are you saying, then, that Nazism was a natural or logical product of Europe?
What I'm saying is that there is an illness in Europe that's always been there - one whose main symptom is anti-Semitism.
Has the post-WWII taboo against expressing it expired?
Well, anti-Semitism in Europe today is very high, and has taken an even sharper rise since the Second War in Lebanon. According to statistics, anti-Semitic incidents all over Europe have multiplied.
Not only those perpetrated by Muslims?
Not only by Muslims. There are neo-Nazi, neo-Fascist and also leftist global movements that are very anti-Semitic - though they would never acknowledge it. They call it anti-imperialism, and say it's simply criticism of the State of Israel. But if you look at the double standards with regard to civil rights, you know they are being false. We come from a culture of civil rights, which became totally distorted by the communists, who took all of the civil rights for themselves and denied them to others. During the Cold War, civil rights became the medal you received for being on your way to communism. That was the way the communists saw the Third World and Arab countries. So terrorist, autocratic, fascist governments, like the Arab ones, became recipients of civil rights, though they were not upholding them at all.
In my book, I tell my own personal story of mental corruption during the time I was a communist. I also speak about the sexual revolution, and about the way we saw the reconstruction of Europe. When we witnessed Italy's reconstruction in the '60s, we didn't see the enormous and marvelous effort being put into creating structures and infrastructures in Europe in general and in Italy in particular. After the complete disaster and havoc that fascism wreaked on Italy, it was now blossoming. But when we saw houses and neighborhoods and factories going up, what did we see? Capitalist exploitation. The gap between the rich and the poor. We didn't see the fantastic ability of the leading classes in Italy to make the country one of the world's first powers.
Yet you were also a feminist. Did you not see sexual and other forms of freedom for women being allowed to blossom, as well?
Yes, but it's more complicated than that. The burst of freedom that Italian women were experiencing during those years mainly affected the Catholics. We Jewish girls were a different story. I saw my mother working, for example, and my grandmother was a free-thinking member of the bourgeoisie.
But I remember an incredible confusion that created the impossibility of living a happy couple life, and much divorce. We thought that love and passion were exactly the same thing. So, when passion became pale, we simply got divorced. We had children here and there from different marriages. We created situations that were very hard to manage. We made our lives very difficult. And what emerged from all that was a terrible selfishness. Couples in Europe now, particularly in Italy, rarely have more than one child. Meanwhile, the immigrants are having many.
Which brings us to the issue of demography - the buzz-word in Israel that has been framing the debate since 1967. What about the demographics in Europe?
I read that Austria - one of the most conservative countries in terms of public life and behavior - in a few years will have a white Christian minority. Incredible.
But it's more than that. People have asked me, "Is it true that 'Israel is us'?" And I say no. Today, we are not able to wage a war, as Israel is; we are not able to have the kind of vibrant and stable democracy that Israel has; and we are unable to behave with internal solidarity the way Israel does.
Is Italy really the same as other European countries? After all, Italy sent troops to Iraq…
It also took them out of there.
Still, you say that people whisper in your ear about being on your side. The book must have touched a nerve.
The Italians are much milder than other Europeans in the way they express their views. They are neither vulgar nor violent. This is something that makes the discussion at least possible.
On the other hand, don't forget that a third of European Jewry was deported during the war, and Italy was no exception. It had racial laws exactly like those of Germany. Furthermore, today Italy has a large, opportunistic, politically correct petit bourgeoisie.
So, when [Silvio] Berlusconi was prime minister - though Italy had different international politics, particularly regarding the US and Israel - nevertheless, even his own television stations (which are filled with leftist journalists) were broadcasting material that wasn't pro-American or pro-Israeli. In fact, one of the most important TV shows discussed the possibility that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the Americans themselves because of the Jewish conspiracy. And this is Berlusconi's TV!
Hegemony is something that still almost completely reigns (with the exception of my newspaper, Il Giornale, and a few others). In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, what dominates is a politically correct media.
So, maybe the Italians are not aggressive in an argument; maybe they are polite and civilized. But when you sit at a dinner party with them, their basic assumption is that Israel is wrong and the Palestinians are right. And that terrorism is a minor phenomenon which pales in comparison to the domination of capitalism.
In spite of their witnessing the carnage produced by radical Islamic violence? And in spite of their seeing certain behavior on the part of immigrants to their countries? Has this not created a racist backlash on the part of many Europeans?
Of course, there is a quiet tendency to what I call "democratic racism." In fact, I wrote a book with this title when this dangerous phenomenon started. And it is dangerous because the intellectual elite have not been elaborating the issue properly, since political correctness forbids them from doing so. So, what they say is, "These immigrants are welcome here. We need to have a multicultural society. Terrorism and the madrassas that educate to it are a minor phenomenon. Islam is one of the three monotheistic religions."
On the other hand, there is mumbling on the part of ordinary people to the effect that, "We can't stand them any more. Our streets aren't safe.They steal our money. They take our jobs." Which is unjust, of course. And which is why the absence of an intellectual bridge between these two positions is dangerous. It's about time that we created one, because if we don't, the mumbling will become a violent mob shout.
How can this intellectual void be filled?
For example, by telling immigrants, "If you come to our country, you won't marry four women; you will marry only one."
I mean, you know, Italy is a country in which women have been fighting for centuries for freedom - and now you have women living in homes with other wives, and subject to honor killings and female circumcisions. Which is all due to this ill idea of multiculturalism.
I'll give you an example of this illness. Recently on Italian TV, a famous Italian journalist defended [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar [believed to be harboring Osama bin Laden].
How he did this was by reading a fictitious letter he had composed as though he were the Mullah Omar - to make a point about how one could put himself in the shoes of the other side. In this letter, the "Mullah Omar" said: "You call me a terrorist. But is it I who is a terrorist, or is it George Bush bombing our country and killing people at weddings? And when we hid bin Laden here, we told Bush to give us proof that he indeed perpetrated the World Trade Center bombings." Then, he ends by saying: "It's true I live with four wives, who are covered from head to toe. But what would you tell me about your own women, who walk around with their underpants showing?"
During the week that this broadcast appeared, I was teaching a Mideast history class [at Luiss University in Rome], and we were talking about terrorism. I asked my students what they thought of the equation this journalist made between Bush and Mullah Omar. And they said they found it quite interesting. I asked them why, and then a discussion ensued. While it was going on, the other person teaching the class with me interrupted to say, "Fiamma, don't you get it? These kids don't want to face the fact that there is terrorism in the world, because they are not ready to fight. There is no compulsory conscription in Italy, and they will never join the army."
So I turned to the students and asked them, "If you were threatened, like Israel is, would you go into the army?" And they all said no. Then I asked them if their brother or sister were being threatened, would they go into the army, and they said no.
Then I thought about what I wrote in the book about Israeli youth. And I thought of the stupid saying by Bertolt Brecht, "Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes."
Well, I think, "Happy the land that is in need of heroes," because it gives the people the possibility of loving and being committed to something. Of course, I'm not referring to warriors against democracy and for conquering the world, like the Islamists do. I'm referring to wars of defense, like those of Israel. When you speak to Israeli boys and girls - even during this time of the Winograd Committee findings about the failures of the government and upper echelons of the IDF - you realize how unique they are. None of this stops them from wanting to serve in the army. Nor does it stop them from wanting to go to pubs at night. This duality is a fantastic creation of the State of Israel. Indeed, Israel is special for the fantastic men it has created. Which is why I feel so bad whenever I see it despised and destroyed by Israelis themselves.
Give an example of this self-destruction.
One recent example is the Israeli film, Beaufort [directed by Joseph Cedar and based on the novel by Ron Leshem, about the last battle at the Beaufort Castle during the first war in Lebanon in 1982]. It's a good movie, in the sense that it gives you the sense of who these Israeli boys are. It destroys the international myth of the ferocious Israeli soldier. The trouble is that it introduces a different myth: that war is the stupid invention of the upper echelons in Israel, in order to be assertive about incidents which could just as easily have been ignored.
The movie portrays the suffering of the soldiers - suffering that was certainly genuine - but these soldiers appear weepy and mournful. I know Israeli soldiers. They laugh a lot; they make a lot of jokes. And they not only love this country, but they are ready to die for it. And this isn't mere rhetoric. In fact, earlier this month, I went to the North to observe the situation as it stands nearly a year after the war.
There I met a 25-year-old officer who, with a shy smile, told me: "I know it must sound funny to Italian ears, but I'm ready to die for the country."
In the movie, you see these boys full of fear and a feeling that the whole thing is senseless. Senseless?! - since they left Lebanon, the Hizbullah has been growing and building up its arsenal!
The movie also has Haaretz's Gideon Levy interviewing soldiers' parents on the TV, and one main theme comes out of those interviews: We don't blame anybody; we don't blame the Hizbullah; we don't blame the terrorists; we blame ourselves for not giving our children the sense of how important their lives are and how they must not die for any reason. Now, that's true that children must not die for any reason - please go and tell that to [Hizbullah chief Hassan] Nasrallah! Why are you explaining it to the people being assaulted?
So, the aim of your book is to tell anybody who believes in liberal values that Israel is a model to identify with and emulate?
Yes. And to stop paying so much heed to all the corruption allegations and other assaults against Israel.
Speaking of which, how do you respond to Italians who point to widespread corruption in the Israeli government?
What I say is that people are not perfect. And that democracy involves the circulation of information that exposes everybody. I'm sure that in Syria and in China, there are scandals of this kind. But we don't know about them.
In Israel, as everywhere else, human nature is what it is. When I'm asked which errors I admit to Israel's having committed, I say that Israel has made many mistakes, but for the most part, they are political ones. One can argue about whether it was right or wrong to withdraw from Gaza. My own opinion on that has changed, by the way, because originally I thought it was a good idea, but now that I have seen the results, I say, "Mea culpa, mea culpa." I think I'm not alone in that.
Isn't the response to your book an indication that Europeans are beginning to grasp what you're talking about?
No. I'm afraid they'll only wake up if terrible things happen that none of us would wish on ourselves or on anybody else.
Having said that, there is some level of awareness that the Islamist jihadists hate not only Israel, but also the rest of the Western world.
Ahmadinejad has his Shihab-3 missiles pointed at European capitals - which they realize to some extent. But still, things are not really getting better.
What has dominated European life is laziness on the one hand, and loneliness on the other. There isn't the kind of solidarity that exists in Israel - where everybody has something to say to everybody else - even if it's done in a hutzpadik manner. In my book, I describe a traffic jam on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, with one driver asking another how much he's selling his car for; another accusing someone else of not knowing how to drive; another hitting on a woman. The point is that in Israel, there is a sense of communication - and of being in the same boat. This is something not found anywhere else.
And it is something Israel should be stressing about itself: that it is a country full of solidarity - one which is so insanely democratic that the likes of Azmi Bishara went to the Hizbullah and the Syrians immediately after the war and passed on information to them - as a member of the Knesset! It's a country whose prime minister and defense minister are being treated like dishrags, and exposed to the public like clowns, as a result of a government-initiated commission of inquiry!
It is said of Italians that they have a lot in common with Jews - in terms of their mothering and nurturing, etc. Doesn't this mean that they would be naturally more susceptible to the ideas you are expressing?
[She laughs] My son says that he suffers terribly, because he's got a mother who's both Italian and Jewish.
But otherwise, I don't think there's any real cultural similarity- not in modern times, anyway. Since 1945, the Italians haven't had the experience of having to fight to protect their children, for example. World War II vaccinated them. But also, their army - other than the Partisans - was a fascist one that sided with the Nazis, which caused a double sense of disaster, not only about war, but being on the wrong side of the war.
So, on the one hand it's true that people are starting to sense that [radical] Islam is against democracy. On the other, it's not clear whether this feeling will develop any further.
You see, there is a complete disconnect going on. Using my students as an example again: They say, "It's true that we are a superior culture because of civil rights and women's rights and freedom and democracy. But, precisely because we are superior, it is we who have to find a way to an agreement."
When you tell them, "But they don't want an agreement. They are a revolution. Think about Ahmadinejad. He doesn't want an agreement. He's a revolutionary. It's his revolution," they say, "This is impossible!"
They think reaching an agreement is always possible.
Don't Israelis also think that?
Fewer and fewer, I think. Look at the Winograd Report. At the end of the day, what is the issue? The issue is that Israel must still win the war. In other words, what's wrong with [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz is that they fared badly, not that they went to war - that they were incompetent to lead a country surrounded by enemies.
But it's not only Europe that doesn't understand this. I fear that Israel doesn't understand this about itself the way it should. Israel is at the heart of the greatest adventure not only of this century, but of this millennium.
Professor Toaff's Blood Libel
Professor Ariel Toaff's book “Passover of Blood” has kicked up a storm in Italy for claiming that there is truth in the old myth. The book has been slated by historians, but the fact that a Jewish professor has “proved” the blood libel has overjoyed the Ahmadinejads of this world Fiamma Nirenstein (2/19/2007) This article is published with the kind consent of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Ariel Toaff's book “Passover of Blood” recently published by Il Mulino claims that there is truth in the blood libel myth. Exposing the murder and ritual use of blood by Jews hundreds of years ago is presented by the author as a necessary act of “truth” and “courage”. Rarely, however, has there been a shallower conception of the words “truth” and “courage” in a study that raises so much heated political interest, as in Toaff’s book. Related Articles The New Anti-Judaism And the World Turns a Blind Eye Scandalous Historical Method Toaff is the son of 91 year old Rabbi Eliyahu Toaff, the former Chief Rabbi of Italy, who certainly is not pleased with this affair, which comes after a lifetime of devotion to the Jewish community. The size of the scandal caused by Toaff’s claims, and the possible consequences of his unanticipated conclusions, are unrelated to the science the author brings to justify his claims. In fact Toaff only produces inductive evidence, which relies on documents already published in the past, namely testimonies wrung through agonizing torture from Jews accused of the blood libel, and on the twisted assumption that the correlation between the testimonies proves they are true. In fact, the opposite is true as proved by the many testimonies of women accused of “witchcraft” many of whom confessed to having sexual relations with the devil. The correlation shows a desire to provide the narrative demanded by the torturers. An Outrageous Libel Utterly Rejected It took time, but the case of the child from Trento who was supposedly slaughtered to use his blood was rejected by the Catholic Church itself and even the child’s sainthood, which had existed for hundreds of years, was repealed. On reading the essay by Catholic historian Massimo Introvigne “Catholics, Anti-Semitism and Blood: The Myth of Ritual Homicide”, published in 2004, we can see that Toaff uses the texts selectively: for example, Introvigne rejects outright the idea Toaff raises in his interview with Il Messaggero, that Pope Clemens XIV believed that cases of two boys ostensibly to be used for ritual sacrifice, were true. Blood Libels in Widespread Current Use Toaff knows full well that what he has done has political implications, his publisher, Il Mulino knows it, and so does Luzzatto, the professor who presented the book with great excitement to the Italian press. Only last week, I twice had the misfortune to come across the myth that Jews use gentile blood for ritual purposes (not a lot for someone involved in the Middle East and anti-Semitism): the first involved Ariel Toaff’s book, and was on February 5, when I saw the text for the answers given in an interview with Lebanese poet Marwan Chamoun shown on Lebanon television (Tele-Liban):, “How many Lebanese, how many Arabs know the Talmud? Or the book “Secret Government of the World”, or Blood for Jewish Matzos”, which tells the story of the murder of Tommaso da Camengiano, a Sicilian with French nationality who lived in 1840, in the period of Muhammad Ali Pasha? The book was written by Syrian defense minister, Mustafa Tlas. In it you can find all the documents of the French diplomats and the consul in Lebanon […] the priest was killed in the home of Daoud Al Harari, head of the Jewish community in Damascus […] his blood was collected and the rabbis took it. The Jews could honor their God because when they drink human blood they can get closer to God. Where are you diplomats and politicians? Whey don’t you use these historic claims which are given to us on a silver platter? […] there are 20 or 30 books of this genre […] I bought 2000 copies […] when somebody gets married, instead of chocolate, I give him a copy […]”. This is history, the texts speak for themselves. Jews are vampires. Chamoun is not the only person who thinks that texts which historically prove the blood myth must be learned very well: the above text, the penmanship of Syrian defense minister Tlas, “proving” the Damascus blood libel of 1840, has been reprinted at least ten times. Tlas is a lawyer who attended the Sorbonne. He maintains that his book casts light on the secrets of Judaism: “Since 1840, every mother tells her son ‘Don’t to far from home. The Jew can put you in his sack and suck your blood out for Jewish matzos’. In the 1970s, in the weekly newspaper Al Mussawar, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia claimed that when visiting Paris, the police found five cases of children whose blood had been taken by the Jews […] this is history. Can anyone doubt this noble testimony?” Professor Toaff is Playing the Innocent Ariel Toaff is sorry that his work has caused such dismay. Strange. He knew perfectly well that the blood libel myth is one of the most aggressive and most exploited forms of antisemitism in our times. It didn’t only cause pogroms, torture, and murder in the past. It is not a closed episode from history locked away in the safe deposit of the past; the blood libel is alive and with us today and a whole lot of people will just love it that a Jewish professor with that name seems so at ease. Jewish demons and vampires don’t only appear in thousands of caricatures in the Arab world. The picture of Ariel Sharon biting off the head of a child and pouring his blood over his exposed belly while saying “What’s all the fuss. I’m just kissing the boy” is a British caricature that won the most important competition in British humor in 2002. The host of pictures showing Israeli soldiers drinking the blood of Arabs and of “atrocities” committed by the Israeli army…revive the story of “martyred” San Simonino and the blood drinking Jews, though this time it is the Israeli Jew who is on trial, despite the fact that the church has repudiated the blood libel myth. As an aside, the Christians should also beware of “new” manifestations of blood libels. In 1842, the radical poet and philosopher Georg Freidrich Daumer wrote to the philosopher Feuerbach about the “cannibalism of the Talmud”, and referred to blood libations on Purim and “mysterious tales of rabbis and cannibals”. He promised Feuerbach “astonishing information” and claimed that his research showed that the Christian Jesus belonged to a Jewish group which used to drink blood. Weapons for Antisemites in the Next Decades Sometimes it is amazing to see the tendency for self-destruction of some Jews. If it wasn’t enough for us that 150 Jewish signatories in England lately called for the freedom to “criticize” Israel; that the Neturei Karta went kissing Ahmadinejad in Teheran, and that Noam Chomsky and his cronies try to show that Zionism and the State of Israel is a mistake, we have just added a new name to the list. Toaff’s “revelation” and the glowing description (“a glorious history book”) by Professor Sergio Luzzatto in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has given millions of antisemites around the world a good reason to toast. His words offer an outstanding weapon for the coming decades. The fact that a Jew, the son of a rabbi, and a professor of such pedigree has “proven” the truth behind the blood libels will fill the many Ahmadinejads of this world with joy.
A Great Misunderstanding
Ms. Rice, while wisely withholding new subsidies to the Palestinian Authority until Hamas decides whether to give up its armed struggle, proclaimed, that the Palestinian Arabs are a "wonderful people." Which might be true psychologically, or aesthetically. But certainly not politically unless you think that their vote for Hamas is just a matter of chance. I don't deny that one day the Palestinians could become a wonderful democratic people. I don't know about the future. But I do know about today. I know from personal experience the reasons why they voted for Hamas, and they are not good.
I went to the West Bank to report on and interview Palestinian Arabs before, during, and after the elections. In the market of Hebron, a pretty woman, Raeda, 22, with a veil down to her eyebrows, books and notebooks under her arm, told me that she prefers Hamas because it's a religious party that will reestablish the Islamic rule on all the land occupied by the Jews. With a lovely smile she also told me that in her life she wants to teach, she wants to help people; and that she wouldn't mind if her son (she has one already) becomes a martyr. For the sake of Islam and Palestine she would sacrifice herself and everybody she loves.
Hamad Hassan Zama'ari, an old man with an Arafat->
Ahmad, 22 years old, said: "We have been negotiating for the last 15 years, and it served nothing. Only resistance can help".
A group of children told me, almost singing, that: "Religion says that there is no peace with the infidels." Where did they learn that? At school. What do they think about martyrs? All of them want to be one.
Ali Zamar, the boss of Fatah in Hebron, told me that Hamas is very strong because people are ignorant and superstitious; Hamas looks for consensus with simple and dogmatic sentences, like the one that proclaims without doubt that Israel must be destroyed. "They want Hamas so that they will not to be obliged to make peace" he told me plainly.
Naef Rajub, a very important leader of Hamas, answered my questions about the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying "Well, he was not very diplomatic when he said that he wants to sweep Israel out of the map. It was precocious. He had to wait until the bomb were ready."
In front of a voting commission office in Bethlehem, Naji, from Hamas, told a very young policeman from Fatah that for him, pubs, cinemas, beers, girls can all disappear. He will not miss them. He needs only Islam, and Hamas will give it to all the world.
I cannot forget also the several professors, lawyers, pharmacists, dressed in duffel coats and scarves like revolutionaries of La Sorbonne. A professor of urban planning, Aziz Dued, enthusiastically explained to me that all of these intellectuals were candidates for Hamas because they are proud of Islam as a universal religion. Universal? Yes, because being the last revelation, the Koran includes the Torah and the Gospel. Hamas has two fights going, said Professor Dued, one for the Islamization of the world and the second for Palestine.
In a word, it's a pathetic joke to try to launder the Hamas victory as if the Palestinian Arabs simply wanted to vote against the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and as if religion is not so important because the Palestinians are traditionally a secular people.
From what I saw and heard, it was an Islamist and violent vote, with deep cultural roots in the Palestinian education system and in the messages of the Palestinian Arab leadership during the intifada, from Sheik Yassin to Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah candidate who wrote an electoral open letter full of religious reminiscences.
The reality is that secularism since has declined since the 1970s. Even Arafat used to excite the crowds with his Al Aqsa Intifada and his Al Aqsa Brigade, invoking the name of the mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The martyrdom has an undeniable religious meaning and religious support. It will be very difficult, whatever the Hamas leadership will try to do now, to bury the deep ideological meaning of Hamas's electoral victory. It's a pity, it's regrettable, but no statement renouncing violence or terror or acknowledging Israeli's right to exist can cancel out the religious and violence-oriented education of the past decade that culminated in the election.
The Post-Gaza Rift
There was, once upon a time, not such a big bunch of people, who shared a common and not so easy struggle: spreading the truth about Israel. All these friends have always been aware that Israel faces a tough fight for survival and that its people have been heroically resisting an ideological and prejudicial hate that has been directed against them since before the Jewish state was born.
All kind of blood libels and conspiracy theories have been painted about Israel, and many new ones have been invented since the starting of the last intifada, in 2000. Israel's friends know that there are humorists that have been depicting Prime Minister Sharon as a naked monster eating children and that the mayor of London thinks that much of the evil of the world comes from the mere existence of Israel. Israel's friends know that the international press imagines (still!) that Muhammed Al Dura was killed on purpose by some evil Israeli soldiers, that Jenin was a massacre perpetrated by the Israeli army, that the real source of global terrorism is the "Israeli occupation" and that the cruelty of Israeli soldiers and the violation of international law by Israel is endemic and permanently rooted in the nature of the Jews.
But nowadays, the struggle for truth seems to be less important. Part of the group of good people that had been spending their lives on testifying about the reality of Israel is now spending now much of their time and energy in explaining that its prime minister is a criminal, a traitor, an old corrupted guy that put all of his efforts in cheating his own voters to implement the infamous disengagement.
I think I have some right in expressing my opinion about what's going on here, just because I've spent so many years as a journalist in Israel, and because my opinions, my books, my articles, have caused me some sense of loneliness and something more, too. I will say, about the disengagement, without spending too many words to explain why (I've been doing that so many times, and with so little success) that yes, I can stand the idea that what we see is a genuine attempt to achieve something good for the state of Israel.
I have a deep respect for the settlers, love their courage, and have written a lot about their pain and sense of injustice. I fully understand the incredible personal and political suffering of the Gush Katif and I fear the extreme bet of giving something good to people that did them and all the Israeli people so wrong. But I know that this makes most of my friends angry, that the bunch of people that is fighting for the truth about Israel since the disengagement doesn't have the same truth anymore, that having spent so many years trying to tell the true story of Sharon and before him of Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, now I have to hear again about him - the present prime minister of this country - the same silly (forgive me) accusations that I have heard about him from the left all over the world.
No, for the settlers Sabra and Shatilla are not so important, but still he is a bulldozer, a hawk against his own people. I have seen graffiti and caricatures that are not less abominable than the monster one; whenever his name arises I feel cornered, the silence falls on the conversation, just as it happens in Europe whenever you raise the subject of the Palestinians. If you don't believe that Mr. Sharon is a criminal, a dictator, a thief, a crazy peace-monger, if you as a matter of chance think that his choice was just, dictated by the idea (questionable, maybe, but certainly nothing to do with the adjectives I listed above) of being part of the general worldwide war that President Bush is for the first time waging against terrorism; if you believe, as he says, that he simply thought that to be a minority of 8,000 in front of 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs is problematic from the democratic point of view, well, if you dare to think this, you might be a traitor of the Jewish people. You become, regardless of who you are and what you have been doing for so many years, a coward. Now, even when you have some reasonable doubts about the strategic value of all the operation, just because the non-religious critics mostly have a security problem (and so do I! I don't expect at all that terrorism will slow down, I expect harsher struggles) still there is basically one thing in favor of Sharon that needs not to be forgotten: Among the Israeli prime ministers, Sharon is certainly the one that has fought terror with the most enduring and tough determination.
He has been hated, blamed, cursed by all the international and Israeli leftist community. It's him who has put in jail about 8,000 terrorists or people related to terrorism, and who, in a uniquely daring move, ordered the killing of Sheik Yassin.
And if I can try to foresee the future, Sharon will be very tough again. And then, again we will be together, I hope, to try to convince the world that terrorism has to be faced and fought with strength and determination, and that Israel is doing its duty also for the sake of the general fight against the awful enemy that the world faces today.
People like me, journalists, intellectuals, writers, and simply friends that engage their life and their credibility not on the common good sense or the politically correct, but on depicting the story as it is, will find themselves again side by side to defend Israel and its struggle against terrorism. But if it is Sharon the general that will wage it, after this burning wound, shall we be able to do it?
Scenes From the Disengagement
First, it's not for a journalist to confess that sometimes words are not enough to express what you have seen, certainly not for somebody who has gone through a lot of terrorism and wars as I have. But after this week in Gaza, I'm afraid I'm not nearly able to tell the story: the tears and cries of the settlers losing their homes and their greenhouses, their schools and synagogues, their friends and their neighbors, the beauty of their sea and the heroism of resisting the loss of their beloved in terrorist attacks for something that now doesn't exist anymore, the end of their Zionist dream of making the Gaza dunes blossom, the disappearance of the entire meaning of their life in the hands of their Jewish compatriots, the silent pain and the shouting rage.
But I can give you a hint by recalling a man from the Matzilia family who had just set on fire his own beautiful two-story villa adorned with purple bougainvillea and acacias, the fire coming out from doors, windows, and attics, his family standing on the inflamed roof, and he was there, at my feet, lying down in front of his door face down, a peace of earth himself, his old father trying to turn him around and give him some water.
I can recall a 10-year-old boy pushing a big soldier out from his door, arms outstretched to the big man's chest, glasses going down on a little nose full of freckles and tears, asking, "Please not my home, not my mom"; and in the evening the same boy, going around alone among the empty houses and mumbling, "I want to go home," while all the buses were leaving forever his birthplace, Morag. I can remember a group of residents of Netzer Hazani, while an enormous bulldozer enters the settlement, destroying the barricades set on fire and proceeds rolling over the marvelous grass that will return to sand in a second, crying to the sky, "Adonai, Adonai," as if God could suddenly wake up and operate the miracle they had been expecting in vain for months.
It's hard to say, but it was difficult to avoid thinking about the never ending suffering of the Jews all along the centuries when the soldiers had to drag from their synagogues many crying old men wrapped in their prayer shawls while they kept reading their prayer books.
And there has been much more. But here is the consolation that came to me, even in those hours, from the mere nature of the state of Israel, in the shape of its unique and amazing creation, its soul, the Israel Defense Force and the police. The amazingly sweet, understanding, and yet firm, professional, and morally clear attitude of the Israeli soldiers and policemen created a sincere, warm but uncompromising relationship with the very people they were removing. This will be forever an example for all the armies of the world. And a guarantee that, in a democracy, you can continue speaking and protesting and praying (oh, how many words were spent from the two sides, as if a single soldier who refused the orders could stop the disengagement) without shooting and using force, except in very few cases. The disengagement has been the image of a morally motivated democracy in motion.
In Netzer Hazani, where the disengagement was relatively calm, there was a group of citizens who barricaded themselves inside a little house. The young commander, Udi Lav, invited them to discuss outside: "You have to come out now. I have the order to operate the disengagement, and sooner or later, today, I have to fulfill the orders."
Reply: "But this is the home we have built with our own hands, our forefathers were here, what will you tell your sons, will you tell them the story of how you dragged out your Jewish brothers from the land they have given so many lives for?"
Lav, standing in the very hot sun, putting a hand on the shoulder of his interlocutor, answers: "Brother, I understand you, but you have to come out of here, I'm so sorry, I cry with you, but now it's time to go."
Lav looks tired and keeps his hand on the shoulder of the settler.
Reply: "You know I'll not go, because I'm right, and I obey to the Law."
Here Lav has a little smile. He puts his hand on the Israeli flag embroidered on his shirt and says in a soft voice: "You know that I'm right. I'm simply right because it's me actually, obeying the law, I represent law and order, I represent a decision of the parliament of the state of Israel, you cannot mix politics and religion." He says it without any rhetoric, but just as a matter of fact. There is no place for theocracy when you live in a parliamentary system, and this has nothing to do with respecting every citizen's belief.
That young guy in uniform sweating in the sun is a flashing light of democracy, and I feel honored to have witnessed the dialogue. Even his interlocutor now stands in silence, even if he certainly still believes that the Torah is over anything else. But he too is just an Israeli, like Lav. And Lav, with his respectful attitude, shows that he knows that without the Torah, the Jews and therefore the Jewish state would not exist. They both know they have very good reasons to stand together in front of the past and in front of the future.
Many soldiers discussed for long hours with the families, until they were able to help carry out their bags.
I witnessed a young official sitting on the floor of the house of the family Hillberg, whose son Jonathan was killed in 1997. Under his portrait, he listened in tears to the bereaved mother Broide, who leaves not only her home but also her son's tomb in the village, and then asked permission to say something: "I only want to tell you that I love our country no less than you do. Please believe me. I and my friends serve in the most distinguished units, just like your son, of whom I have heard so much about. We fight the terrorists just like he did. I'm here just to help overcome any possible fracture among our people, we cannot allow it, please let me help me bring your bags out."
Broide let him take her bag all along a path toward the synagogue, where she and her husband Shaul have walked every day for so many years. There, with all the citizens, the soldiers sat and cried and sang.
In Kfar Darom, one of the toughest places in Gush Katif, a young girl, after telling a young soldier for the thousandth time that "a Jew doesn't deport a Jew," started shouting at him the second basic slogan, "Look into my eyes." She told him so another thousand times, while the young soldier was simply patiently looking at her. When he could not stand it anymore, he asked her, "Don't you see? I'm just looking into your eyes, blue eyes, you have to look at me, too."
The girl, a religious, modest, pretty girl who probably has never looked much into boys' eyes, suddenly saw the soldier, his 18-year-old face, his different culture, his embarrassed, sad expression, the Israeli flag on his breast: "Wow," she said with simple honesty, "it's true, you are looking into my eyes, we see each other."
Muslim "Moderates" and terrorism
No women were there, no mothers, or sisters, or wives. Egyptian women almost don't live in Sharm. The family and children of the workers are in the villages near Cairo, and their beloved men come to visit for one week once a month. Sharm is inhabited by a couple of thousand military people and public officials that President Mubarak, just like President Sadat, keeps as a defense vanguard near his own villa; or by poor workers, waiters, drivers, plumbers, and cooks - lots of day laborers that serve the enormous tourism business. Only a large group of very poor workers, the other face of the holiday town of Sharm el-Sheik, have been the killed and the wounded here.
You understand many things about terrorism when you speak to them; and you understand also, unfortunately, why we will never be able to count on what we call "the moderate Muslims" for the war against terrorism.
What you learn about terrorism from the poor of Sharm, if you still didn't know it, is that its cruelty has no limits, no excuses, and no historical explanation, but only a cold ideological background.
The terrorists know that the men they kill, wound, and destroy economically have nothing to do with imperialism, occupation, Palestine, Iraq, colonialism, and all the other explanations that the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, finds to explain their crimes. They know who the hundreds they are going to kill are: people who sleep 10 (exactly!) to a room, with no bathroom, one toilet, and one little kitchen; people who define themselves as "good Muslims," go the mosques once a week, pray three times a day, and when they forget, says Khaled, it is because they work too much or it is too hot; people who after the terrorist attack tremble because they will have no work anymore, now that the tourist season is destroyed and this will make them lose their $100 a month wage in the best cases for a family of five, six, 10 children.
These guys are the typical "moderate Muslim" that the holy rage of the jihadists destroys with fury, the one infected by the contact with the West and also the one that in our Western dreams and in many European and American experts' analyses should suddenly rise against the extreme Islam, their enemy.
So, let's test this thesis and ask: "Do they hate terrorists?" The answer is "Yes, very much so," and they really do, - they close their fists and watch in rage and repeat to me that they deeply hope that Mr. Mubarak will catch them all, will put them in prison, will kill them. Are they ready to fight them? Yes, at every level, with their hands, if requested, and with demonstrations that actually, while I'm in Sharm, suddenly appear in the hot streets and just in front of the cameras of the international press: "Down with terrorism," "We are against terrorism"...
But then, if it's so, why can the great moderate Muslim world not really fight their own enemy? They themselves give me the answers: "Bin Laden? The Muslim Brotherhood? Certainly the terrorist attacks are not their work, no! This is a lie. A Muslim could never do this. And if they say they do it in the name of Islam, they are not Islamic; or, most likely, this shows, like the television says, that someone uses the name of Islam just to hide the real perpetrators."
Anyhow, Islam is out of the question, And then, we ask again, who is behind the attacks? Well, you know the answer, they smile with a smart expression. Mahmoud, who comes from a periphery of Cairo, where he now cannot go back because he doesn't have the money for a bus ticket, knows the answer, and so do all his other friends, about 10, all from the same town, now all together as one, standing in the corridor of the Hospital of Sharm, no air-conditioning, their friend Khaled in bed with a wound in his back ("I was lucky. Nadem had both of his legs amputated," Khaled says).
They know the answer, yes: the television said that only the Israelis and the Americans have a real interest in seeing Egypt on its knees; General Fuad Allam said that the perpetrators of the Taba attack of October 2004 were apparently linked to the Israeli security forces, and so, supposedly, it is today. Also Al-Jazeera and even Al-Arabia interviewed "experts" to confirm this point of view. A big, beautiful guy with a red T-shirt just puts it down bluntly: "We know only what the television tells us."
It's suddenly clear to me that here television is a metaphor for "knowledge" and for "power": printed paper, school texts, Friday sermons in the mosques, everything is "television" for this guy and his hundreds of millions of "moderate Muslim" friends. And everything points to the Israeli as an object of hate. Their poor condition - almost of slaves, of people almost without civil rights and work protections - makes the growth of their knowledge of how this are going a danger for the fascistic power there rules them.
So, we cannot count on "moderate" Arabs, not even on the group of youngsters that I meet later, the girls dressed just like ours: They repeat to me, still with a smart little face, "It cannot be a Muslim, it's certainly the Israelis and the Americans." The dream palace of the Arab, after the terrorist attack in Sharm, just like the thousands of attacks in Iraq and in Israel, is still there; the summer camps of Hamas still teach that it's good to kill the Jews; several madrassas work full time as centers of recruitment; the television broadcasts an "analysis" that charges the Mossad and the CIA with mass murders. The dictators of the Arab countries, in this case Mr. Mubarak, don't let Khaled know who the guys that cut their legs are. So, Khaled can be as "moderate" as we want, but so long as that fascist culture of hate is there, we can count only on ourselves.
Old and Tired
Last Saturday, Mahmoud Zahar, the current leader of the terrorist group Hamas, said he had just met "a very important adviser of the German government." The Hamas spokesman, Mushir Al-Masri, clarified: "Every 10 days we receive visits of European envoys from all countries. We explain to them that our resistance is legitimate and should not be interpreted as terrorism" and that "Hamas has no intention of changing this course." The course intended is the destruction of Israel, terrorism, bombings in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and the replacement of Mahmoud Abbas with a radical Islamist leadership.
On June 15, the European Union acknowledged that it has been maintaining "low level" contacts with Hamas. The American and Israeli administrations protested that Europe should strengthen the moderate Palestinians rather than appease the extremists. "Appease" is the same old correct word to describe the Munich-like European behavior that looks all the time for new ways of expressing itself. In the time of "democratization of the Middle East," the new vehicle of this policy is the terrorist organizations.
Europe finds itself in the darkest and narrowest corner in its historic efforts to manage a powerful Middle Eastern policy in opposition to the American one. Clearly, Europe cannot decently refuse the great American novelty, democratization. So, in order to play a relevant role, now it embraces the disturbers, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., in the name of its beloved eternal strategic choice: stability. But stability does not exist anymore. A great revolution under the flag of freedom is taking place, and America is the magnet of this revolution: Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas are received in Washington, Egypt is changing its laws, Gadhafi has given up his nuclear ambitions, the Gulf countries are introducing feminist ideas, even Iran is sending signals, and the Lebanese-Syrian-Iranian question, even if poisoned by the Hezbollah, is moving toward a change.
The role of Europe in all of this is null and void. The wind of change blows from an American policy that aims at putting an end to terrorism through democratization. But for Europe, the term "terrorism" is far less important than the term "stability." And now Europe once again repeats itself, while praising democracy and freedom (of course, how else in the cradle of democratic values!), it embraces violent organizations, continues in its idea that we ourselves are the cause of terrorism, carries on the belief that the democratic potential of the Arabs is null, and insists in its total lack of interest for human rights. Europe plays the game of democratization, smuggling into the new processes the terrorist organizations.
Europe wants to remain a player in the great Middle Eastern revolution. But it is extremely harmful to legitimize totalitarian and terrorist forces such as Hamas and the Hezbollah, which are collecting weapons, training suicide bombers, and keep on preaching to their crowds their basic slogan: "Death to the West." The stronger they will be, the more dangerous the threat to the innovative leadership.
This danger will hit Europe, too, because terrorism is a very contagious disease. Even a child would understand this, but Europe cannot. Europe is old and tired.