Our Public Squares to Democratic Lessons From Israel
Why go to the public square for Israel? Because the Italian square throughout centuries has been designed from its genesis and development on a culture that has brought to democracy. Our public squares, that of our cities, cannot become the private property of the most vulgar dissent, of the totalitarian and threatening exaltation, for which people burn flags, yell and even pray in Hamas' honor, an anti-Semitic terrorist organization. The function of our public squares is not that of intimidating, but of encouraging. They must open; not close. There is, from us, a part that hates and threatens, that draws Swastikas on the Star of David, and which unites with those who promise to kill until the last Jew and aim rockets on innocent civilians. In addition, there are those who boycott not only Jewish stores, but also any products produced by Jews. It will be interesting to see if they are ready to also boycott the Salk vaccine, the insulin, the vitamins, the streptomycin, and the discoveries on the DNA of the Israeli Novel Prize-winners Ciechanover and Hershko, or the water irrigations or even the Icq, the first chat as well. In these days our public squares have served to curse the only democracy in the Middle East, a country from which not even in these days has exited one word of hate and that initiated a defensive war only when Hamas refused a ceasefire and fired 100 missiles in one night after eight years of patience. The criminalization of Israel, however, has taken savage tones. The evident reasons of Israel's self-defense have been buried under the accusation – familiar for the Jews - of a gratuitous thirst for blood. The reality of Hamas, which is anti-Semitic, dictatorial and assassinates its own people by exploiting its women and children to mass death, has been covered in a grey fog: only the Jews have remained criminalized. We, therefore, will go to the public square in Israel's favor, we will protest today at 6:30 in the public square of Montecitorio, which is a quintessential symbol of democracy and we will do so without threats, without offending anyone, without yelling murderous slogans and without burning the Palestinian flag, to which we wish a better destiny than that reserved for it by Hamas, which in reality, day after day, burns it destroying thus the Palestinian cause.
When we speak in the public square for liberty and against terrorism, it is clear that we defend ourselves together with Israel. In the war that is by now underway for almost three weeks, territorial questions play no part: to the Palestinians in Gaza that was already handed over. Their "land for peace" has been transformed into a launching pad for missiles inside Israel. Also during the time of Barak and Arafat, land was offered and Arafat refused launching the Intifada of suicide terrorism. The Palestinian question has changed under our eyes from when it became the prey of the greater religious clash, and then in 2000, Bin Laden's spirit blew with his gang against the Crusades and the Jews. Subsequently, we saw entering on the scene also Shiite Iran, followed together with its proxies Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, although Sunni. A great, new deployment that see all us Democrats, Jews and Christians, as the enemy.
In 2005, Iran launched a very powerful hegemonic offensive, and Hamas drove out Fatah from Gaza - eliminating it physically from the area. Arafat's death reopened inside Fatah a moderate prospective, which was unpopular to the axis of terror. This same axis works within Hamas: using Sharia Law, which punishes with death adulterers and homosexuals and uses a crude justice against anyone who is not its accomplice, as well as indoctrinates children. It hates any moderate Muslim component, from open war to the prudent behaviors of Abu Mazen, of Mubarak, of Jordan, of the Saudis, and stifles the liberty and freedom of Lebanon. As happened at the time of Camp David, it's not enough to offer peace in order to obtain it. It's not enough to hope for dialogue. And if one is forced to wage war in order to remain alive and to defend its sovereignty, and it wants to fight in a legal manner, a vast universe of terrorism instead scorns all the rules that our world has toiled to inscribe in the Geneva Convention, using its masses as Human Shields: the rules no longer function. Does a school remains a school when it is full of dynamite and shoots from its windows? Does it remain either a hospital or a even a home?
Yes, there is disproportion in the Arab-Israel conflict: Israel is a country of 6 million inhabitants that doesn't hate anyone. It's very small in front of the 22 Arab states with more than 300 million inhabitants, whom have attempted since 1948 to liberate themselves from it, and near is Iran plus the numerous mujaheedan of the farthest latitudes that hate it. Sure it's disproportionate: Israel has seen 1500 of its citizens – civilians moreover – killed in terrorist attacks within five years. Disproportionate because with every siren they mobilize a solidarity that will not allow them to give up – never behind is left neither a woman nor a child. What would we do us in Israel's place, each in his house, in his city, with children at school and our loved ones at work if we came to be bombed day in and day out? Would we remain strong and would we have resisted? Would we have fled? Or in reacting against terrorism would we prefer to save the lives of those used as human shields at the expense of risking that of our own children? It is a dilemma that Israel, a democratic country in the Middle East, confronts for all of us. For this reason, Israel is worth it for a civil democratic square that supports it and looks upon a future of peace alongside it.