Fiamma Nirenstein ha scritto per il Jerusalem Post di ieri 17.11.2003 un commento sulla visita di Gianfranco Fini in Israele.
Lo pubblichiamo come come รจ uscito in inglese.Nov. 27, 2003
Gianfranco Fini's penance
By FIAMMA NIRENSTEIN
Those accusing the Italian politician of coming here to be legitimized ignore the impact of Israel's defamation
The storm of criticism surrounding the visit of Gianfranco Fini, vice president of the Italian Council of Ministers, is anachronistic and hypocritical.
When Fini began talking of visiting Israel four years ago, the purification of the Fascist past was already an old story. In January 1995 at the Congress of Fuggi, when Fini transformed the post-Fascist and partly anti-Semitic Italian Social Movement (MSI) into the Alleanza Nazionale Party, the anger of many members was great. Fini was accused of committing party suicide. He stuck to his convictions, though, proposing rejection of racism as a condition for membership in the new party.
Some sought to prove a difference between Fascist racism and Nazi racism. Fini, however, spent much of the following years demonstrating how much the problem concerned him.
He made a pilgrimage to Auschwitz and supported the institution of a national Holocaust remembrance day. He spoke many times of Mussolini's racial laws as the worst error in Italy's history and as a horror without equal.
He gave a frank interview to Haaretz recently, expelled a party member for his open admiration of Nazism and has repeated, on every possible occasion, his remorse and rejection of the past.
This week in Israel he spoke of the Holocaust as "an abyss of infamy," explicitly recalled the racial law's Fascist roots and repudiated Mussolini's pro-Nazi ties.
WHAT MORE does a man have to say to prove his conversion? And yet the Israeli and Italian Left persist in presenting Fini to the public as a liar in search of legitimacy for the sake of political machinations.
The polemic, in fact, relates to something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with truth and lies, but with Right and Left, the war on terror and Europe's role in it.
The years since Fini first talked of coming to Israel, which have seen the outbreak of the intifada, September 11, and increased anti-Semitism, have also seen the rise of the pro-American, pro-Israeli government of Silvio Berlusconi in the midst of a Europe that delegitimizes the war on terror.
The depth of a man's remorse and his views on the extermination of the Jews are his alone to know. The speculations on the subject by Yossi Sarid, Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell, Avi Primor in Haaretz and by Italian left-wing journalists are merely speculations.
The words of regret are there, and the price Fini pays for them in his constituency is high, given the bands of keffiyeh-clad ultra-right-wing youngsters who - like those on the Left - spray "Jews out of Palestine" on walls and draw caricatures of hook-nosed Jews, American missiles, and Ariel Sharon munching on small children.
The issue is not Fini's penance, which in any case can never be proportionate to the Holocaust. It relates to the pro-American and pro-Israeli policy of Italy's government. This at a time when the country's Left seems to prefer the French and German view, which lays the blame for the entire tragedy of the last three years squarely on Sharon.
It relates to the fact that it was Italy's presidency of the European Union which saw the condemnation of Hamas as a terrorist movement. And there is Fini's determination to make Europe's attitude toward the Arab-Israel conflict more balanced.
This is what lies at the root of opposition to Fini's state visit. The Israeli and European Left don't like the fact that Fini came to Israel to explain that the world needs to be vigilant against not only the anti-Semitism of the past but also that of the present.
It is unforgivable to the Israeli Left, with its talent for self-castigation, that Fini pointed to the danger faced by Jews today who are identified with Israel - the collective Jew.
It is shocking that the head of a formerly fascist party, now Italian deputy prime minister, should not only recognize, but publicly talk about, the danger Israel faces, and link the "shameful chapters of the past" with the anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism of today.
It is difficult for them to understand how a European can permit himself to view Israel with sympathy, and how Italy can permit itself to understand the scale of the terrorist onslaught on Israel and place these attacks within the context of the war between the West and terrorism.
Gianfranco Fini understands Israel's policy of self-defense. He insists, to the press here and in Europe, that the fence is an unpleasant necessity, not a cruel fascist choice.
Anti-government journalists in Italy and international public opinion would like to link Fini and Sharon: their predilection for the use of force, their authoritarianism, and ultimately, their fascist nature. This is what drives an intellectual like Ze'ev Sternhell, who seems to believe that there is fascism in Italy today.
And finally: What of Fini's much-publicized alleged quest for legitimacy from the Jews?
These days, after an immense campaign of defamation has turned it into an apartheid, illegitimate, colonial, cruel and needlessly aggressive state, what legitimacy can Israel bestow?
These days, Israel does not grant legitimacy to those European politicians who have the courage to support it in this dangerous chapter in history.
Fini, then, may have come not so much to beg for support as to lend it.
The writer is a correspondent for La Stampa and an author.
