The right, Israel and Italian Jews

Dear Mr. Foreign Minister,

We would like to express to you our deepest concerns over how the parties, associations, and media of the Italian right have taken it upon themselves to rcwrite the history of the country of which we are citizens, banalize the horrors of Fascism and rehabilitate ideas that most Italians have rejected long ago.

As Jews, we maintain close contacts with the state of Israel and uphold its governments peace policy. We appreciate the public positions the Israeli government has taken so far on the issue and we ask you to continue exercising the utmost vigilance over actions by the Italian government, since the very presence therein of a neo Fascist component is in itself cause for alarm.

We take this opportunity to express our most cordial greetings and fondest hopes for peace for the State and the people of Israel.

Signed: Martin Buber Group Jews for Peace.

Thus read a letter we sent on June 8, 1994 to Israel's den Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Two months later, one of Peres's assistants replied: "The minister has asked me to thank you for your letter regarding the concerns over the recent political developments in Italy which we fully share."

Today, eight years later, has the context of relations between the Italian right, Israel and Italian Jews truly changed?

The Israeli government's political tone and international inclinations have changed indeed. Back in 1994, Israel was led by the Rabin and Peres government and committed to implementing the principles of Oslo, partially abandoning the settlements and forging relations to live alongside the nascent Palestinian Authority.

In 2002, the Israeli government is under the dominating influence of the currents of the most extremist right, utterly precluding any possibility for a fair peace agreement with the Palestinians. Public opinion has lost its way anxious for peace but oppressed by a state of physical and psychological insecurity over the continuing terrorist offensive, which has renewed the Jewish condition of anguish, rootlessness and solitude.

The collapse of tourism, the economic crisis and the growing sense of isolation are feeding an anxious search for friendly governments and allies in the West, Europe anywhere at all.

Despite the profound differences in their history and formation, there are objective similarities between parties like Prime minister Ariel Sharon's Likud and Italy's right wing National Alliance that feed on the values of national identity, the cult of force and state authority, as well as the impulses of the small bourgeoisie filled with resentment and social grievances.

Also, the National Alliances political statements in recent years have moved in a positive direction. From the self absolving statements at the Fiuggi conference in 1995 to the crude downplaying tones in the 1998 Bologna conference describing the racial laws as a "tragic error," what was lacking was a firm, explicit repudiation of Fascism as a racist, totalitarian regime.

But on April 25 of this year, National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini declared that he fully shared the "values of freedom and democracy celebrated on April 25" the values of the resistance to Fascism that inspired the Constitution, the founding pact of the Italian republic.

So is the National Alliance's "revisionist" democratic path toward a modern and European right complete?

I think not. As the president of Italy's Jewish Communities, Amos Luzzatto, points out, "Fini has to reckon with militants that do not want to break with tradition. Even in the face of serious events, I haven't seen any expulsions from the party. Fini has always considered Almirante, once an editor at the publication La Difesa della Razza, or Defense of the Race, his mentor, his point of reference."

In the National Alliance's most remote branches, in the local governments where it is in power, an ambiguous and uninterrupted continuity with the neoFascist heritage of the old Social Movement still persists a sort of nostalgic revanchism taking shape in patriotic commemorations that degenerate into celebrations of the Salo regime, plaques or street and school names dedicated to Mussolini's high officials.

The suppression of history, the banalization of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews and forgetfulness masquerading as the will to "make peace" between the heirs of Fascism and anti Fascism merge to produce an enormous variety of cases.

So: Is Fini's trip to Israel a given, or can the dissent of many Italian Jews as well as from Israelis of Italian origin prevent it?

It is a difficult thing to prevent, and in any event the Israeli government will legitimately make its own, independent decision.

But in my opinion, it is important to understand the deeper reasons for the National Alliance's insistence on visiting Israel. For the party's officials, being welcomed in Israel would represents the international legitimization they have been pursuing for some time, in a bid to complete the legitimacy they have already won domestically.

Above all, in their crude and basically anti Jewish view of things, the trip to Israel is their passport to the United States, in light of what they believe is the dominating influence of Jewish Americans in that country's society, culture, and politics.

It is a sweetened up version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the antiSemitic myth of Jewish power in the world. We Italian Jews must not be an instrument to this design.