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Italian Jewish leaders condemn parliament president for honoring neo-Fascist party
(JTA) — Jewish leaders in Italy had strong words for the president of the country’s parliament after he published a post on Instagram honoring the history of the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, a neo-fascist party founded in the wake of World War II.
Ignazio la Russa, a senator from Cologno Monzese, a municipality in Milan, wrote alongside a picture of an MSI campaign poster: “In memory of my father, who was one of the founders of the Italian Social Movement in Sicily and who chose the path of free and democratic participation with the MSI throughout his life in defense of his ideas respectful of the Italian Constitution.”
Leaders within Italy’s Jewish community were dismayed by his decision to link MSI to the post-World War II Italian constitution. The ascendance of far-right leaders who have expressed nostalgia for the fascist period in Italy — which nearly spelled the near destruction of Italian Jewry — has Italy’s present-day Jewish community worried.
“Today we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the promulgation of the Republican Constitution, the affirmation of our anti-fascist democracy,” Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said on Tuesday in an op-ed in La Repubblica. “Yet there are those who believe they are celebrating another anniversary, that of the foundation of the MSI, a party which, after the fall of the fascist regime, placed itself in ideological and political continuity with the RSI, the government of diehard fascists who actively collaborated for the deportation of Italian Jews.”
Ruth Dureghello, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, wrote a critical statement of her own.
“The Italian Republic is anti-fascist and when one swears on the Constitution, it should be done knowing that there can no longer be ambiguity or inconsistency in this matter,” she wrote. “The Social Movement claimed the experience of the RSI [Fascist Italy under Mussolini], while for Italians the only model to aspire to is that of the anti-fascist movements which with their sacrifice have freed Italy from the Nazi-fascist yoke.”
La Russa took office as Senate president in October, after the victory of a right-wing coalition gave his Brothers of Italy (FDI) party a plurality in the senate and made Giorgia Meloni prime minister.
Though La Russa founded FDI alongside Meloni in 2012, he spent much of his early career in politics as a part of MSI — which was co-founded by his father in 1946 — until its dissolution in 1995. For most of its history, MSI branded itself as the defender of Italy’s fascist history, even long after the death of dictator Benito Musolini.
FDI is seen by many as MSI’s successor in Italy, even incorporating the defunct party’s tri-color flame in its own logo.
‘With all due respect to his family affections, the honorable La Russa has not yet understood that he is the President of the Senate of the anti-fascist Republic and not the head of the youth organization of the MSI. His post is a disgrace to democratic institutions,” said Gianfranco Pagliarulo, national president of ANPI, an organization devoted to veterans of Italy’s anti-fascist resistance, according to La Pressa.
Meloni was also linked to the MSI in her early years in politics. Critics say she has emboldened fascist sympathizers, and last month photos of one of her appointed ministers wearing a Nazi armband over a decade ago sparked controversy.
“Faced with the prospect of a prime minister that is affiliated with a party that ideologically is the heir of the Italian Social Movement, a good part of Italian Jews are concerned,” David Fiorentini, president of Italy’s Jewish Youth group, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in September.
Nonetheless, Meloni has attempted to make overtures to the Jewish community. In November, she met with the World Jewish Congress as well as Italian Jewish Leaders, where she discussed antisemitism and, according to her office, gave a statement which “underlined the essential importance of Jewish communities for the Italian and European national identity.”
Like other far-right leaders in Europe, she has frequently pointed to her support of the state of Israel and compared herself and FDI to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
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The post Italian Jewish leaders condemn parliament president for honoring neo-Fascist party appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Police denied Jewish community’s request for more security before Sydney massacre, commission finds
(JTA) — Days before a massacre on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, Sydney, the region’s Jewish security organization asked the police to send officers to Hanukkah events in the city.
The organization, the Community Security Group, had already worked with Chabad of Bondi to create a security plan for the event that included fencing off an area that normally had no barriers.
Now, in the message to police, the group emphasized that Jews in Sydney were facing unusual danger. The threat level, it wrote, was “HIGH. A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish Community is likely and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification.”
The police responded by saying that they could not devote additional officers to the events but would send patrols by. Three days later, 15 people, including rabbis and a child, were killed when two men opened fire on the event, known as Chanukah by the Sea.
The sequence of events appears in the first report issued by Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, formed in the wake of the massacre amid pressure on the government to do more to keep Australian Jews safe.
The report, issued Thursday, contains 14 recommendations, some of which were obscured from public view for security reasons. They include elevating and strengthening counter-terrorism policing and improving policing of Jewish events.
The top recommendation: “The procedures adopted by NSW Police in respect of Operation Jewish High Holy Days should apply to other high risk Jewish festivals and events, particularly those that have a public facing element.”
The Australian Jewish Association welcomed the report’s release but said it was marred by failing to address the form of antisemitic extremism said to have motivated the Bondi Beach shooters.
“The report’s credibility is undermined by its failure to address the issue of radical Islamist extremism. No serious analysis of the lead-up to the Bondi massacre can ignore this,” it said in a statement. “It’s concerning that the report identifies no urgent legislative changes required. There were serious failings by multiple agencies. If the legislation is adequate, then these failings are inexplicable.”
In particular, the group said, the commission should explore the fact that gun-control laws bar private security from being armed in Sydney, adding, “Whether different security settings could have changed the outcome is a matter that warrants urgent examination.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Police denied Jewish community’s request for more security before Sydney massacre, commission finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish man arrested for allegedly firing pellet gun at left-wing activists in Rome
(JTA) — Italian Jewish leaders are condemning the alleged acts of Jewish man who was arrested this week after police said he fired a pellet gun at participants in a parade marking Italy’s Liberation Day from Nazism and fascism.
Eitan Bondì, 21, was charged with attempted homicide in connection to the shooting of Rossana Gabrieli and Nicola Fasciano, two members of the National Association for Italian Partisans, a group founded by members of the Italian resistance, during the Rome parade.
Neither victim was seriously injured by the attack, according to Italian media.
Bondi’s arrest marks the second instance of confrontations involving Jews during Liberation Day festivities this year. In Milan, pro-Palestinian activists, including members of ANPI, blocked participants honoring the Jewish Brigade, a Jewish military unit that fought the Nazis in Italy during World War II.
Bondi said he was affiliated with the Jewish Brigade. Davide Romano, the director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan, wrote in a post on X that the organization did not know Bondì, and that he felt “horror and condemn in the most resolute manner, and without any justification, anyone who dares to use the name of the Jewish Brigade to carry out acts of violence.”
“The Jewish Brigade fought for freedom and human dignity. Instrumentalizing its name to justify or cover up violent behavior is an outrage to its memory and to all those who sacrificed themselves under that flag,” Romano wrote, adding that the organization reserved the right to “pursue legal action against all those who use the name of the Jewish Brigade to associate it with this shameful act.”
Victor Fadlun, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, condemned Bondì’s alleged acts in a statement, saying that his detention “fills us with dismay and outrage” and voicing his organization’s “full solidarity and closeness” to the victims.
“The Jewish Community of Rome condemns and dissociates itself unreservedly from any form of anti-democratic violence,” Fadlun said, according to the Italian news agency Ansa. “In such a tense moment … we appeal to political and civil society to avoid any exploitation (of the case) that could fuel hatred and generate new violence.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish man arrested for allegedly firing pellet gun at left-wing activists in Rome appeared first on The Forward.
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British police pledge 25M pounds for Jewish security in wake of London stabbing
(JTA) — British police have allocated 25 million pounds, or about $33 million, in new funding to keep Jewish communities safe, officials announced on Thursday.
The announcement came a day after a stabbing in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green left two men injured and a community reeling. The stabbing has been ruled a terrorist attack.
“There’s no getting away from the fact that this was not a one-off,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited the neighborhood on Thursday, said during a press conference. “This has been a series of attacks on our Jewish community, particularly in recent weeks, and there is a very deep sense of anxiety, of concern about security, about safety, about identity frankly.”
A new group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, that has claimed attacks on Jewish targets across Europe said it was responsible for the stabbing. British officials said they were investigating that claim.
They disclosed that the 45-year-old man arrested in the stabbing, who was first subdued by Jewish security forces, was a British national who had come to the country “lawfully” from Somalia as a child.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who joined Starmer in Golders Green, told the BBC that she was treating the spree of antisemitic incidents as “absolutely an emergency,” though she declined to adopt language used by Starmer’s terrorism advisor that there was a “national security emergency” because of its implications on civil liberties.
Still, she said, she believed that frequent pro-Palestinian protests in London contained “far too many instances” of hate crimes and she spoke of her opposition to antisemitism in terms of her own religious identity.
“When I take the stand that I am taking against antisemitism, I am doing so as a practicing Muslim. It is absolutely in line with my faith,” Mahmood said. She added about British Jews: “This land is their land. It is my land too. We share this land and we must all work together to keep each other safe.”
The incident, which followed arsons at synagogues and of ambulances owned by a Jewish emergency service as well as a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue last year, has prompted an escalation of fear among British Jews. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that visibly Jewish people — those wearing symbols of their Jewish identity — were “not always safe” in England.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post British police pledge 25M pounds for Jewish security in wake of London stabbing appeared first on The Forward.