Monday, May 05, 2008

Rome Jews Playing Dangerous Game in Supporting Election of Fascist Mayor

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Italian Jews who were amongst Mussolini's early Fascist supporters, and a disproportinate number in Leadership positions and his Financiers, and later attacked him viciously to "distance" themselves from their earlier collaboration, are now again "cozying" up to Fascists.

 

Not only are the Rome Jews opening themselves up to charges of "Dual Loyalty", by openly basing their voting on their perception that the Fascists are more Pro Israel.

 

Can anyone tell me which of the current US Presidential Candidates are "Best for Italy" ??

 

Fascists and Jews United for Rome Mayor

 

The Financial Times

By Guy Dinmore in Rome

May 4 2008

Romes election last week of its first rightwing mayor since the time of Benito Mussolini has been celebrated by fascists as a historic victory over the left.

Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayors appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight-armed Roman salutes, shouting abuse at communists and immigrants.

Before, if you were a fascist you had to pretend to be part of the mainstream to have respectability. Now they are coming out of the closet, said an aide to the defeated centre-left candidate, Francesco Rutelli.

Debate over the significance of the National Alliances first election victory in a major city has been intense  especially among the capitals small but important Jewish commun­ity, which is widely thought to have swung in Mr Alemannos favour. Romes Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel.

Michel Bokhobza, whose family fled from Libya to Rome in 1967 in the wake of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day war, says Italys centre-right is much closer to Israel than the pro-Arab bias of the centre-left.

Even if his past was very close to fascism and ex-fascism, Alemanno belongs to the coalition guided by [Silvio] Berlusconi and [Gianfranco] Fini, he said, referring to the People of Liberty alliance that also swept national elections last month.

Mr Bokhobza had always voted for centre-left candidates for Rome mayor. Giving his second reason for changing, he said they had not managed the city well. The ideology of politics is finished, he added.

Sandro Di Castro, president of the Jewish communitys Bene Berith association, says the present sense of danger posed to Israel by Islamists and Iran outweighs memories of the more distant and tragic past of the mass deportations from Rome by the Nazis and Mussolinis anti-Jewish race laws              

[The deportation of 8,000 Eastern European Refugee Jews AFTER Italy surrendered,and was done under the Nazi Occupation. The Racial Purity Laws inacted to discourage inter marriage between Italian Troops stationed in Ethiopia, AND also affected the Jews, by requiring them to sign Loyalty Oaths to assurre that the Zionist Jews were not being used as "pawns" of British policies in the Mediterranean]  

Times had changed, he said, since 1993 and the first open elections for Rome. The rights candidate then was Mr Fini, now leader of the National Alliance, who at that point was part of its neo-fascist predecessor, the MSI, the direct heirs of Mussolini.

Fini was then seen as a demon and neo-fascist, said Mr Di Castro. The turning point came in 1995 when Mr Fini became head of the new National Alliance and started to steer it towards the mainstream. That process was completed in 2003 when, as deputy prime minister in the second Berlusconi government, Mr Fini denounced fascism as an absolute evil in a ground-breaking visit to Israel.

Mr Alemannos personal journey is less certain. Leftwing commentators have called the 50-year-old former agriculture minister fascist, neo-fascist and post-fascist  in the 1980s he headed the sometimes violent youth wing of the MSI in Rome.

But, campaigning on a law-and-order platform, he was also astute in courting the Jewish vote, promising to continue school visits to Auschwitz and to complete work on a Holocaust museum in Rome.

Dominique Sicouri, from Egypts Jewish community, says her heart is with the left but she still decided to work with Mr Alemanno in building ties with Frances ruling UMP party, for which she acts as spokeswoman in Italy. She sees Mr Alemanno as intelligent, serious and a pragmatic moderniser. His Jewish supporters say that in power he will be better placed to rein in extremism. If he fails, they will be among the first to desert him.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4d07386e-19fd-11dd-ba02-0000779fd2ac.html

 

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