Antisemitismo Introduction Nirenstein En

8/3/2019 Antisemitismo Introduction Nirenstein En

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Introduction by the Chairperson of the Sub-Committee of Inquiry into Anti-

Semitism

Hon. M.P Fiamma Nirenstein

Our final report makes clear the urgency of our work: it is for all the reasons that you will find here,

that we requested the Italian Parliament in 2009 to follow the British and Canadian Parliaments in

systematically investigating what the historian Robert Wistrich defines as the longest hatred.

Anti-Semitism.

We embarked on this mission with a lot of energy and held dozens of hearings, including four

Ministers. Throughout our work we also held many open sessions, inviting Members of Parliament

as well as citizens to discuss the issue of anti-Semitism in the halls of our most important

democratic institution

We worked intensively, yet still could not match the speed of this new tide invading the world

unexpectedly sixty years after the Shoah. There has also been ample evidence of growing

intolerance about our Sub-Committee of Inquiry, which is accused of being the long arm of the

Jewish hold on Italy and its Parliament.

I would like to thank the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the Chairpersons of the Committeeson Constitutional Affairs and Foreign Affairs and all the members of our Sub-Committee for their

contribution. In particular, I would like to thank all the Committee officials and other staff who

have shown their dedicated commitment to completing this investigation with us.

We worked with an unprecedented sense of urgency, prompted by the abrupt resurgence of this

millenary danger. Moreover, as legislators we felt a specific obligation to avoid past

underestimations of the danger and to overcome many obstacles so as to go beyond rhetorical

statements and take concrete action.

It is not only an Italian issue, it is a global emergency: a new globalized anti-Semitism is described

in all the documents mentioned in the report. First the OSCE, then the Interparliamentary Coalition

for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA), of whose Steering Committee I am a member, and the

Inquiry Committees in London and in Ottawa showed that an anti-Semitism based on old

stereotypes is using new, very pervasive and widespread tools. The international resolutions refer to

a situation reminiscent of the 30s, unparalleled and unprecedented since World War II.


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In some countries, anti-Semitic episodes have grown by fifty, sixty per cent; the percentage of

people who do have an unfavourable opinion of the Jews - even if they have never met one is

incredible. And against any possible expectation, the figure is more than 40% in Italy, even though

we have fewer violent incidents compared to the rest of Europe. All this brings me back to many

analyses of Italian anti-Semitism that show it is cautious, creeping but in the end extremely lethal.

Can we speak of authentic anti-Semitism when we look at its new expressions on the web and

social networks, the neo-Nazi anti-Semitism with its allegations about the Jewish grip even on the

Italian Parliament, the new genocidal Holocaust denial, which sentences Israel to death? Is it

dangerous? There are different views on this subject and even during our sessions we heard

different opinions. In my view, there is a substantial and clear continuity, even if it is hard to bear

for people like me who had firmly believed that after the Shoah, anti-Semitism would never be

possible again.

It is true, though, that in the last few decades, knowledge of the Shoah has become more

widespread than ever before, but paradoxically this has created a backlash in terms of a widespread

rebellion against the truth, an irritated, almost bored but still reactive guilty feeling. In the worst

cases, this feeling has generated denial and sometimes a return to ignorance. This is how, in Spain,

35% of the individuals between 18 and 44 years of age are not able to place the Shoah

chronologically, while two thirds of European respondents do not know how many Jews were

killed.

Therefore we must not only fight against ignorance, but we must also try to kindle a yearning for

truth. Not least because, as we must be aware, we are listening to the last direct beloved witnesses

of the Shoah. We are faced today with a denied, masked anti-Semitism that hints at its nature but is

never openly admitted, and which can even be so extreme as to envisage the elimination of the

Jewish people.

The premise of the current determination to eliminate the Jews, and first Israel as the collective

Jew, is the very denial of the Shoah. And it is a shame that the very institution that should have

condemned this attitude has repeatedly accepted it on its podium: this is what happens when the UN

become an instrument for denial and elimination theories, when the Iranian President Ahmadinejad,

who promises to destroy Israel, defines it as a tree with rotten roots and argues that the 2001

September 11 attack on the Twin Towers was a Zionist plot. With these awful public statements

and his unacceptable language, he destroys the credibility of the institutions, thus encouraging

similar behaviour on a global scale. Unfortunately, we have plenty of evidence of this phenomenon.


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So what is anti-Semitism today? Is it different from what is has been in past centuries? Has it left

behind the plan of exterminating the Jewish people? In my opinion the answer is no: the core of the

phenomenon has remained unchanged, it is just more amplified and widespread because of

globalization. There are some specific current issues that are also connected to it, such as

emigration or the economic problems that create general mistrust in politics.

We are witnessing a revival of right-wing racist sentiments, linked to ethnic and cultural

intolerance, which are sometimes directed also at the Jewish Italian Community, which has been

living here for over 2000 years. Moreover, anti-Semitism has been inflamed by the most

conspicuous collective Jewish community ever seen, the State of Israel. We have noticed that

typically anti-Semitic stereotypes (blood libel, conspiracy theories) are used against it, in addition

to the legitimate political criticisms, as we have repeatedly pointed out.

The President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, whom you will find quoted in our

Report, supports our opinion, as do the views expressed by all the experts and Ministers

interviewed.

Our times are characterized by an exponential growth in the number of messages that appear on

social networks: these capitalize on ignorance and on spreading the basest stereotypes. According to

the most dangerous of these, the Jews are believed to have invented or amplified the story of the

Shoah in order to obtain an illegitimate and colonial State of Israel that now persecutes the

Palestinians. But how? Well, just in the same way the Nazis persecuted the Jews. A painful

intellectual confusion often results in a denial of history, which is then suddenly brought back into

the picture just to accuse the Jews of cruelty. Moreover, this approach completely ignores the fact

that the history of Zionism has nothing to do with the Shoah, which it predates by a long time.

Todays anti-Semitism is fed by a political legend that results in a theoretical and even mystical-religious bias. In fact, radical Islamists describe Jews as pigs and monkeys and, on the TV and in

the textbooks of many Arab countries, they are generally depicted as cruel killers and greedy

exploiters. This incitement is so vast and multi-faceted that it is certainly the major political issue

we have to deal with across borders.

When it comes to Europe, it is easy to underline how often political attacks against Israel turn into

physical attacks on Jews, as happened to the Ghetto of Rome and several Jewish facilities,

cemeteries and homes of community leaders. We cannot avoid recalling the tragic memory of the


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attack by a terrorist group on the Synagogue in Rome in 1982, which resulted in the death of the

two year old Roman Jewish baby Stefano Gay Tach.

While we must affirm the right even to the harshest criticism, we also feel the duty to require people

to refrain from the language of incitement, which becomes completely anti-Semitic when someone

claims that the Jews are creating concentration camps or a State of apartheid. This is the typical

language of moral boycott.

The new anti-Semitism is not pure and simple racial or religious hatred. On the contrary, the

champions of anti-Semitism even those who have a genocidal attitude wave the banner of the

three monotheist religions and cite their common father Abraham. But when we read the context,

we can always identify the reality and the stereotypes of anti-Semitism. The three Ds by NathanSharansky can help us when we try to identify the shift from the right to criticism to anti-Semitism:

Demonization, when the judgment is disproportionate and senseless, i.e. when Gaza is likened to

Auschwitz; Double standards, when Israel is judged by completely different criteria from other

countries, for example on human rights, when China, Iran and Cuba, for example, are completely

ignored by the international organizations; Delegitimation, when Israel's right to exist is denied.

Since, unfortunately, we have noticed in our Inquiry that anti-Semitism is inversely proportional to

access to education among young people, it is an evident and present duty of the institutions to find

the way to intervene.

We know that the attacks on Jews always precede attacks on democracy. Kofi Annan, in his

capacity as Secretary General of the UN once stated: Our Organization came into being when the

world had just learnt the full horror of the concentration and extermination camps. It is therefore

rightly said that the United Nations emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. And a human rights

agenda that fails to address anti-Semitism denies its own history. [] It is hard to believe that, 60years after the tragedy of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is once again rearing its head. But it is clear

that we are witnessing an alarming resurgence of this phenomenon in new forms and

manifestations. This time, the world must not, cannot be silent. He recalled that the U.N. was born

in the wake of the Second World War to prevent any recurrence of its horrors, especially anti-

Semitism. Along the same lines, we may say that all our democratic institutions born after World

War II have grown out of the ashes of the Jews, having anti-Semitism in mind as the most severe

risk and as decisive battle ground for the future.


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The birth of the ICCA, the many conferences held and the documents signed by many

interparliamentary groups are manifestations of the will to fight actively against this phenomenon.

Recently, this International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians from all over the world, that I have

the honour to chair, has made plans to visit the countries where anti-Semitism is regaining a

powerful momentum, such as Scandinavia and Venezuela, to ask their governments to halt this

phenomenon with great determination.

But no action will be successful unless the Institutions are able to raise awareness of this new

situation, in all its ramifications. A case in point is Ilan Halimi, a young Jew who was kidnapped in

Paris in 2006, tortured for twenty-four days and then killed by an extremist Islamic group only

because he was Jewish. The Police refused to believe in the anti-Semitic root of this murder and

ascribed it to many different circumstances. Well, this fact should be seen as a very serious

reminder.

It is to create a widespread awareness of what anti-Semitism means today that we have worked, and

it is to actively fight against it that we will keep on doing so.

Hon. M.P. Fiamma Nirenstein

Antisemitismo Introduction Nirenstein En

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