En matière d’alignement sur Israël, habillé en idolâtrie de tout ce qui évoque la notion de « juif », Sarkozy est en bonne compagnie avec Silvio Berlusconi, comme en témoigne l’élection à la Chambre des députés italienne d’une authentique représentante de la colonisation des territoires palestiniens occupés.
Le douteux personnage s’appelle Fiamma Nirenstein.
Agée de 63 ans, Nirenstein était jusqu’à présent salariée de l’empire de presse de Berlusconi, en qualité de correspondante du quotidien d’extrême-droite Il Giornale à Jérusalem. Elle collabore parallèlement à diverses officines du Mossad et de la CIA. Se proclamant juive au détour de chacune de ses diatribes racistes contre les Arabes et les musulmans, Nirenstein réside à Gilo, l’une des plus grandes colonies établies au sud de Jérusalem. Lorsqu’un journaliste du quotidien Haaretz s’étonne que Nirenstein, malgré sa flamme déclarée pour le sionisme, n’ait pourtant pas acquis la nationalité israélienne, l’intéressée répond que cela n’a strictement aucune importance. La preuve ? Son dernier livre destiné au public italien, et titré, « Nous sommes tous israéliens ». Imparable, n’est-ce-pas ?
Comme on le sait, le parti de Berlusconi, qui vient de gagner les élections en Italie, est une coalition regroupant notamment la Ligue du Nord, spécialisée dans le racisme anti-immigrés, et l’Alliance Nationale, le parti des nostalgiques de Mussolini. Que ces individus aient fait publiquement le salut hitlérien, bras droit bien tendu, dans les meetings électoraux de Berlusconi, ne gêne pas le moins du monde Madame Nirenstein. Voici ce qu’elle répond au journaliste du Haaretz Meron Rapopport, quelque peu médusé « Ecoutez monsieur, Gianfranco Fini (dirigeant historique d’Alliance Nationale, futur président de la Chambre des députés, NDR) est allé s’agenouiller à Yad Vashem (le mémorial aux victimes du génocide à Jérusalem, NDR). Que lui demander de plus ? »
On en restera là. Les lecteurs maîtrisant l’anglais peuvent prendre connaissance, ci-dessous, de l’intégralité de l’interview dans le Haaretz.
The ‘settler’ in Italy’s parliament
By Meron Rapoport
Tags: italy
Almost 50,000 people live in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood,
one of the largest in Israel. Up until now, it had no
representative in parliament. As of this week, it does. Fiamma
Nirenstein, a neighborhood resident for 10 years, was just
elected to the Italian parliament. If we stick to the
definitions of the UN, which views Gilo, on the capital’s
southern edge, as a settlement, one could say that Nirenstein
is the first settler to be a member of a non- Israeli
parliament.
This week, in a series of phone calls to Rome, between the
first reports of a close victory for the right-wing coalition,
to which Nirenstein belongs, and the final reports of Silvio
Berlusconi’s sweeping victory, Nirenstein explained several
times that she has not requested Israeli citizenship but that
this bureaucratic fact does not affect her identity. « I feel
as though I made aliyah, » says Nirenstein in a conversation
that fluctuates between Hebrew and Italian.
In the elections, Nirenstein did not hide her Israeliness. Her
campaign was centered on the view that Israel is Western
democracy’s vanguard in the struggle against world terror. « I
ran for a place in parliament as a representative of the
Liguria district. I held rallies in Genoa and other cities in
the region, » she recounts. « But I didn’t talk with the people
about local problems. I told them that the most important
thing for their Italian identity is to stand by Israel’s
side. » Nirenstein called her most recent book « Israele Siamo
Noi » (« Israel Is Us »). By « us, » she was referring, of course,
to Italians.
Even though Italy hasn’t experienced much in the way of terror
attacks and the number of Muslim immigrants there is small
compared with other countries in Europe, the talk about the
importance of the fight against Islamic terror, or simply of
how to deal with Islam in general, is very much present in
contemporary Italian discourse. Oriana Fallaci devoted the
last years of her life to writing books in which she
forthrightly pegged Islam as the source of all the world’s
evil. Berlusconi himself, the unquestioned leader of the
Italian right for more than a decade, explained at one of his
appearances a few days ago: « We must be conscious of the
superiority of our culture, which gave prosperity to people in
countries that adopted it and ensures respect for human rights
and religion. This respect certainly does not exist in the
Islamic countries. »
Perhaps this is the reason why Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini,
Berlusconi’s partner and the former head of the neo-fascist
party, proposed that Nirenstein join their joint list, Il
Partito della Liberta (« The Party of Liberty »).
Nirenstein’s father arrived in Italy during World War II, as a
soldier in the Jewish Brigade. In Florence, he met her mother,
who fought as a partisan against the fascist government and
later against the Nazi regime. « I was born as a communist, »
she says. In her youth she was part of the 1968 generation,
founded the first feminist journal in Italy and worked at
leftist newspapers.
After the 1967 Six-Day War, a rift began to develop between
her and her « communist comrades, » who saw Israel as an
occupying country. « I was confused for a long time, » she says.
« In 1982, I signed a petition against the First Lebanon War.
Today I wouldn’t sign it. What did Israel gain from the
withdrawal from Lebanon? »
To the right of Netanyahu
Her first visit to Israel was as a reporter, and it was only
after this initial visit that she returned in 1992 for the
long term. For two years, she ran the Istituto Italiano di
Cultura in Tel Aviv, and after the Rabin assassination, she
decided she had to stay in Israel. « I had the feeling that
this was the most interesting place in the world, and I also
felt that the reporting on Israel was biased. » She did not
obtain Israeli citizenship because she thought an Israeli
passport would hinder her in her work, but aside from that,
she also thinks that « every Jew in the world is an Israeli
even if he’s not aware of it. Anyone who doesn’t know it is
making a big mistake. »
In terms of the reality of Israel’s current political system,
Nirenstein is located to the right of Kadima and Labor, and
maybe even of Likud Chair Benjamin Netanyahu. She says she
believes in the idea of two states for two peoples, but thinks
the principle of « territories for peace » has been a failure.
There’s no point in discussing it, she explains, until the
entire Arab world is capable of recognizing Israel.
Negotiations with Hamas are absolutely out of the question.
But there are polls which indicate that a majority of Israelis
are prepared to negotiate with Hamas.
Nirenstein: « The public supports a compromise with Hamas, so
that it will stop firing on Sderot. But morally speaking,
there mustn’t be negotiations with Hamas, which thinks that
Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs. You can’t negotiate
with cannibals, who eat human beings. »
It’s hard to argue with Nirenstein. Not just because of the
poor quality of the phone connection to Rome, but also because
she thinks that Israel is a beacon that should serve as
inspiration for the entire West. « Israel is the vanguard of
all the democracies in the world, and the time has come for
Europe to recognize that, » she says.
But in the election campaign you met with Italians who barely
know where Israel is. How did you persuade them that Israel is
important to their lives?
« I said that Italy can learn a lot from Israel. It can learn
what a true democracy is, how a democracy can survive in
conditions of conflict, without forsaking its fundamental
principles. Israel is a culture of life, a culture of people
who are always seeking peace. Our problem in Italy is that
sometimes we don’t know who we are. You can know who you are
if you know your enemy and your friend. Israel is Italy’s
friend. »
In other words, Islam is the enemy?
« I’m not saying that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all
Muslims are criminals. But Hamas has announced that it wants
to conquer Rome, to make it the outpost from which it will
conquer all of Europe. »
And you think that Hamas really intends to conquer Rome?
« Rome is a very symbolic place in the eyes of radical Islam.
Italy, with its Catholic culture, is an enemy in the eyes of
Islam. »
Obviously, this all touches on one of the central issues in
Italy’s recent election campaign: the immigrant issue. Fini,
who is slated to be appointed parliament speaker in
Berlusconi’s new administration, frequently talks about the
need to ban illegal immigration. Even the moderate
Social-Democractic party, led by the former mayor of Rome,
Walter Veltroni, devoted a good amount of attention to the
subject.
« People feel that immigration is threatening their cities,
their culture, » Nirenstein explains. « Maybe it’s exaggerated,
but the residents of Florence, for example, think of their
city as a temple for the works of art that were created there.
When they see the steps of the Duomo filled with immigrants,
they’re in shock. »
I lived in Florence. I remember Italy as a tolerant country.
« It’s changed a lot. There are entire quarters that you can’t
enter at night. There’s rape, there are assaults, there’s drug
dealing. There are schools for immigrants where they don’t
hang the crucifix. The immigrants have contempt for our
culture. We gave them work and they scorn our values. There’s
a deep contradiction between the more radical Islam and
Italy’s values.
« The problem is that there is hardly any moderate Islam in
Italy. Just the opposite. In Rome they built an enormous
mosque. There are a lot of mosques in Italy, and very
anti-Western madrasas operate in them. There’s polygamy,
there’s wife-battering – it’s very common. There’s a father
who killed his daughter for ‘family honor.’ It’s logical that
Italians would notice and that there would be reactions. »
The straight- armed salute
In Nirenstein’s books, you don’t find the aggressive
anti-Muslim sentiment that screams from every page of
Fallaci’s books. But while she isn’t part of the wave of
opposition to immigrants and Muslims that is sweeping Italy,
she does belong to the new right that scored an impressive
election victory this week. It seems that there is no such
thing as a right way to be « right » in all of Europe:
Berlusconi, the avowed capitalist and most avid pro-American
in Europe, on the one hand, the Lega Nord (Northern League)
with its wild incitement on the other, and then Fini and his
former neo-facist party. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy
almost seem like communists in comparison to this bunch.
Nirenstein does not « completely » accept this definition. To
her, Berlusconi is a centrist who also received votes from the
left, because he’s « for the downtrodden » and wants to lessen
their tax burden. Nirenstein sees herself as « a friend of the
Northern League, » which just wants to turn Italy into a
federal state. She feels this is a legitimate ambition, even
if some of the League’s pronouncements are « unpleasant. »
Her closeness to the former neo-fascist party caused
Nirenstein some discomfort during the election campaign,
particularly after one of Berlusconi’s candidates for the
Senate, Giuseppe Ciarrapico, proudly announced that he was and
remains a fascist. According to Nirenstein, his candidacy
« does not fit » with her candidacy as an avowed anti-fascist, a
Jew and the daughter of a partisan, but she remained on the
list nevertheless. « There’s no such thing as a perfect list, »
she says.
Did you encounter people like Ciarrapico during the election
campaign?
« At one of the election rallies I attended, in Genoa, someone
gave the straight-armed salute. I went to the Allianza
Nationale [the new name of the former neo- fascist party]
people and asked who it was. I said that I protested, that I
was stunned to see such a thing and that I did not want to see
it again. »
But Fini himself used to do the straight-armed salute at
rallies in the 1960s, when everyone knew where fascism had led
to.
« I don’t know if Fini did that salute, maybe he did it in his
youth. But I don’t know what more he could have done than to
kneel at Yad Vashem. Is he supposed to kill himself? »
He may not have been able to do more. But how did you, as a
Jew, the daughter of a partisan, feel alongside a man who
supported fascism as an adult?
« He was a fascist like I was a communist, when I was
indifferent to what Pol Pot did, when I admired Che Guevara. I
see him as someone who has since developed. »
Post-election Italy, says Nirenstein, is a better place, a
more stable place, a place without a radical left and a
radical right. She doesn’t know yet what she’ll do in the new
parliament. Nirenstein would like to deal with foreign
affairs, but she knows she’ll have to pay a price: For now
she’ll remain in Rome and bid good-bye to her good friends in
Israel. She’s not giving up the house in Gilo, though. It will
wait for the return of the parliament member from Rome.
CAPJPO-EuroPalestine
