Italy: Bishop condemns antisemitic painting

Via CAMERA:

An influential Bishop in Italy has weighed in on the controversy surrounding a painting produced by an Italian artist, Giovanni Gasparro. The painting, which Gasparro produced in late 2019 and early 2020 is titled “The Martyrdom of St. Simon of Trento for Jewish Ritual Murder.”

Bishop Ambrogio Spreafico, who serves as president of the Episcopal Commission of the Italian Episcopal Conference for ecumenism and dialogue, denounced the painting as “a sad demonstration of how much the human mind chases old stereotypes.” (The Bishop’s denunciation of Gasparro’s antisemitic painting was published in Chiesa, an influential Catholic newspaper in Italy.)

The painting depicts a blood libel based on debunked accusations leveled at the Jewish community living in Trent in 1475. Fifteen Jews were the victims of judicially sanctioned murder as a result of this libel. Most of the victims confessed under torture.

Sadly, Gasparro, who posted images of his painting on his Facebook page on March 25, 2020, is a well-known painter in Italy and has done a substantial work for Catholic places of worship in that country, which makes Bishop Spreafico’s robust condemnation particularly compelling.

The Bishop’s condemnation demonstrates that Gasparro didn’t just offend Jewish sensibilities in a naked attempt to attract attention, but crossed a line regarding Church teachings by promoting a blood libel that had been repudiated by the Church after the passage of Nostra Aetate by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in 1965. Nostra Aetate rejected the notion that the Jewish people are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus and condemned antisemitism in all its forms.

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Italy: Catholic artist posts image of Jewish ritual murder on Facebook page

Via CAMERA:

Giovanni Gasparro, a popular artist in Italy, has posted images of a painting of a Jewish ritual murder on his Facebook page. The title of the painting, which appears to have been produced by Gasparro during the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, is “The Martyrdom of Saint Simon of Trent, For Jewish Ritual Murder.” Images of this painting can be found on Gasparro’s Facebook page. The painting is apparently in a private collection. Gasparro has been commissioned by Catholic officials in Italy to adorn their basilicas and churches with his work.

The painting (which CAMERA will not show) depicts numerous hook-nosed Jews of varying ages looking on in glee as one of their fellows prepares to plunge a dagger into the baby’s chest. Another hook-nosed Jew holds a silver chalice in place, ready to catch the blood from the ritual murder. It is a truly horrific painting clearly intended to reawaken age-old hostilities toward the Jewish people.

CAMERA has contacted the artist himself via email asking why he would post such a horrific image during a time of plague. CAMERA has also contacted the Papal Nuncio in Washington, D.C. asking that he alert the proper officials in the Vatican about this outrage.

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Giovanni Gasparro writes on FB:

We are all disgusted by the horror of Auschwitz.  But what does it have to do with the Jewish ritual murders and the "Passovers of blood" performed by Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, attested by well-known scholars like Ariel Toaff, son of the former chief rabbi of Rome, who remained Jewish?

Europe: How bad is antisemitism in Europe? Survey suggests it's rampant.

Melissa Langsam Braunstein via The Federalist:

[…] When 36 percent of Portuguese respondents, along with 32 percent of Spaniards, 31 percent of Italians, and 28 percent of Belgians agree that “Jews always pursue their own interests and not the interest of the country they live in,” that’s concerning. And when 36 percent of Italians, 33 percent of Portuguese, 30 percent of Spanish, and 28 percent of Belgian respondents tell Pew pollsters they agree that “Jews always overstate how much they have suffered,” that’s a red flag. Neighbors who believe you’re exaggerating about historical suffering are unlikely to empathize over your contemporary concerns.  

For a more explicit deep-dive into this subject, consult the ADL Global 100 index of antisemitism, which added an 18-nation update in 2019. ADL’s top-line conclusion is that 24 percent of Western Europeans and 34 percent of Eastern Europeans hold antisemitic views. Those numbers are followed by extensive, substantiating details.

Hesitating to dub strangers antisemites is wise, especially based on limited information. It’s worth reading the country reports in full, if only to understand the particular form antisemitism takes in each society. However, I’d like to focus on the survey’s first question as an important sign post for this inquiry.

Respondents were asked whether “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/to the countries they live in].” Anyone answering “probably true” views Jews as “the other.” Whether through ignorance or malice, this group is primed to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories, including myths about Jews controlling financial markets, the media, and world governments, or blaming Jews for the world’s wars.

The fact that 33 percent of British respondents deemed that statement “probably true” helps explain Corbynism’s growth and the “record high total of 1,805 antisemitic incidents in the UK last year.” Also, the fact that 64 percent of Poles, 62 percent of Spaniards, 50 percent of Belgians, 49 percent of Germans, 49 percent of Austrians, and 39 percent of Russians think this statement is “probably true” speaks volumes.

It’s easier to understand Jews being widely dehumanized at public celebrations when we understand how widespread the antisemitic virus is in Europe. That knowledge necessarily informs European Jews’ decisions about how openly Jewish to be in their daily lives - for those who aren’t visibly Jewish - and whether they consider it safe to remain in their home countries.  

For those who would combat antisemitism, it also offers a window into the immense challenge ahead. Antisemitism’s European roots are centuries deep, so any curricular component would have to start long before the Holocaust.

Also worth pondering is the microscopic percentage of respondents truly familiar with Jews. That only 2 percent of Polish respondents reported interacting with Jews “very often,” while the same was true of 4 percent of respondents in Belgium and 1 percent in Spain, is instructive. Demonizing people you know only as ugly caricatures is easy. So it’s theoretically possible that person-to-person diplomacy, especially starting at early ages, could help reverse some of these conspiratorial beliefs.

But fundamentally, this is not European Jewry’s problem to fix. If things change, it will be because Europe’s non-Jewish majority decides it’s time to make their nations’ collective future brighter than their past.

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Italy: "Liliana Segre in the ovens", grafitti with swastika in Vicenza

Via antisemitism.il:

"Liliana Segre to the ovens".  

This is the disturbing writing, accompanied by a swastika, which appeared a few days ago on the wall of a building at Cont 'Santa Lucia in Vicenza. The author used red color spray to target Senator for life, Holocaust survivor and Holocaust witness Liliana Segre.

Europe: The EU has been greatly negligent in fighting antisemitism

Manfred Gerstenfeld via The Jerusalem Post:

Substantial skills in verbal acrobatics are required from the European Union ambassador to Israel. He has to justify unjustifiable behavior of the organization he represents. One aspect of that is to know how to express facts selectively when publishing articles.

The current ambassador is the Italian diplomat Emanuele Giaufret. In April 2019, Giaufret wrote an article in The Jerusalem Post titled “A brief history of EU-Israel Relations.” In the piece, he analyzed the depths of the historic, political, economic social and cultural connections between Israel and the EU. He mentioned that these are often overlooked in the discourse. Giaufret added, “Our common future is also sometimes disregarded even as Israel and the EU continue moving toward each other.”

In his description of the depth of historic connections, a very specific background issue was missing: for more than 1,000 year, antisemitism has been part of European culture. That, in particular, should have been mentioned because the EU has been so greatly negligent in fighting it. Almost 20 years since the current huge increase in antisemitism began, no uniform statistical data on antisemitic incidents in member countries are available.

Concerning political connections between Israel and the EU, Giaufret did not mention that member countries have frequently voted against Israel in the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. No similar votes exist against any other country in anywhere near such numbers. According to the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), that makes these votes antisemitic acts. The many European countries on that organization’s board supported the establishment of this definition. […]  

Recently, Giaufret got a new boss. Former socialist Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell was appointed high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy. His party rules Spain in a coalition with Europe’s most extreme Israel-hating party, Podemos. In 2018, its leader, Pablo Iglesias Turrión – now Spain’s second deputy prime minister – called Israel an illegal country.

Borrell said in an interview, “Iran wants to wipe out Israel. Nothing new about that. You have to live with it.” To understand how barbarian this is, one should imagine a Western politician in the late 1930s saying, “The Germans mistreat and heavily discriminate against the Jews. We have to live with it.”

At that time, German policy was not yet aiming for genocide of the Jews. Borrell’s statement is thus far worse in view of Iran’s intention to destroy Israel.

With such a new boss, an extreme anti-Israel inciter, Ambassador Giaufret will have to greatly upgrade his verbal acrobatics.

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Europe: The “Deal of the Century” and Israel’s European challenge

Via The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (Dr. Emmanuel Navon):

[…] While Israel should secure US support for the deal's partial implementation in the absence of negotiations, it must also pre-empt and mitigate the opposition of the European Union and of the United Kingdom. This must be done not only by neutralizing unanimous decisions from the EU's foreign affairs council thanks to the votes of European governments sympathetic to Israel, but also by convincing European leaders and opinion-makers that the "deal of the century" is not, in fact, inconsistent with international law and with the two-state solution.  

Early European reactions to the deal provide an indication on how and where Israel should invest its diplomatic efforts. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell issued a statement in which he claimed that the Trump plan "departs from … internationally agreed parameters" and warned that Israeli annexations in the West Bank would "not pass unchallenged." France said it welcomed President Trump’s efforts, would “study” his plan, and reiterated its commitment to a two-state solution and to international law. The British government welcomed the Trump plan and called it “a serious proposal,” encouraging Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate on its basis and insisting that it was for them to determine if the plan suits their aspirations and concerns. Germany was more lukewarm, welcoming on the one hand the plan’s endorsement of a two-state solution but questioning on the other hand the plan’s compatibility with international law. Poland said it saw in the plan a “valuable basis” for future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and Hungary vaguely said that it supports “all efforts” aimed at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Thanks to the votes of Italy, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, the EU's foreign affairs council was unable to pass a resolution that was meant to criticize the Trump plan and to warn Israel not to proceed with annexations in the West Bank. Israel's "divide-and-rule" tactic among EU members was successful once again. But Israel must also influence European public opinions and decision-makers of the plan's advantages and of its consistency with international law.

Europe's leading opinion-makers and mainstream media are mostly hostile to the Trump plan. Britain offers a typical example: while the British government was forthcoming, most British newspapers are aghast. The Economist asserted that the plan "will not bring peace" and "may spell the end of the two-state solution." A Guardian columnist wrote that the deal must be rejected because it allegedly goes against "countless UN resolutions, the Oslo accords of 1993, the Arab peace initiative of 2002 and the fundamental idea that Palestinians, like Israelis, have the inalienable right to self-determination."

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EU statement against Trump peace plan blocked by several countries

Via European Jewish Press (EJP):

At least six European member states on Tuesday opposed a push by E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell for a joint resolution by the 27 members states of the E.U. Foreign Affairs Council criticizing the Trump peace plan and warning Israel against annexing parts of the West Bank.  

Italy, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and at least two other unnamed nations opposed the resolution following intense lobbying efforts by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, according to Israeli media reports. Israel reportedly argued that the proposed resolution was one-sided and encouraged the Palestinians to avoid negotiations.  

Apparently outraged by the failure, Borrell issued his own independent statement on Tuesday, warning that the European Union is committed to a two-state solution featuring “an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable state of Palestine,” and that the US deal “departs from these internationally agreed parameters.”  

“Steps towards annexation, if implemented, could not pass unchallenged,” he added.  

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat took to Twitter to criticize the E.U. foreign policy chief’s “threatening language towards Israel.”  

“The fact that the High Rep of the EU, Josep Borrel [sic], chose to use threatening language towards Israel, so shortly after he assumed office & only hours after his meetings in Iran, is regrettable &, to say the least, odd,” said Haiat. “Pursuing such policies & conduct is the best way to ensure that the EU’s role in any process will be minimized.”

Italy: Youths hurl punches, anti-Semitic invective in Venice attack: "Anne Frank ended up in the oven"

The youths shouted: "Anne Frank ended up in the oven" ("Anna Frank sei finita nel forno.")

Via Times of Israel:

Venice’s mayor said Wednesday police were investigating an attack with possible anti-Semitic characteristics in which youths punched a left-wing Italian politician in the city’s St. Mark’s Square.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro tweeted Wednesday that fascist-like incidents like the one that happened on New Year’s Eve “won’t be tolerated” in Venice.

Arturo Scotto, a former lawmaker, was walking with his wife Tuesday night when eight youths yelled out, “Duce! Duce!” a reference to Italy’s World War II fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The youths then punched Scotto in the nose.

Scotto told Italian state TV that a young man who tried to help him was also beaten up. He said the youths also shouted disparaging remarks about Anne Frank, a young Jewish woman who perished in a Nazi death camp. 

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Italy: Woman attacked in Rome

Via CFCA:

Rome – “Today in Rome: I’m standing in front of Feltrinelli, waiting for a person, a guy with a   swastika on his arm, approach to me and spitt in my face, I was so shocked that I did not even react. He probably did it because I had a canvas bag from the Yiddish course in Tel Aviv, proof of antisemitism .

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Italy: Focus on racist and anti-Semitic chants is a 'psychosis', say Lazio

Via France24:

Lazio blasted as "a psychosis focusing on either a minority or non-existent incidents" after racist and anti-Semitic chants overshadowed the team's 4-1 Italian Cup win over Novara at the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday.

The chanting early in the first half was heard in Lazio's North End and was aimed at the club's bitter city rivals AS Roma, with taunts of "Yellow, red and Jewish" and "This Roma that looks like Africa".

It also targeted police who had clashed with fans on Wednesday at Piazza della Liberta in the capital when celebrations to mark the club's 119th anniversary turned violent.

Eight police were injured and four supporters arrested.

"I am here to talk about the racist and anti-Semitic chants that are supposed to have happened," club spokesman Arturo Diaconale told a press conference after the game.

"I am one of the 98 percent of people in the stadium who didn't hear them.

"The club naturally condemns any racist or anti-Semitic chants, but we have to consider the dimensions of the phenomenon.

"I think it's a form of psychosis focusing on either a minority or non-existent incidents.

"I read about chants as if the entire stadium had participated. We mustn't turn this into a mass panic over nothing. I invite our colleagues in the media to give the right degree of consideration to incidents that would normally be ignored," added Diaconale.

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Italy: Outrage after plaques honoring Rome's deported Jews stolen

Via Ynet News:

Rome’s mayor, Catholic groups and politicians of every stripe joined Italy’s Jewish community this week in denouncing the theft of 20 small bronze plaques honoring a Jewish family deported during the Holocaust.

The plaques, affixed to the cobblestones in front of the Di Consiglio family home in the Monti neighborhood of downtown Rome, were taken overnight. A gaping hole in the cobblestones was all that remained Monday.

The organization responsible for laying the plaques, “Art in Memory,” reported the theft. In July, the same group reported receiving a threatening letter featuring a photo of Adolf Hitler.

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Italy: Hotel tells Israeli customers they're the reason Nazis are returning to Europe

Via Ynet News:

A Jewish couple that accidentally gave an Italian hotel a low rating received in response anti-Semitic mail, saying that “Jews are never satisfied” and that they should not complain if Nazis return to Europe.

Bella and Boris Nudelman, together with two other couples, stayed in the Hotel Ristorante Italia in the Certosa di Pavia, and had only positive feedback after their one-night stay.

“The hotel was really nice and we enjoyed it there. When we left, we received from the booking website “Booking.com” a request to rate our stay there. It was at the same time as we were driving and by accident, without paying attention, I gave the hotel five out of ten stars,” Bella said.

A short while later, the hotel responded with hateful outrage to the rating.

“You Jews are never satisfied! Don’t complain when Nazis and fascists return to Europe. There is a reason for it … You!” the abusive email written in English said. 

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Italy: The Jewish Opera Italy Couldn’t Bear to Hear

Via Atlantic:

After the composer died in Turin in 1945, hiding in a fleabag hotel under a false name to avoid roundups, his music was forgotten. His family tried for years to get Italian opera houses interested in it, only to be met with suspicion and resistance. Producing Finzi’s music posthumously would have implied admitting and publicizing that it had once been banned because of the racial laws, a part of the past with which Italy still has not properly reckoned. So the Finzis did what European Jews sometimes do when they feel voiceless: They turned to the U.S.

(...)

Yet this is not just the story of a Jewish composer finally getting the recognition he deserves. It’s also the story of a country that still represses the memory of its racist past, a phenomenon that carries serious consequences for modern-day politics, especially at a time when the populist right wing is on the rise.

“When it comes down to the racial laws, Italy never fully reckoned with its responsibilities. Unlike what happened, for instance, in France [or Germany], no Italian head of State or government ever apologized for the persecution of Jews,” Guri Schwarz, a historian at the University of Genova, told me. Many Italians, he said, grew up with the distorted notion that the racial laws were not such a big deal, that Italy was “out of the shadow of the Shoah,” that the Holocaust was “a German thing.”

“It’s not that Italians didn’t learn about the persecution of Jews, but often they learned about it as if it where something that happened somewhere else,” said Schwarz. This lack of historic consciousness, he added, is the result of what he described as “the normalization of fascism,” a political process that began in the 1980s, when the Socialist party attempted an alliance with the post-fascist Movimento sociale, and continued with Silvio Berlusconi, who included self-described “former fascists” in his coalitions. “The message was, ‘We can include fascists [in mainstream politics], and we can do that because they weren’t really so bad.’”

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Anti-Semitic vandals hit shop in Italy, Holocaust monuments in France, Holland

Via Times of Israel:

A barbershop in Italy, and Holocaust monuments in the Netherlands and France were targeted in separate incidents deemed anti-Semitic.

The perpetrators of the incident involving Gianni Errichiello’s barbershop in a northern suburb of Turin in northern Italy torched a car parked in front of the establishment on Marconi Square. They splashed red paint on the shuttered blinds of the barbershop of Errichiello, who is not Jewish. And they attached a piece of printer paper on which was printed: “This shop belongs to a Jew,” Corriere de la Sera reported Tuesday.

(...)

Separately, in Paris, unidentified individuals removed a commemorative plaque that education ministry officials put up at the Ave Maria public elementary school for Jewish children who were deported from there and murdered during the Holocaust, Le Parisien last week reported.

The perpetrators did not damage any other object on the building’s façade, raising the suspicion that their action was an anti-Semitic incident. The Ave Maria school is located at the 4th District of Paris, or the Marais – the city’s historic Jewish quarter. The district’s mayor, Ariel Weil, who is Jewish, called the incident “shameful.”

On Sunday, unidentified individuals painted swastikas and other far-right symbols on a monument for Holocaust victims in the Midden-Groningen municipality, situated in the northeastern Netherlands, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the capital Amsterdam. City workers swiftly cleaned the black paint off the monument as police began investigating the incident, the RTV Noord broadcaster reported.

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Italians trained to fight Israel in Palestinian refugee camps, former Arafat adviser says

Things don't really change in Europe, do they? In 2018, 25% of Italians do not want Jews as family members

Via La Stampa:

During the Seventies, thousands of Italians went to Palestinian refugee camps to give their help, according to a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Bassam Abu Sharif, a historic member of PFLP who later became advisor of Yasser Arafat, has been heard by the parliamentary inquiry committee into the death of Aldo Moro, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, who was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades in 1978. Bassam Abu Sharif said to the committee also that there was a non-aggression pact between the Italian secret services and the Palestinian fedayeen.

«The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had special relations with some of the revolutionary groups emerging in Europe after 1968. These forces did not know how to oppose capitalism, and we taught them how to do it. It was part of the fight against the imperialism that supported Israel. Thousands of Italian young women and men came to Palestinian refugee camps in order to help in different ways, in the schools, in the clinics, or in combat», Bassam Abu Sharif said to the committee. This is the first time explicit mention is made of the presence of Italians in the Palestinian refugee camps forty years ago.

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Italy: 25% of Italians do not want Jews as family members

Via The Times of Israel:

Nearly a quarter of British respondents to a poll on attitudes to minorities in Western Europe said they would be unwilling to accept Jews as family members.

The Pew Research Center’s report titled “Being Christian in Western Europe” was published Wednesday and contains results from interviews with more than 24,000 randomly selected adults in 15 countries. In the United Kingdom, 23 percent of 1,841 respondents interviewed said “no” when asked “Would you be willing to accept Jews as members of your family?” It was the second-highest highest proportion of naysayers, directly after Italy’s 25 percent. The poll has a margin of error of up to 3 percent. (…)

The statement that “Jews always pursue their own interests and not the interest of the country they live in” received the highest levels of agreement in Portugal and Spain, with 36 and 31 percent of 1,501 and 1,499 respondents in those two countries, respectively. Next were Italy, Belgium and Norway, with 31, 28 and 25 percent, respectively.

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Italy: Roberto Saviano, author of ‘Gomorrah,’ takes on Internet Nazis

Via Tablet:

Tired of internet conspiracy theories and vile anti-Semitism, the journalist turns his attention from Italy’s mafia to its white supremacists

Later this month, Roberto Saviano, the renowned Italian journalist, will testify at the first hearing of a trial against 39 Italian neo-Nazis who were accused, among other things, of participating in an online group that incited racial discrimination and violence. For years, between 2009 and 2012, the group held discussions that included white supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric on the American hate site Stormfront.

In one of the threads, members of the site posted lists of alleged influential Jews: entrepreneurs, artists, and journalists. Among the people listed, were Carlo De Benedetti, former president of the publishing group L’Espresso, TV host Gad Lerner, and Saviano himself, whose maternal grandparents had Jewish origins, although he identifies as atheist.

An investigation carried out by the Italian police revealed chilling conversations among the members of Stormfront Italy. “I still believe that the great Führer had found the right solution for those damn rats,” wrote Filippo Galbesi, one of the users, in one of the threads. Another member, Alessandro Pedroni, stated: “To build—this time FOR REAL—homicidal gas chambers, applying for real what they pretend happened to them, I believe that would be the REAL FINAL SOLUTION.” All members took part in the discussions under nicknames, but the police discovered and published their names. (...)

Another reason for the online attacks was his participation in a debate on Israel in 2010, despite his openly critical stance on many of Netanyahu’s policies. “In Italy,” Saviano explained, “you cannot have a critical and interlocutory opinion on Israel; either you ask for its immediate dissolution, or you are considered to be part of the conspiracy.”

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8 EU states violate UN resolution with Palestinian missions in Jerusalem

Via Israel Hayom:

Despite having voted in favor of resolution condemning U.S. move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, which urges states to refrain from operating missions in Jerusalem, eight European states maintain Palestinian consulates or embassies there.

Several European countries have been found to be in violation of a U.N. resolution they themselves supported when condemning U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The U.N. General Assembly resolution that followed the U.S. announcement on Dec. 6 called on all countries "to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem." But the eight European countries in question – Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom – actively operate Palestinian Authority consulates or embassies in Jerusalem despite having voted in favor of the resolution.

The president of the world's largest Zionist Christian organization, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has come out against what he called the "hypocritical and inappropriate conduct of the international community toward Israel and Jerusalem."

ICEJ President Jurgen Buhler sent letters to each of those nation's leaders, in which he noted that "the international community has always called for an even-handed approach to Jerusalem, so as not to prejudge this sensitive final-status issue. Yet here are eight nations that have never been called out for violating this principle by placing their chief missions to the Palestinians in Jerusalem. It turns out the demand for neutrality has just been a hollow pretext for denying the Jewish people and state their rightful place in Jerusalem. So no nation can now complain when a country decides to open an embassy to Israel in Jerusalem.

"Many world leaders have been critical of the recent decision by U.S. President Donald Trump regarding Jerusalem, contending that it prejudges a sensitive issue which should left to final-status talks. Instead, they have urged an even-handed approach to Jerusalem. Yet [your country] has been violating this very principle for some time now due to your chief diplomatic mission to the Palestinians being located in … Jerusalem. If you truly wanted to be fair, you would either have both your diplomatic missions to Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem, or neither." 

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Italy: Secret Arafat diaries confirm non-aggression pact between Italy and Palestinians

Via i24News:

Excerpts of secret diaries reportedly kept by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat published Sunday reveal a secret deal with Italy protecting it from attacks by Palestinian terrorists in exchange for freedom of movement in the country for Palestinian terror factions.

Excerpts of a 19-volume diary published by the Italian L’Expresso magazine confirmed the long-rumored non-aggression pact between Italy and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed for decades by Arafat.

“Italy is a Palestinian shore of the Mediterranean,” Arafat writes in one excerpt of the diaries, which were recently sold to a French foundation for studying.

In one of the most dramatic realizations of the agreement, authorities in Rome refused a US extradition request for the mastermind of the deadly 1985 hijacking of the Italian ship Achille Lauro, in which a wheelchair bound Jewish-American man was murdered, allowing the terrorists to escape Italy to Yugoslavia.

The deal between Rome and the Palestinians had been previously revealed in 2008 by former Italian president Francesco Cossiga, who wrote at the time that it was struck by former prime minister Aldo Mora.

Other reports have suggested the agreement dates back to 1973, when Giulio Andreotti who served as foreign minister at the time of the Achille Lauro standoff, was prime minister.

The PLO is said to have struck a similar deal with Switzerland during the 1970s, giving them free rein to move around the country provided they discontinue attacks on Swiss targets.

In the excerpts of the diaries published by L’Expresso, Arafat also reveals lying to Italian prosecutors in 1998 about receiving some 10 million lira (NIS 21.5 million) in aid money that actually went to the Italian Socialist Party in order to help former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi avoid fraud charges.

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Italy: Lazio fined for anti-Semitic Anne Frank stickers against Roma

Via BBC:

Serie A side Lazio have been fined 50,000 euros (£43,520) after supporters displayed anti-Semitic Anne Frank stickers last October.

Fans posted images of the Holocaust victim in a Roma jersey alongside slogans such as "Roma fans are Jews".

Thirteen Lazio fans have received stadium bans of between five and eight years in connection with the incident.

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