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Rating: "My premise is very simple: Israel, contrary to commonly accepted propaganda, is a positive model, a case study for anyone who finds himself living in a democratic society that must eventually confront a defensive war-one that encompasses the entire universe of Western democracy today".
(F. Nirenstein, from the presentation to the US edition of the book)
The law on equal time and the need not to influence the voting rights of the site's users push me, with this new contribution, to abandon domestic politics to dedicate myself, with a broader perspective, to an internationally significant topic, one as interesting as it is delicate: the "Jewish question," contemplated after reading this fascinating essay by Fiamma Nirenstein, a respected representative of the Italian Jewish community and an excellent journalist, already elected to our Parliament.
Before discussing the book, it may be appropriate to clarify - even for the average site user who may be uninformed about history - the terms of the issue analyzed in Nirenstein's essay: after being expelled from Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the Jews were, for several centuries, a Nation without a State, that is, a community of people, culture, and religion lacking sovereignty over a specific portion of territory, and consequently, without state institutions expressive of such sovereign power.
For long centuries, they were "dispersed" in various European States, being received in different ways, sometimes with favor (mainly in the Netherlands, but also in England), sometimes with substantial indifference, and other times with more or less pronounced disfavor (it was in the Venetian Republic that the first "ghettos" were established, for example, named after the Jewish quarter located near local foundries, recalling the "casting" of molten metal).
The role of Jews was peculiar in the Central European and Eastern European context: they profoundly influenced the culture of those places, especially in the Habsburg realm (consider the significant influence Judaism had in Prague society) or in the farther East (where Judaism significantly influenced parts of Polish culture), not to mention the German world, where Jewish influence touched not only vast cultural sectors but also economic development itself, with Jews, particularly the Rothschild family, becoming the main financiers of pre-unification German states' economies, eventually becoming arbiters of European (and thus global) economy of the era, financing military campaigns as well as commercial ventures overseas.
The rise and importance of Jews in the European sociocultural context corresponded, as is tragically known, to a growing antisemitic movement, whose roots are too complex and variable to be easily summarized: rather than seeking a single cause for antisemitism, it is preferable to observe how a series of historical, social, and psychological prejudices (often the result of outright falsifications) weighed against Jews, regarding their "deicidal guilt," their supposed "infidelity" toward host nations, their "economic influence," and so on: what counts is observing how Jews were simultaneously the "perfect outsiders" compared to any other individual and the "perfect culprits" for any conceivable blame (as in some extreme cases of infanticide or kidnapping, frequently sparking an irrational and insane "hunt for Jews").
In the 20th century, these prejudices found a tragic synthesis, culminating in an explosion in Nazi Germany, where the popular and, surprisingly, theoretical (Fichte, Nietzsche), religious (Luther) roots of antisemitism were the detonator of Hitlerian madness: over six million deaths in the Holocaust (to which must be added other representatives of ethnic or cultural minorities, such as Romani people, homosexuals, political dissidents). A tragedy, in which Fascist Italy was not indifferent, tainted by the guilt of the "racial laws" of 1938 and the subsequent deportation of thousands of Jews to extermination camps, from Buchenwald to Treblinka or Auschwitz.
After this tragedy, the international community deemed it necessary to counter antisemitism in various dimensions and all forms of racism: among the various policies implemented to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies, there was also the necessary cessation of the Jewish diaspora with the establishment of the State of Israel, under the aegis of the UN, in 1948.
At this point, the issue could be considered resolved: yet, as often happens in history and politics, further problems then arose, with contemporary significance.
It happened that the realization of the State of Israel (for obvious and understandable pro-Atlantic and pro-American reasons) was opposed by the Palestinian populations settled in those territories for millennia: of Muslim religion but of ethnicity akin to that of Jews, considering how all those tribes derive from the mythical figure of Ishmael, the illegitimate son of the Jew Abraham. The Palestinians then found support from other neighboring Arab peoples, including Syrians and Egyptians, launching a series of wars, guerrillas, and low-intensity conflicts that continue even today, with deaths on both sides.
Conflicts and wars so complex that it is difficult, after years, to discern the original motives and the reasons for one side or the other.
The most interesting aspect of the matter, for us Italians, is well captured in Nirenstein's essay and concerns the role of our population concerning the Middle Eastern conflict: a role in which political prejudices and typically internal struggles led political parties and especially left-wing youth, to identify with the defense of Palestinian and Arab population rights, adopting their symbols and anthems: not so much due to a rational opposition to the Jewish state as such, but due to an underlying opposition to the United States seen as the unseen orchestrators of the Middle Eastern crisis and the very establishment of Israel, here understood as a longa manus of American "plutocracy", in turn represented by particularly influential figures of Jewish origin, like Henry Kissinger.
It is tragically obvious that, in such a context, having made the simple equation USA/Israel= USSR/Palestine, the Italian left took the side of the Palestinian, and generally pro-Arab, population, based on an uncritical, and as always fideistic and immature, adherence to the Party's dictates and the Single Thought.
This gross adherence, paradoxically, ended up feeding on the same anti-Jewish prejudices, or more broadly antisemitic ones, that circulated in Europe for several centuries and which, as we have just clarified, were one of the causes of the Holocaust, or more accurately of the "non-manifest opposition" of European peoples to the extermination of the Jewish population.
Although it may at first seem paradoxical, considering also the clear Jewish roots of Marxist thought, the left ended up manipulating the Israeli issue twice; once by underestimating the causes of the Holocaust and its effects to trivialize them within internal political struggles; the second time, by using historical events related to the establishment of the State of Israel as a pretext, or Trojan horse, for yet another vacuous critique of alleged American imperialism, without realizing a nonetheless fundamental argument, whose assumptions are underestimated even today: that the State of Israel, however criticizable in terms of the military policies initiated by its highly efficient Army and its exceptional Secret Services (well depicted in Spielberg's "Munich"), was and remains a democratic state, reflecting a virtuous coexistence of Jewish values and the best Western tradition, in a sociopolitical context in which these values have never established themselves and have never fully taken root.
In this environment, it was the moderates who consistently and loyally supported the positions of the Israeli state, both by frankly acknowledging the tragedy of the Holocaust (in which the same Italian moderates were, unfortunately, involved, not clearly opposing Jewish persecution, both as fascists and as Catholics) and by recognizing the geopolitical centrality of the State of Israel in the international chessboard, and the fact that defending Israel ultimately amounts to a defense of democracy against anti-democratic tendencies.
Nirenstein's book illuminates, with an explosive, fiery prose that takes no prisoners and gives the reader no respite, the matter and its impact on Italian politics, inviting all Italians "to acknowledge being Israeli," meaning being clearly aware of one's history, and alas, also of our faults, but also educated about the importance of democracy as an absolute value, whose implementation appears justified by every possible means against any foe.
The book constitutes, in this perspective, also a reconsideration of Nirenstein's youthful thought, seduced by the sirens of '68 and the youthful libertarianism that by breaking all chains of the past, naively severed even one's roots, anchored in solid traditions and values that, rather than being abandoned, needed to be reconsidered and updated.
The message, however, does not stop here: the book also has a political perspective and looks to the future, not just the past. Assert "Israel is us" means also that the Israeli political model should be considered a general model applicable in Europe, and especially in Italy, with the aim of defending the founding values of European civilization (whose Jewish roots are undiscussed despite attempts to erase the past) against external aggressions from Arab and pro-Islamic populations, particularly following the events of September 11 and the attack on the Twin Towers as a symbol of Western culture: in this view, it is necessary to repel such aggressions, carriers of countervalues, and confine them to spaces outside the Western community, as they are phenomena unsusceptible of assimilation into the broader canon of Western culture.
A model that, therefore, could be useful, even in our country, to contain the effects of immigration proposing values alternative to those fundamental to our civilization and the same values of a West that has its roots, and its highest expression, in the State of Israel, seen as the forefront and symbol of all countries in the civilized world.
A useful book thus: it allows cornering the ostensible champions of democracy in Kefiah, as well as their weak roots, demonstrating the inherent inconsistency of the Italian left regarding historical and geopolitical issues, while providing an effective recipe to respond to contemporary multiculturalism issues, making the most of the lessons of History.
The book's coup d'aile, therefore, is to have us, after centuries of distinctions, put ourselves in the shoes of the Jewish people, giving a universal value to the universal sensation of feeling perpetually under the threat of external aggressions aimed at destroying the identity of a people. This is the true meaning of the moral warning contained in the book's title.
I think this is sufficient and I invite all users to reflect well, abstaining from instrumental comments based on the typical commonplace-ism that afflicts many, and on the ahistorical antisemitism of the extreme Italian left, instead trying to reflect on the contents and stimuli present in this excellent and straightforward work.
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