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“The images we have seen show something more than just a war, they show the desire to erase the Jews from this region and it is an act of anti-Semitism. And we must fight it, today as yesterday. We defend Israel’s right to exist, to defend the security of its citizens. We absolutely understand that it is an act of terrorism that must be fought. We think and believe that you are able to do it in the best way, because we are different from those terrorists. We must defeat this barbarism: it is a battle between the forces of civilization and barbaric monsters who have killed, mutilated, raped, beheaded, burned innocent people. This is a test, a test of civility. And we will win it.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni never misses an opportunity to prove herself the most Atlanticist among Atlanticists. On a mission to Tel Aviv to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Italian Prime Minister recited more or less the same script already recited when she met Zelensky at the time of the Russian SMO on Ukrainian territory. It is a model that works very well for the Italian mainstream.
Of course, then, by participating in the Cairo Conference – the result of which was absolute zero – she had to change his tone and register, inviting Israel not to seek “revenge”. But the guard dog effect had already hit the front pages of all the newspapers. Not even a word about the nearly five thousand Palestinians killed by IDF fire. For the Italian government, those are just collateral damage.
Italian foreign policy is reduced to a fake display of pro-Washington globalism, without any care for Italian history and its long pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian tradition. Because Italy wasn’t like that. Over the last sixty years, political relations between Italy and Palestine have changed, in parallel with deeper changes in Italian and Palestinian politics. For decades, Italy has been considered the Western European country most supportive of the Palestinians.
Everything changed in the early nineties. Yet another cadeux from the end of the Cold War. Italian political support for the Palestinians has undergone a gradual but constant change. Italy, in fact, is today one of Israel’s closest European “friends”. There are two main factors behind this political repositioning. One is Italy’s political and social transformation – the long process of cultural, economic and political “integration” into globalized neoliberal policies, closely linked to the neo-imperialist agenda – which has led to a drastic overhaul of Italian foreign affairs.
After the end of the Second World War, Italy paid great attention to the Arab world. The government sought to have an active role in the region, well aware of the need to establish strong and lasting relations, taking advantage of its favorable position as a “bridge” between the Middle East and Europe. Italy has historically attempted to benefit from its geographical proximity to the region to establish an economic presence in the Mediterranean area. This was evident in attempts at direct colonial expansion. Indeed, even though Italian foreign policy was decidedly limited in scope in the midst of growing polarization between the United States and the Soviet sphere in the 1950s, its interests in the Mediterranean endured.
While in the 1950s and 1960s there were only timid attempts to play an active role in the Arab-Israeli question, in the 1970s Italy deviated towards a more decidedly pro-Palestine position. Under the leadership of the then Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Italy promoted various initiatives in favor of the Palestinian cause. For example, together with France, it supported Arafat’s participation in the United Nations General Assembly in 1974. The Italian government of the time also expressed solidarity for the Palestinian drama, not only with declarations and communiqués, but also to the point of allowing the official presence of the PLO in Italy in 1974.
Aldo Moro – Click to see the full-size image
National diplomacy aimed to ensure that tension between Palestinian militants and Israeli intelligence did not escalate in Italy. With a secret pact, known as “Lodo Moro”, Italy assured some Palestinian groups the freedom to coordinate and organize their activities on Italian territory in exchange for the guarantee that the actions would not then take place in Italy. Nonetheless, many reconstructions have emerged over the years according to which it appears that the same policy of “pretending not to see” was aimed at the Mossad.
We know what happened to Italian politicians who supported the Arab and Palestinian causes. Aldo Moro (1978) was kidnapped by the Red Brigades and killed in circumstances that are not yet fully clarified. Bettino Craxi was overwhelmed by the moralizing wave of Tangentopoli, the scandal that erased the entire Italian political class coinciding with the end of the Cold War, and died as an exile in Tunisia. Now, Italian foreign policy is nothing more than a dependency of Washington.
