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Yours,
Fiamma
published on Il Giornale, 27 January 2011
We can no longer celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Day simply by remembering, albeit from the depths of our hearts and with the greatest of goodwill. This Holocaust Remembrance Day must be lived in a fighting spirit. The illusion that the history of the world is marching in progress deluded us into believing that “never again” is not just a hope but a statement of fact. But it is indeed a very tough battle. The UN, born from the ashes of the Shoah, was, first and foremost, set up to guarantee that genocide policies or instigation to genocide would have been prohibited by international law. This is provided for in the UN conventions against genocide. But as a matter of fact, we have seen what has happened in Cambodia, in Darfur, in Rwanda… We have witnessed genocide attempts in Tibet and in Bosnia… As far as instigation is concerned, it has become par for the course, and all that is actually needed would be an international court prepared to pass fair sentences. But nobody lifts a finger.
Twice during my work as a journalist in the Middle East, I collected my gas mask, just like everyone else, from one of the centers designated for this purpose. In 1991, I took refuge in a safe room prepared in the house. In 2003 I converted a walk-in cupboard in my own house into a safe room by applying nylon sheeting and sticking adhesive tape around the door. My husband and I kitted ourselves out with plastic overalls able to withstand chemical or biological attacks, so that we could go out and cover the news. In fact, in 1991 Israel was attacked by Saddam’s missiles killing and injuring civilians; in 2003 the American attack on Saddam did not give him the time to respond. But the masks, then redistributed for fear of exterminating attacks with odorless, colorless gas that burns the skin and destroys the lungs with botulinum toxin or with anthrax, add to the unflagging efforts to build shelters for every house, school and hospital. Israel uninterruptedly patents new accident and emergency services, new mass evacuation systems, it sets up rapid medical and paramedical chains, it equips the hospitals with spacious anti-atomic underground bunkers. The population carries out drills in the event – unique in the world – of mass destruction, i.e. a new extermination of the Jews, as threatened in block capitals on the television, in the newspapers, on the Internet, and at the General Assembly of the UN, which failed to utter a cheep in response.
http://fiammanirenstein.com/ articoli.asp?Categoria=5&Id= 2515
by Fiamma Nirenstein
published on Il Giornale, 24 January 2011
In his latest essay, Pierluigi Battista, Italian chief columnist for “Corriere della Sera”, meets all the prejudices against the Jewish people and the Jewish State head on. Those who lash out against Israel then have nothing to say about what’s going on in China and in the Darfur.
The new book of Pierluigi Battista “Lettera a un amico antisionista” (Letter to an anti-Zionist friend) (Rizzoli, 120 pages, € 17.50) is an extraordinary event. The European and American élites are competing with each other in a crazy, unprecedented and illogical spiral of criticism against Israel. This is aimed at giving the idea, embellished by studies and numbers and clothed in fine words and nebulous statements, that Israel is a country which has no right to exist. And actually tomorrow it might not exist, as so many want to destroy it Battista, in contrast, destroys this intellectual/political mass perversion of anti-Zionist hate in five burning chapters, revealing it for what it is: anti-Semitism.
Why is Battista’s work so exceptional? Because we can count on the fingers of one hand the non-Jewish intellectuals who have systematized the scandal of hate for Israel that contaminates the world, the UN, the European Union reducing them to a circus of lies; this hatred safeguards the violators of human rights, does not object to the Chinese bullet in the back of the head, or to the Sudanese carnage, and condemns, with the pornographic label of «Nazis», the Israeli check points designed to ward off terrorist attacks. Not considering the Christians for Israel, we can quote only upright intellectuals such as Robin Shepherd, with “A state beyond the pale”, Bruce Bawer, who deals with this question as well in his book “While Europe slept”, Neill Lochery with “Why blame Israel?”, and among Italian writers, Angelo Pezzana and Magdi Allam. Then there are the distinguished names of politicians and journalists such as, in pride of place, José Maria Aznar and Giuliano Ferrara.
Recently the large event «For the truth, for Israel» held in Rome, that I personally contributed to organizing, and which was attended by many intellectuals and leading politicians, is the evidence that something is changing. Some people are no longer willing to submit to the most dangerous perversion of the European mind. But the members of the élites who have produced a book such as Battisti’s are few. Generally, in contrast, the opinion makers who speak from newspapers, books, TV screens, from their university desks, from the world of cinema and show business, have been instrumental in feeding public opinion with ignorance and silent agreement. They pass off the idea that it is just pure common sense delegitimizing the existence of Israel, imagining it as an apartheid state or as a country guilty of war crimes, describing it as a «shitty little country» bound to die – the words of the French ambassador in London – using a double standard that exonerates the worst dictators, and even denying its right to exist.
