Dear director Feltri,
a deep discouragement comes over me, seeing how much the Jewish people are still suffering from the wave of anti-Semitism that was unleashed after 7 October 2023 and the events in Gaza. As a child, shortly after the end of the war, I went with the whole family to visit a Jewish married couple who had been kept hidden by my grandmother during the war, I who always have in my eyes and mind the first shocking images of the Nazi extermination camps projected in cinemas and schools, I who remember with profound emotion the Diary of Anne Frank, even in the masterful theatrical adaptation of the company
De Lullo, Falk, Valli, Guarneri, I who remember the various battles waged by Israel with the Arab world, which never tolerated its birth and still, to a large extent, hopes for its annihilation, cannot understand the new growing hatred towards it. Those who babble about genocide in Gaza cause a very serious offense to those millions of Jews killed by the Nazi fury, which searched for them house by house with the aim of their total extermination. I am not aware that such treatment is currently reserved, for example, for Palestinians residing in Israel: words sometimes weigh like boulders and in this case they inappropriately evoke extermination
of mass which is not in the facts. I don’t think anyone who has personally experienced the immense Nazi crimes can fully understand what lies in the hearts of those who were subjected to it: an infinite terror passed down from generation to generation that leads to fighting with every means to prevent everything from happening again. Not only me, but I think all readers, would like to know your analysis on the matter. Cordially,
Alberto Tonini – Milan
Dear Alberto,
your words contain indelible truths. And they are striking, because they do not come from an ideology or a prejudice, but from a living memory. You have known, since you were a child, the smell of true history, the one that is not written on walls or on social media, but that is lived on your skin. You are the son of that part of Italy that had the courage to protect the Jews when protecting them meant risking your own skin. And today, as a free man, who has seen and known the reflection of horror, you are rightly scandalized.
Yes, dear Alberto: there is a forceful return of anti-Semitism in Europe. I’ve been reporting it for two years. And it is an anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism, a hatred that is cloaked in humanitarian slogans, but which in reality follows the same identical centuries-old stereotypes of the powerful and evil Jewish people, now guilty of defending themselves. Those who today scream “genocide”, as a certain lady Francesca Albanese does, like this
as leftists, they should know that the word has weight. And using it inappropriately is not only proof of ignorance, but also a form of moral complicity with those who want to delegitimize the State of Israel, or even worse, justify violence against Jews everywhere in the world. Especially when that cry comes after October 7, a date that history will not be able to ignore: a cold-blooded massacre, a massacre of civilians, children, women, old people. And whoever today denies, minimizes, or worse yet absolves, takes the responsibility of holding the same match that lit Auschwitz.
You quote Anne Frank with emotion. I loved that journal too. But today we don’t need writings hidden in an attic. We have videos, images, evidence, testimonies. The horror is out in the open. Yet it is denied. This is what worries me most.
Israel is a state surrounded by enemies who do not want it to be reduced,
but the erasure, of himself and his people. Hamas is not asking for two states: it wants just one, without Jews. And it wants it at the cost of using the Palestinians themselves as human shields. This is the difference that many refuse to see: Israel uses weapons to defend its people, Hamas uses its people to defend weapons.
You said it right: anyone who didn’t experience the Nazi terror can’t really understand it. But he should at least have the decency to respect the victims. And don’t tear your clothes only when it’s ideologically convenient.
Because a Jewish child massacred in a kibbutz is no less innocent than a Palestinian child under bombs. And if you cry for one and ignore the other, then you are not a pacifist. We are complicit in terror.
I thank you for your letter, which constitutes a lesson in dignity.