Dear Director of Feltri, I allow myself to disturb her to ask her for an opinion on a question that in these days is turning on controversy: the football match between Italy and Israel, scheduled for October 14 in Udine. There is talk of pressure to suspend the meeting, even an exclusion of Israel from UEFA competitions. There are those who claim that, in the light of the ongoing war, it would be right not to let Israel play, and those who shout at the scandal. What do you think about it?
Gianni Riva
Dear Gianni,
I say it in no uncertain terms: the hypothesis of suspending Israel, of erasing its matches, of ousting it from UEFA is a shame that shouts revenge on the sky. Sport, if it still makes sense, should represent a frank terrain, free from ideological controversies and propaganda obsessions. It should embody the values of loyalty, solidarity, healthy competition, the meeting between peoples and cultures. It has never been conceived to become a political battlefield, nor to transform itself into a court where sentences against entire nations are issued. Those who today demand the exclusion of Israel are not defending peace, but are opening the doors to the most brazen anti -Semitism. It is a fact: when Islamic terrorism unleashed hell on October 7, Israel found themselves under attack, with thousands of massacred Jewish citizens, raped and mutilated women, slaughtered children, over one hundred hostages seized and still held in the prisons of Hamas. Yet, in this madly correct madness, the attacked country is treated by executioner, while the real executioners are sanctified and painted as victims.
Now we would even like to punish the Israeli athletes, who have no faults except to bring the shirt of their national team. It is a disgusting operation, which has nothing to do with peace, justice or sport. It is pure discrimination, it is anti -Semitism disguised as pacifism.
If a similar drift was accepted, it would mean bending the sport to the drives of the street fanatics, transform the football federations into succurversal of the most becere ideologies. It cannot work like this. Israel has to play, and Italy has to play against Israel. Those who protest have every right to do so, but within the limits of legality. If the squares turn into battlefields, then the public force intervenes: it is not conceivable that the state gives you to guarantee a sporting event for fear of the factorous.
Dear Gianni, here is not only a football match. Here is the same principle of civilization: a whole people cannot be expelled with a sporting assembly only because part of the public opinion, blinded by hatred or propaganda, has elected it to enemy. It would be like saying that the Jew cannot run, he cannot dance, he cannot play, he cannot live. It has already happened in history, and we know how it ended.
We do not repeat the errors. Israel must remain inside, it must take the field, it must be treated like any other nation. And we must have the courage to say enough to cowardly covered with fake good intentions.