Here comes the accusation of anti-Semitism for the events in Amsterdam. An accusation that has often been painfully and shamefully used to silence any honest and rigorous denunciation of Israeli politics, an accusation that was emphasized with the October 7 massacre by Hamas and above all with what followed: the massacre of defenseless civilians in Gaza, that “plausible genocide” also for the International Court of Justice and those war crimes for which an arrest warrant was issued by the ICC. In addition to the leaders of Hamas, also for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his “opponent”, Defense Minister Gallant.
But we would be short-sighted not to see that the hateful wind of anti-Semitism risks regaining its breath and strength to blow with greater vigor, in the absence of awareness of the events and their history, and in the face of the chatter or worse, the deafening silence of Western governments in the face of the “quiet” massacre of Palestinians, a now routine slaughter of tens of thousands of second-class human beings, reduced to shadows walking under the bombs of a powerful State, and reduced to hunger and desperation among the rubble, for the which seems to have no more words to describe it or title to name it.
Indeed, in the inability to impose even a ceasefire, “returns to normality” are announced as the Italian government hypocritically hopes for, as if after everything that has happened and what happens every day there could really be a “return to normality”, as if normality really existed under a criminal military occupation that has lasted for decades.
Of course, the dirty wind to be stopped, together with racism, is that of anti-Semitism, but the first person responsible, as Anna Foa’s book “The Suicide of Israel” courageously recalls, is exactly the Israeli government in office: «…But the dead of Gaza are the work of a State that defines itself as democratic, the only democracy in the Middle East – writes Anna Foa -, but which does not hesitate to attack old people and children to kill a single leader of Hamas, a leader who will be replaced after a few days . And the Jews of the world – continues Anna Foa – of that diaspora that fills its mouth and mind with Jewish ethics and Jewish thought, how can they accept it without reacting? How can they only talk about anti-Semitism without looking at what is causing it to flare up at the moment, the war in Gaza?”.
We therefore condemn the evil plant of anti-Semitism – we underline a final evolution: one can in fact be supremacists like Orbán and Islamophobes like the racist Wilders, as well as of an anti-Semitic background like the neo-Nazi German party Afd and the Almirantian Meloni but mimetically also staunch friends of Israel. And of course we must be careful every day never to confuse the terms, because the Israeli government with declared fascists inside is one thing, Zionism and its history are another – realized, alas, on the back of the aspirations denied to the Palestinians – and Judaism yet another.
But is it really enough? Can it be enough, in the face of the hatred sown, to think about what the memory of those who lived as a target in the Gaza Strip will be? Can it be enough for the long-term gaze of those children?
There, under the rubble and in mass graves, the great solidarity owed to Israel for 7 October is now buried; there is a reservoir of hatred there that shakes the world to its foundations, which spreads because it no longer finds a listening ear, soothing, humanitarian comfort or political mediation, if even the UN institutions have been declared “terrorist” by the Israeli institutions. So thinking of relaunching the infamous accusation of anti-Semitism according to script – so everyone does, from Netanyahu who shouts about “Kristallnacht as in ’38”, to the right-wing Dutch government, from the king to Ursula von der Leyen – taking advantage of the degenerations condemning opposing football fans, as happened in Amsterdam – the city of Anne Frank, with deep Jewish roots (now the capital of European xenophobia) – is truly a painful ritual that trivializes the history of Jewish persecution and the anti-Nazi memory of ‘Europe, bringing only water to Netanyahu’s arrogance.
Who with his war of revenge exposes the Jewish communities to danger, and who, in fact, thinks of reducing us to the dimension of “fans”. But Gaza is not a football trip. Because the ultra drift is the perfect spectacular metaphor of our time, where violence finds its reasons, now in the absence of the necessary spaces of politics which remains silent and closes its eyes, like the media, to the truth. If it is true, how true is it that not only was there a serious hunt for the Israeli in the name of the “children of Gaza” afterwards, but that the Israeli Makkabi fans themselves staged provocations in several incidents well before the match , with contemptuous gestures and violent claims of the massacres of Palestinians. If the one in Amsterdam is a pogrom, what is the massacre taking place at the moment in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon?
