The left is as uncomfortable as Prodi. “In the summer we went to the kibbutzim but it is no longer our Israel”

Nel kibbutz Fabrizio Rondolino he showed up wearing a keffiyeh. He asked if it was a problem, “no one” they told him, and they set him to discard the rotten oranges. “It was the summer of 1978, I was eighteen years old, a boy student at the Alfieri high school in Turin, and the kibbutz seemed to me to be the only experience of real socialism that was worth living”, says the former spokesperson of Massimo D’Alema at Palazzo Chigi.

“It is no longer the Israel we loved,” he said Sunday at In half an hour, Romano Prodi. «Netanyahu he exceeded every limit.” How do you experience the escalation, we ask the lawyer Luciano Belli Pacithe son of Liliana Segrewho is among the founders of Left for Israel: “With discomfort,” he replies.

Socialists were the founders of Israel. Labor ruled the country for a long time. When Achille Occhetto went to Tel Aviv in 1991, he pronounced himself thus on Zionism: «It was the social and national liberation movement of the Jewish people and has its roots in the history and values ​​of the workers’ movement». Today Israel risks isolation, in moral disapproval for what is happening in Gaza, for the powder keg ignited between Lebanon and Iran.

«Prodi is right», says Rondolino. «Netanyahu is like Trump, Putin, Erdogan. But it is within a democracy, a secular society, where the newspapers contest it, family members take to the streets, while I don’t know that even a Palestinian from California has said anything against the massacre of October 7th.”

However, the relationship with the left is fatally compromised. Could it be otherwise?

There was a time when the kibbutz was the promised land for many left-wing kids. Emanuele Fianoa long-time member of the Democratic Party, spent a year there, with his girlfriend who would later become his wife, in 1983. «I was a militant of the socialist Zionist movement, we ended up in Sassa, one kilometer from the border with Lebanon. I picked apples, then I worked in the carpentry shop, we got up at six. Everything was shared, in exchange they gave you house and food. Even the father of Schlein he lived on a kibbutz in the South. Many dear friends remained there.”

Like Rondolino, who falls in love with Israel after arriving convinced that Arafat is Che GuevaraFiano also cultivates dialogue with the Palestinians. «Today there are few of us left who think we can reconcile the two causes: what I see pains me a lot», confesses Rondolino, former correspondent of theUnit.

The break already occurred with the Six Day War, in 1967. First the PCI, then also the PSI of Craxi they move to pro-Arab positions. The DC itself, Andreotti in the head, it is. The divorce was sanctioned by the advent of Netanyahu, who reduces the Israeli left to nothing: today he has four deputies. «This happened because the left sacrificed itself on the altar of peace», says Belli Paci. After the Oslo agreements, which established the Palestinian Authority, there were dozens of attacks; the void left by the withdrawal in southern Lebanon was occupied by Hezbollah; after Camp David the second Intifada broke out; the exit from Gaza allowed Hamas to take over the strip. For public opinion, every attempt to make peace has brought more terrorism. Netanyahu explains himself this way. But we cannot help but continue to fight for two peoples, two states, the only key to reaching a peaceful solution.” «There is no shooting on Unifil», specifies Fiano, «but it must be said that it is not doing what it is there for: to make Hezbollah retreat».

Left for Israel continues to spread its newsletter, in the belief that we must not stop looking for the reasons for peace. But with bewilderment, with impotence.

Fabrizio Rondolino has retired to the countryside. «At the time they put me in the kitchen, then in the factory, and finally to clean the chickens’ poop. I was the only Gentile who came from Italy. The kibbutz paid for your holidays, your doctor, your college. I saw the only socialism there.” Other times.