House and Palestine

After two years, finally, through a still-blurred horizon, I can glimpse my country again.

Italy had always been the most pro-Palestinian of European countries. Much depended on the fact that the old Italian Communist Party — which, at the time, was the largest in Western Europe — placed solidarity with oppressed peoples at the center of its vision. Palestine had become something of a flag of international solidarity.

This sentiment had not struggled to gain traction among Italians in general, regardless of their political affiliation.

In a country where, according to ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics), more than half of families owned their own homes as early as the 1970s, it couldn’t have been otherwise.

Work, Marriage, Mortgage. The three fundamental moments in the life of an Italian family.

It was hard not to sympathize with families driven from their homes, forced to watch people from all over the world living in their houses, cultivating their land.

Anti-Semitism was not a component of this sentiment. It existed then, as it unfortunately exists now. But solidarity with the Palestinians was never to be confused with anti-Semitic sentiments. It was an untouchable pillar of ethical and moral existence. The communists believed in solidarity. Everyone else believed that, in the Palestinians’ place, they would have reacted even worse. Home is sacred for every Italian family.

So much water has passed under the bridge since then.

Let’s just say that the United States has invested too much money in Israel, taking it away from its own citizens.

How can you explain to families who lose their loved ones because they can’t afford healthcare — free for everyone else in the developed world — that millions of dollars are gifted every year to Israel for weapons?

You need them to see those funds as a compelling duty. And to achieve that, you need more than an enemy — you need evil on the other side of the Israeli barricades.

Dehumanizing Palestinians has always been even more paramount for U.S. administrations than for Israel itself.

And their pressure on the allies has become more than insistent, absolute. So much so that it has created internal tensions even within the US itself.

Thus, after decades of propaganda, in the reactionary period we are currently experiencing, the most obtuse strain of American conservatism has managed to break the deadlock of a political class that is corrupt to the core.

Italy has never ceased to be pro-Palestinian, but Italian politicians and the mainstream media have fed us two years of pro-Israeli American propaganda. Talking about Palestinian rights meant being anti-Semitic, condemning the horrific massacres in Gaza meant siding with Hamas, and so on. One insult after another, one lie after another, I don't know what they hoped to achieve.

People's feelings, even more than their ideas, do not change according to what suits you in order to survive politically.

It’s the problem of power for power’s sake.There is no identity to defend, no ideals, no definitions.

I always think of a young leader of the Sinistra Giovanile (Youth Left). I didn't feel welcome there, but I stayed longer than I should have. I did so because the first demonstration I attended with them was the Gay Pride in Padova. At a meeting about the demonstration, Umberto said, 'Guys, I know this can be a difficult topic to discuss with our older comrades. I think we have to be willing to go door to door to convince them that we are making the right choice.' I think he also added, 'Enough of this bullshit,' but it was the 1990s. We didn't want to be politically correct. We wanted to be just. Relics of a bygone era.

Here’s the point.

Italian politicians no longer want to persuade us that what they believe in could lead to a better future. They don’t want to persuade anyone of anything.

Moral corruption, before it even shows itself in choices, begins as a loss.

When you no longer have a vision that is truly your own, a vacuum opens up — and that vacuum will be filled by whoever pays the most, one way or another.

So here they are, ingesting American propaganda and spitting it back at us, convinced it might still work.

They hope that we too will get lost in that same void — a void of ideas and hope.

I don’t doubt that it could happen to us too - to ordinary people.

But in the last 2 months I just found it staggering that, for the sake of the political survival of a corrupt ruling class, my Italians could forget what a house means to us.

That they could no longer feel that gut-deep repulsion at the very thought of being forced out of one’s own house so that someone else could live there instead.

I was doubting my country, and what I always knew (or felt) about us.

And yet here they are. Palestinian flags, banners, and all the rest of the repertoire. Young students, comrades, and quite a few Italians with psychosomatic stress psoriasis at the mere thought that someone in that part of the world might see another person living in their house.

Perhaps, if we fail to stand firm for what’s right, common sense will still come to our rescue.