(Adnkronos) – Lawmakers and members of the public have “an absolute duty” to unite against “all forms” of the “disquieting monster” of anti-Semitism amid a re-emergence of the scourge, Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Wednesday.
“For Parliament and the country, it is an absolute duty to be united against anti-Semitism,” Tajani told members of parliament after appealing to the opposition to back US president Donald Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan to end Israel’s two-year-old war in Gaza.
“We must speak with one voice in severe and concrete condemnation of all forms of anti-Semitism, a disquieting monster that is reappearing in our societies,” Tajani said.
Criticism of Israel’s government is “legitimate” over its devastating military offensive in Gaza that followed the cross border raids led by Islamist Palestinian group Hamas in which 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage, Tajani conceded.
Italy’s ruling coalition has also disagreed with Israel’s government many times, Tajani pointed out.
“But those who attack people in the street because they wear Jewish clothing, those who destroy or desecrate sacred Jewish sites, those who mock the victims of the Holocaust and glorify their executioners, those who call for the destruction of the State of Israel ‘from the river to the sea’ are not critics of the Israeli government, they are anti-Semites, representing a shameful legacy of our societies,” he said.
“And it is important to reiterate this forcefully today, as Israel and all Jewish communities around the world mark Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest holiday in Judaism,” said Tajani.
Europe and Italy “cannot be anti-Semitic, because they are founded on the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman roots from which our civilisation was born,” Tajani underlined.
“The memory of a past marked by racial laws and atrocities perpetrated against humanity must not be erased,” he underscored.
Tajani issued a call for all to ensure there will be no repeat of past atrocities against the Jews.
“We must be united in saying ‘never again’ but also in doing everything necessary to ensure that ‘never again’ becomes a reality,” he concluded.
