J'Accuse, 7 February 2024 on the controversy between Ambassador Elena Basile and senator for life Liliana Segre

 J'Accuse, 7 February 2024 on the controversy between Ambassador Elena Basile and senator for life Liliana Segre

It all exploded a week ago when Ambassador Elena Basile (collaborator with Il Fatto Daily) published an article accompanied by a video, almost three minutes long, in which she addressed the senator for life, as well as the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, accusing the first of being sensitive only to the suffering of Jewish children - victims of the October 7 attack, demonstrating, in his opinion, a completely questionable coldness towards the pain and suffering of Palestinian children affected by those who suffered the terrible infamies of Nazi persecution. This criticism has raised a fuss and indignation among those who do not think like Basile, to the point that her son, Luciano Belli Paci, as reported by Corriere della sera, defined them as "blatantly false and defamatory", asking her to delete the video from her social media by posting another apology.

Now if we were to act as impartial judges of what was done and said in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli reaction was a total and summary devastation of everything they found themselves in front of and this is not how one builds one's own security and the future! Not 7 October, but a genocide as defined by the Court of The Hague, a collective punishment of the Palestinian population, guilty of collusion with Hamas, but in the vast majority unrelated to the events of 7 October. Faced with these massacres by Italian politicians, whether from the government or the divided opposition, we have not seen explicit condemnations of the massacre perpetrated, which is still ongoing. Only bland words, calls for a Ceasefire and abstentions at the United Nations in the face of decisions that order the Jewish state to stop its warlike actions. In short, except for a few daring journalists in the beautiful country and the compassion of a part of Italian public opinion, which obviously does not change history, everyone ignored or overlooked when it came to raising their voice and saying in clear words that what is happening it is a massacre of the civilian population and not an action aimed at defending Israel. In this context, Basile's words make sense: the scale of the carnage required, and requires, a proportional sentence, if one is impartial and just as the Senator claims in her statements reported by the newspapers. We have seen with amazement how hundreds of American Jews in New York have expressed their indignation in front of the images of massacred Palestinian children (it's THE NUMBER THAT'S SCARY). They said: “Not in my name!”, don't do it in our name. In Italy, we have not seen symmetrical demonstrations, but a propagandistic use of history and information to obscure such crimes. The most serious fact is that these massacres and this genocide are still ongoing. War and blockade of aid by Israel and its allies in the region are decimating the civilian population. I don't see mobilizations or even indignations capable of leading to a Ceasefire, but a climate of intimidation and threats where those who tell the raw truth are threatened with lawsuits and other things like during dictatorships. Italy is, and remains, a free country where freedom of thought and expression still exists, for a while longer until free minds are silenced by intimidation. Finally, I believe that Basile understood precisely the fact just stated: as long as there was condemnation on the part of Mrs. Segre, it was not directly proportional to the size of the ongoing massacre...