1
To our not-so-dear colleagues, you've decided to terminate your economic cooperation with Israel after more than 30 years of mutually satisfactory trade. You wrote that you are unwilling to maintain relations "with a nation that continues to act inhumanely adopting policy and military actions that result in the suffering and in the mass killing of the Palestinian population, far exceeding any standard of proportional response to the terrible attack suffered on 7th October 2023." You added that you " we cannot go on remaining indifferent in the face of actions that we consider to be in violation of fundamental human rights " and therefore chose " not to be complicit even indirectly in a context for us morally unacceptable." This, you claimed, was written on behalf of "In the name of the Shareholders, the Board members, the Directors, and all our Technical and Factory staff,."
While living in Italy, I encountered a phenomenon I came to call "intellectual laziness", an unwillingness to engage with facts or confront the truth. Many of those I met preferred to cling to their prejudices and rely on the fabricated film industry of the Palestinians ("Pallywood") or anti-Israel narratives in the media.
2
The world is rife with military conflicts and terrorist attacks, none of which seem to stir your sense of justice and morality. You likely conduct business with some of the regimes responsible.
In Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Mozambique, ongoing military conflicts have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions. In Afghanistan, thousands have been killed since the Taliban takeover. In Yemen, the civil war has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, directly or through starvation and disease. In Syria, hundreds of thousands have died and millions have been displaced. Tens of thousands have been killed in Europe itself in the Russia-Ukraine war. In Latin America, hundreds of thousands are killed due to drug conflicts and violence. In these and other regions, tens of millions of children are exposed to violence, sexual exploitation, disease, malnutrition, and recruitment into terrorist gangs or child armies.
Have you examined human rights conditions in those places? By the way, do you do business with China? Interesting, only Israel seems to merit your moral attention.
3
You accuse Israel of responding disproportionately to the events of October 7. Really? What is a proportionate response to the decapitation of our sons? How would you respond to the mass rape of your daughters until their pelvic bones shattered, followed by bullets to their heads? What is the appropriate reaction to families being bound together and burned alive?
Peace activists lived in those kibbutzim. They dedicated their lives to helping the residents of Gaza, bringing them technology, water infrastructure, and transporting Gazan children to Israeli hospitals. The Palestinians knew them well. That did not save them. They were murdered, their homes looted, and then put to fire.
What is a proportionate response to the abduction of more than 250 Israelis? How do you measure the horror of the Bibas family infants, suffocated to death by hand after being kidnapped? Try imagining it were your children, then talk to us about disproportion.
I will tell you what is truly disproportionate: your hypocrisy. It defies comprehension.
What is a proportionate response to an entity that openly declares its absolute commitment to two principles: the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jews wherever they are? That is written in the Hamas Charter, which I translated into Italian during my term as ambassador. That key document bears an eerie resemblance to another one written in German about a hundred years ago. Indeed, in Gazan children's rooms, Arabic translations of Mein Kampf were found, used as educational material.
Would you agree to live with your children just two kilometers away from a Nazi entity whose raison d'être is the extermination of Jews? Is there a moral right to exist for any society that uses hospitals and kindergartens as bases from which to murder Jews?
Gazan authorities spent the billions of euros you donated not on improving lives but on building a tunnel network larger than New York's subway system, built for one purpose: the extermination of Jews.
4
During the Nazi period, there were Germans who hid Jews, and under Italian fascism, Italians who rescued Jewish families. As ambassador, I had the honor of presenting Righteous Among the Nations medals to their descendants. So why was there not a single Palestinian in Gaza who attempted to rescue the hostages? Fine, they did not save them, but not one voiced genuine condemnation of the massacre, without a "but" or a wink. Not a single righteous person was found in this Sodom.
Would you have supplied fuel, food and electricity to the Nazi population? Israel does just that, extending the war by supplying Hamas. Nevertheless, you complain about "human rights violations." The political abuse of "human rights" to attack us is nothing new: everyone has rights, except Jews. Every time we fight our enemies, the antisemites demand we stop.
5
Let's talk about your hyper-motivation to take a stand against Israel. Jews have lived in Europe for over 2,000 years. There are records of Jews in Rome from the 2nd century BCE. That did not stop you from expelling them through racial laws, eventually they were sent to extermination camps.
I was often asked in Italy why the Holocaust happened. My answer: because they could. The Jewish people were stateless, subject to the whims of their persecutors. Israel was founded to correct that disgrace. It arose despite the Holocaust, not because of it.
Throughout history, Jews were assigned a special role: to remain crucified, as eternal victims. With the founding of Israel, Jesus came down from the cross, wrapped himself in a tallit, and returned to his ancestral homeland; Only now he carries a weapon and refuses to be crucified again. That, to you, is intolerable.
The Palestinians are just an excuse. After all, you have no interest in the children of Syria or Yemen, and those countries receive none of the humanitarian aid Israel provides to its enemies.
6
In the 1970s, Italy made a secret agreement with the PLO terrorist organization, allowing them freedom of operation on Italian soil in exchange for a promise not to carry out terrorist attacks in Italy or against Italian targets. This "brilliant" policy resulted in a terror attack against the Jewish community in October 1982 and the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985. Worse, it granted legitimacy to a terrorist organization.
Seeing Europe's reaction to its Muslim conquest - France, the UK, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands (Italy could be next if you do not act) - shows that your perception of the Jewish people has hardly changed. You believe that if you throw the Jews under the bus and distance yourselves from Israel, the Muslims will leave you alone. They will not. The treatment of Jews remains the historical litmus test for European society's collapse.
7
This is the truth: In Israel, we are not fighting solely for ourselves, but for the entire free world. Yes, even for your ungrateful selves, because we bear responsibility for Western civilization, one to which we have contributed for more than 2,000 years. Israel is the forward outpost in the global battle. There is a reason why the enemies of the West target us. They hate Italy too, especially because you host the capital of global Christianity. They have openly declared that Rome is the ultimate goal of the Muslim conquest of Europe.
We will manage without you. However, the letter you sent, after decades of friendship, driven by your capitulation to our enemies' lies (not just ours, yours too), shows you have forgotten history's lessons.
We are here to remind you.
