All history as reconstruction of the past is of course myth

By Guy Dinmore in Rome, The Financial Times

Published: May 5 2008 03:00 | Last updated: May 5 2008 03:00

Rome’s election last week of its first rightwing mayor since the time of Benito Mussolini has been celebrated by fascists as a historic victory over the left.

Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayor’s appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight-armed “Roman” salutes, shouting abuse at communists and foreign immigrants.

“Before, if you were a fascist you had to pretend to be part of the mainstream to have respectability. Now they are coming out of the closet,” said an aide to defeated centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli.

Debate over the significance of the National Alliance’s first election victory in a major city has been intense - especially among the capital’s small but important Jewish commun-ity, which is widely thought to have swung in Mr Alemanno’s favour. Rome’s Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel.

Michel Bokhobza, whose family fled from Libya to Rome in 1967, says Italy’s centre-right is closer to Israel than the pro-Arab bias of the centre-left.

“Even if his past was very close to fascism, Alemanno belongs to the coalition guided by [Silvio] Berlusconi and [Gianfranco] Fini,” he said, referring to the People of Liberty alliance that swept national elections last month.

Times had changed, he said, since 1993 and the first open elections for Rome. The right’s candidate then was Mr Fini, now leader of the National Alliance, who then was part of its neo-fascist predecessor, the MSI, the direct heirs of Mussolini.

“Fini was then seen as a demon and neo-fascist,” said Sandro Di Castro, president of the Jewish community’s Bene Berith association. The “turning point” came in 1995 when Mr Fini became head of the new National Alliance and started to steer it towards the mainstream. That process was completed in 2003 when, as deputy prime minister in the second Berlusconi government, Mr Fini denounced fascism as an “absolute evil”.

Mr Alemanno’s personal journey is less certain. Leftwing commentators have called the 50-year-old former agriculture minister fascist, neo-fascist and post-fascist

Dominique Sicouri, from Egypt’s Jewish community, said her “heart is with the left” but she still decided to work with Mr Alemanno in building ties with France’s ruling UMP party, for which she acts as spokeswoman in Italy. She sees Mr Alemanno as intelligent, serious and a pragmatic moderniser. His Jewish supporters say that in power he will be better placed to rein in extremism. *Italy will take note of foreign concerns after Libya warned against appointing a far-right lawmaker as minister, but it will not accept interference in its internal affairs, the incoming Italian foreign minister said. A Libyan charity chaired by leader Muammer Gaddafi’s son warned of “catastrophic repercussions” to bilateral ties if Roberto Calderoli - known for his anti-Islam rhetoric - became Italy’s reforms minister.

Wolfgang Münchau, Page 11

It does give a different tone on what we were indoctrinated for many years; the so-called Never Again slogan. Schindler’s List comes to my mind right now. Waste of time, indeed, when you have Gaza city, without actors of course, 24hs on the news channels.

A very radical and bold move from Jewish diaspora in Rome, and expect more of this kind ‘love reunion’ in the future in different part of the world. I don’t think this reunion was done for survival of state Israel, consider it is the only country in the middle east that has nuclear weapons, but I think the answer is found that more and more people (thanks to internet & bloggers) are discovering and asking hard questions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so to distract the real issue, the domestic policy (immigration, read Matt Carr’s You are now entering Eurabia) is linked to the state Israel.