Sad Insults

By Daniela Gross

“On Liberation Day, flags with the Star of David should be welcomed with joy, relief, contentment – and some regrets, looking back to the past. They should be the heart of the march, not just a marginal component, that, moreover, requires to be protected against offenses and insults.” So wrote on Monday, on the Corriere della Sera, the philosopher Donatella Di Cesare in an essay titled “The Insults to Jews – A Break at Left”, which analyzes a terrific and paradoxical situation.

In Milan, the celebrations of the end of the Second World War on 25th April were marked, again this year, by verbal attacks on the people marching under the banners of the Jewish Brigade. The Brigade, which employed Jewish volunteers from the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine, decisively contributed to the liberation of Italy. So, why are these insults repeated every year?

As Donatella Di Cesare explained, “The flags with David’s shield are not only the symbol of the Jewish Brigade … in the view of many, those flags are also the symbol of the State of Israel. Here is, then, the perverse mechanism that ensues: the awkward victim of the past becomes the easy butcher of today. Israel is Nazified to Judaizing the Palestinians.”
This way, Di Cesare wrote, Jews are accused to be “immoral”, or better “inhuman”. As a consequence, they deserve to be expelled not only from the march, but also from the human consortium. It reminds you of something, doesn’t it? This is an illuminating article, but of the kind we would never have wanted to read.