A new Yalta
By Alberto Cavaglion *
Every week that passes the post-pandemic scene becomes clearer. There is something akin to the post-war period, the third if we do not give credit to the fools who turned their backs on the 20th century.
A discouraging outlook that I, despite how much was written, I still read with twentieth century eyes. Freedom for Europe will come if the Anglo-Americans, after they have freed themselves of the virus, come to the aid of a Europe that does not seem to recover after the two previous post-war periods.
By seeing the disbandment of Brussels, that classic Hazard book on the crisis of European consciousness came to my mind. The Red Army in the form of Sputnik vaccine presses from the East. After the everyone against everyone civil war Draghi leads a new Parri government. Without having a supportive CLN (National Liberation Committee) behind? Perhaps, it would be fairer to say that a European 8 September decreed the death of the young and never grown idea of European nation. At their expense, Israelis and Palestinians have always known that peace can never come with a non-existent Europe.
In these recent weeks Israel is described as an Eden of free and vaccinated citizens, and it takes its rightful revenge on European cowardice: when the crisis was “only” oil the power balance was not like that of today. I wonder what Israel is waiting for to give itself that political stability that would allow, after the new Yalta, to bring peace throughout that area that has long been bloody.
*Historian
Translated by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard and revised by Antonella Losavio, students at Trieste University and the Advanced school for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.