Di Segni, Zuppi and Elzir in dialogue on peace

“Behind the attack of October 7 is a long path, years and years of indoctrination in which religion was not used to bring something good into everyone’s life, but to spread hate and perpetrate a massacre. Up to that time, on the Israeli side, there was no plan for war against Gaza”. Noemi di Segni, UCEI president, begins from here. At Più libri più liberi, the national book fair dedicated to small and medium sized publishers and held in Rome, “advanced societies” and “new conflicts” were discussed. Along with UCEI president was Archbishop Matteo Maria Zuppi, the president of Cei (the Italian Bishops Conference), who joined remotely, and at the same desk was also the Waldensian moderator Alessandra Trotta together with former Ucoii (the Union of the Islamic Communities of Italy) president Izzedin Elzir, moderated by the president of the Coordination of Italian cultural magazines Valdo Spini.
“It is not possible to look away from the death of any citizen. Any death, even among Gaza citizens, is a knife to the heart. But we must also ask ourselves why it has come to this,” Di Segni said, begging people to use the proper words to describe the war with Hamas terrorists. “Concepts like ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’ are generalizations that are doing wrong to history: we should not introduce this dialectical method in our cities and streets,” Di Segni stressed. According to Zuppi, who in the last days joined an interconfessional torchlight procession among different religions for peace in Bologna, “we cannot surrender to the logic of war: religions can and must come to a necessary unity.” According to Imam Elzir, “we need more dialogue, we have not done enough up to now.” He thinks that we should “bring peace and guarantee security for the Israelis and rights for the Palestinians.” Also the Imam encouraged people to not “introduce” into Europe the same tensions and dialectics of the conflict.

Translated by Martina Bandini, revised by Annadora Zuanel, students at the Secondary School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.