By Guido Vitale L’opposant à Poutine, Boris Nemtsov, assassiné de quatre balles dans le dos, devant le Kremlin. Les enquêteurs russes parlent d’un crime “minutieusement planifié”, sans trancher entre les pistes politique, ukrainienne et islamiste. Je propose mon aide aux enquêteurs: retournez-vous au lieu de tourner en rond. Et surtout, faites vite, car la longue …
By Guido Vitale “Terror is not a reason to move to Israel” (Rabbi Yair Melchior, Copenhagen)
By Guido Vitale “The very fact that an official branch of the European Union considered the issue of antisemitism sufficiently disquieting to be worthy of public attention and serious investigation is in itself an event of interest.” (Sergio Della Pergola, L. D. Staetsky, JPR Report Perceptions and experiences of antisemitism among Jews in Italy, January …
By Guido Vitale Certains des mes collègues “condamnes Israel de façon virulente pour ce qu’ils appellent ‘un nettoyage ethnique de masse’. Ils sont dans l’amalgame le plus primaire, un amalgame que mes copains de Charlie Hebdo n’auraient jamais cautionné. Un amalgame qui est l’expression de cette obsession anti-israélienne qui sert de masque au ‘nouvel’ antisémitisme …
By Guido Vitale “The Memory of the Shoah is not a bunch of words, that Memory is a punch in the stomach.”(Daša Drndić, Pagine Ebraiche – February 2015).
Guido Vitale “Il y a une notion de blasphème pour le croyant, mais on ne peut pas projeter notre interdiction sur les autres. Si quelque chose est blasphématoire pour moi, je ne le regarde pas. Dire que Charlie Hebdo est allé trop loin, c’est commencer à justifier. Si vous commencez à dire, « liberté de …
By Guido Vitale Strong emotions sometimes create a false feeling of consensus. But the terrible events that took place in Paris in the past few days force everyone, including Italian Jews, to face a clear choice. Not everyone has found the courage to state clearly that an unambiguous support for freedom of the press and …
By Guido Vitale “The Greeks rival the Jews in being the most politically-minded race in the world… No two cities have counted more with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem.” (Winston Churchill, The Second World War, 1952)
By Guido Vitale Faced with a rising tide of ad hominem attacks, excessively aggressive language, vulgarity and at times simple stupidity, some of the main Italian newspapers are seriously considering whether to restrict or prevent the public from commenting freely on their websites. Reviewing, moderating, and occasionally responding to comments – particularly when these include …
By Guido Vitale* Our colleagues Ada Treves and Rossella Tercatin, journalists whose professional development started in our newsroom at the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, have both recently published extremely interesting articles in other newspapers. The byline of Ada appeared in the prestigious monthly “IL- Intelligence in Lifestyle”, published by “Il Sole 24 Ore”, Italy’s …
By Guido Vitale “But you ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it is they who made it famous.” 1955 (Winston Churchill to Eden’s private secretary Evelyn Shuckburgh).
By Guido Vitale Italian newspapers are overflowing with reporting about a serious scandal that links neo-fascism, organised crime and local politics in Rome. But there is no need to thank any journalistic investigation. In fact the investigative work was entirely conducted by the investigative magistrates, while the Italian press remained silent for as long as …
By Guido Vitale The “Corte dei conti”, the Italian court that controls public spending, has issued an opinion on the transfer of money from the state to religious confessions using the tax-deduction mechanism known as “Otto per mille”. This represents a powerful call for clarity and morality that everyone, including Italian Jews, should take seriously.
By Guido Vitale Recently I attended, along with fellow journalist Fiona Diwan of the “Bollettino della Comunità ebraica di Milano” (the newsletter of the Jewish Community of Milan), a course organized by the Professional Association of Italian Journalists. It was dedicated to the issues of privacy and the respect of personal identity in online publications …
By Guido Vitale In a brief touring production that included engagements in Italy, the amazing actors of the Slovenian National Theatre of Ljubljana and of the Slovenian Theatre of Trieste presented an exciting new adaptation of Thoman Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. In this masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, a stunning tableau of the foundational ideas …
By Guido Vitale In a landmark ruling issued in October (number 238/2014), the Italian Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the Italian laws that prevented victims of Nazi war crimes from taking legal action against the German state in the Italian Civil Courts to obtain compensation. On the basis of the principles established by this sentence, the …
By Guido Vitale Thousands of people wait every day in a long line to have the possibility of visiting the largest exhibition ever dedicated to Marc Chagall. It takes place at the Palazzo Reale of Milan, and listening to the comments of those who stand in the long line, it is easy to measure their …
By Guido Vitale “I always feel the world becomes a slightly better place when I meet someone who has ties to multiple sports teams and can’t decide which one to cheer at a game.” (Jaron Lanier)
By Guido Vitale “If we just admitted that people are still needed in order for big data to exist, and if we were willing to lessen our fantasies of artificial intelligence, then we might enjoy a new economic pattern in which the bell curve would begin to appear in digital economic outcomes, instead of winner-take-all …
By Guido Vitale* Yom Kippur is an important opportunity for Jews in Italy and all over the world to listen to and to evaluate what their rabbis really have to say. *Guido Vitale is the editor-in-chief