Some 5,000 people marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday in a demonstration in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
The march was organized by student groups and left-wing political parties. Similar demonstrations were planned in Milan on Monday, in Genoa on Tuesday and within the next few days in such other Italian cities as Venice, Perugia, Bari and Cagliari.
In Rome, the protesters, many o them wearing the Arab kaffiyeh scarf, carried a banner reading, “Is our civilization founded on the massacre and oppression of peoples? Free Pales tine.”
They chanted slogans accusing the Israeli government of being a “band of assassins” that has engaged in the “slaughter of children.” Another said, “Forty years of occupation won’t stop the fight for liberation,” calling into question not only Israel’s administration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also its very right to exist.
There were moments of tension at the end of the march, when about 250 demonstrators broke off from the main group and headed toward Rome’s main synagogue, in the Old Ghetto on the banks of the Tiber, still a largely Jewish neighborhood. Security forces blocked off the synagogue, however, aided by dozens of members of the Jewish community who rushed to the scene.
On Sunday, the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano condemned what it called the Israeli assaults Friday at the Al Aksa and Al Amari mosques, branding the moves another very serious sign of the deterioration of the situation in East Jerusalem and the territories.
”It is feared, with good reason, that the situation could produce an upsurge of infamy, of barbarism and also anti-Semitism,” the Vatican newspaper said, adding, “It is urgent that there prevail a supreme sense of self-control, of moderation, of tolerance.”
Indeed, anti-Semitic vandalism has been on the rise here in recent weeks. Graffiti have appeared in Rome, Milan and Bologna with such slogans as “Israelis kill Palestinians — Jews will pay.”
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