Soviet Mideast Policy and Anti-semitism Linked, Says Italian Political Leader

A leader of the Italian Republican Party chided Italy’s powerful Communist Party for refusing to acknowledge the connection between Moscow’s Middle East policy and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. On one hand the Italian Communists praise Soviet anti-Israel penetration into the Middle East and on the other hand they protest against the Leningrad trial and sentences, Ugo Lamalfa, secretary of the Republican Party, said in an interview published in the Bulletin of the Rome Jewish Community. “There is not much sense in denouncing the Leningrad trial without asking why anti-Semitism is a recurrent phenomena in the USSR and thus a structural part of the Soviet regime,” Lamalfa said. “There is doubtless a connection between the anti-Israel policy of Moscow and the internal anti-Semitism. The battle to encircle Israel and defeat it politically stirs Russian Jews to solidarity with Israel and this is then used as a pretext for further repression by the regime,” Lamalfa said. He conceded that his party represents only about three percent of the Italian electorate but said that its friendship toward Israel was shared by the Italian government. According to Lamalfa, Italy views efforts to destroy Israel as not only morally reprehensible but an attempt to alter the balance of power in the Mediterranean.