Attempting to smooth relations with Italy’s Jewish community, the long-exiled heirs to Italy’s abolished monarchy paid homage at the country’s foremost monument to Nazi barbarity. But the gesture over the weekend did little to assuage Jewish uneasiness over the failure by Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, the son of Italy’s last king, to apologize for the… More ▸
Italian Jewish leaders have warned that anti-Semitic attacks this week against a distinguished journalist of Jewish origin could be symptoms of a more dangerous strain of racism. “I don’t want to overdramatize things, but we need to be more vigilant, to pay more attention,” Amos Luzzatto, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, told… More ▸
Officials in northern Italy have condemned a far-right political party for protesting a drive to erect a Holocaust memorial in the city of Bolzano. In cooperation with the local Jewish community, local newspapers in the province of Alto Adige launched an effort last Friday to build a monument in Bolzano’s Jewish cemetery to honor Jews… More ▸
Celebrated Italian journalist Orianna Fallaci has never been one to mince words. Her no-holds-barred style when interviewing global VIPs made her a celebrity icon in the 1970s and 1980s. A vehement defense of the United States published after the Sept. 11 attacks became a best-seller in Italy and provoked a storm of controversy because of… More ▸
Rabbis, imams, priests and patriarchs from a dozen world religions have joined Pope John Paul II in praying for peace and condemning violence in the name of God. The aim of what the Vatican called a Day of Prayer for Peace in the World was to hammer home the message that religion must never be… More ▸
Rabbis will join dozens of religious leaders from around the world this week in central Italy to pray for peace and condemn violence committed in the name of religion. “Never again violence! Never again war! Never again terrorism!” is the title of the Vatican-organized interfaith encounter in the town of Assisi. Participants in Thursday’s “Day… More ▸
A plan by the mayor of a town in Sicily to name a street in honor of Italy’s wartime fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is drawing protests. The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the proposal, launched by Mayor Guido Costa of the town of Tremestieri Etneo. In a letter to Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, the Wiesenthal Center’s… More ▸
Italy’s prime minister has promised Yasser Arafat he would back a major economic assistance package for a future Palestinian state. Silvio Berlusconi made the promise during a meeting with the Palestinian Authority president on Tuesday during Arafat’s one-day visit to Italy. A statement from Berlusconi’s office said Berlusconi reaffirmed Italy’s commitment to a peace process… More ▸
An Italian commentator has outraged Jews with a prominent and provocative editorial they claim is anti-Semitic. In the editorial, Barbara Spinelli claimed that the Jewish world should make a public apology for “the peoples or individuals” who paid in “blood or exile” so that Israel could exist. Italian Jewish leaders sharply attacked Spinelli’s article in… More ▸
An Italian newspaper is being pressed to remove a notorious anti-Semitic tract from a Web site it hosts. The Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded in a letter this week that the Italian daily La Repubblica remove the text of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which was posted on one of the newspaper’s online discussion… More ▸
