Israel Matzav

The Red-Green alliance

When I use the term "Red-Green alliance," I use it to refer to the alliance between the political Left and radical Islam. You may think them strange bedfellows. In this interview, Italian legislator Fimma Nirenstein explains how it all came about.

Q: You write a lot about leftist anti-Semitism. When and how did you discover its existence?

Fiamma Nirenstein: I made this discovery in theory and in practice. In 1967, as a young girl, I was a communist like all the other people of my age. My parents sent me to a kibbutz in northern Israel called Neot Mordechai. It was a leftist kibbutz, every week it dedicated one working day to the Vietcong. During the Six-Day-War, which broke out during my stay, I took care of the kids and brought them to the shelter.

When I came back to Italy after the war, I thought that my left-wing friends would be proud of me. But the reactions I faced were not sympathetic and friendly, but terribly anti-Israeli. Initially, I didn’t understand why. But all of a sudden I had to realize that it was about the Jews. It was a prejudice about the Jews conspiring with capitalism and imperialism against the poor people of the Third World — a category that included dictatorships like Syria and Egypt, which were allies of the Soviet Union. Slowly, I began to understand the powerful emotions underlying these reactions: the Jews were seen as something negative, something bad, and Israel was viewed as the collective Jew who was grasping for power.

Q: Let’s talk more about your experiences in 1967. Do you think that leftist anti-Semitism in Western countries had already been there, though in a latent state, and then suddenly found the occasion to come out into the open? Or was the year 1967 a psychological turning point, because many people were deeply disturbed when they discovered that Jews were not victims by nature, but were very well able to defend themselves and not afraid of doing so?

Fiamma Nirenstein: Absolutely, you got it right. People saw that Jews stopped being the Jews they liked to imagine: the poor Jews who live in a society as a despised minority, who seal themselves in their homes or their synagogues to pray, and who need permission from gentiles for anything they want. People saw that the Jews were strong enough to defend themselves against the attack of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and that they even managed to conquer some territory in a war that was actually intended to seal their fate.

This improbable turn of events drove them totally nuts. Everything was turning upside down. Unfortunately, there are still many Jews who want to present themselves as sheep going to slaughter. They are ready to sell out the image of a strong Israel and to make themselves as small as possible.

She has a lot more to say about Europe's relations with Israel (which in some cases are not as bad as you think they are).

Read the whole thing.

Wouldn't it be amazing if Italy and Germany (the two World War II axis powers) could lead Europe into replacing the US as Israel's big ally?

/Pipe dream

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:12 AM