|
Please email this letter or write your own
& cc Global Women’s Strike & Payday men’s network
LETTER TO THE ITALIAN EMBASSY
We protest against the outrageous decision of the Turin Book Fair to make
Israel its guest of honour. If this decision to invite and honour Israel is
not rescinded, the Book Fair must be boycotted.
The invitation has sinister echoes: on 7 April the Royal Family in Britain
hosted a dinner at Windsor Castle for the Jewish National Fund, a key Zionist
organisation that has dispossessed and expelled Palestinian people from their
land.
We find it all the more astonishing that President of the Italian Republic
Giorgio Napolitano plans to open the Fair on 8 May considering that the Fair’s
President, Rolando Picchioni, was a member of the Masonic Lodge P2, led by
Lucio Gelli, who was not only a fervent admirer of the Fascist leader
Mussolini, but a liaison officer with the Hermann Goering SS division. In the
‘70s the P2 infamously planned a right-wing coup d’état in Italy.
Those of us who are Jewish are particularly outraged that the Israeli State is
so eager to take a part in the fair organized by an old associate of Nazis.
This collaboration, however, is less surprising following Israel’s deputy
defence minister Vilnai’s call for a “shoah” – a holocaust – against people in
Gaza. To propose a shoah against Palestinians validates all shoahs – including
that inflicted on the world by the Nazis.
Calling for a boycott in response to inviting the Israeli State to the Paris
and Turin Book Fairs, Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai said:
“The book event, or any other kind of exhibition in which the Israeli State is
invited, is not a way to promote peace in the Middle East, and not a way to
bring justice to the Palestinians, but only propaganda to give Israel an image
of being a liberal and democratic society. A State which maintains an
occupation and commits daily crimes against civilians does not deserve to be
invited to whichever cultural week.”
The Union of Palestinian Writers and Intellectuals has also called for a
boycott. And there are protests, demonstrations and boycott demands planned
throughout Italy: on 5th February the headquarters of organizers of the Fair,
Fondazione del Libro, was occupied; Italian book publishers have launched an
appeal; a petition is being circulated and signed internationally by MEPs,
students, workers, teachers and prominent individuals; demonstrations took
place in Turin, Milan and Rome on 29th March; and the Italian Embassy in
London was picketed on 31st March.
For the organisers of the Book Fair to honour Israel in the week before Nakba
is not only a provocation but also a disgraceful defence of the murder, rape
and torture that is the Israeli occupation.
This occupation is one with the occupation of Iraq: military control of oil
and water in the Middle East for the real axis of evil – US, Israel and their
European stooges. And now the Italian authorities have shown they are
complicit in the additional crime of Nakba denial.
Global Women’s Strike www.globalwomenstrike.net 020 7482 2496
Payday men’s network www.refusingtokill.net 020 7209 4751 | 
