Letters
Letters to the editor •
Start with evidence, not theories. What does a case being dropped tell us?
Who wrote to the editor-in-chief, Claudio Cerasa
15 OCT 26
Translated by AI
Photo: ANSA
To the Editor – Your editorial, ‘Bringing Order to Chaos’, offers an important insight: transforming the points of convergence between different political camps into a concrete ability to manage change. The real challenge of leadership is not to foster consensus through confrontation, but to identify priorities, take decisions and deliver measurable results. Europe, competitiveness, the energy transition and the modernisation of institutions require fewer declarations of principle and a greater capacity for implementation. Pragmatism does not mean abandoning differences, but recognising that debate gains value when it helps to build solutions. This is where leadership is measured: in the ability to set a direction, mobilise resources, correct what is not working and take responsibility for decisions.
Andrea Zirilli
To the Editor – I read Ermes Antonucci’s article on the Mafia-procurement link with interest. To dismiss it as a mere set of conjectures seems to me just as simplistic as attributing the entire explanation for the 1992 massacres to it. Investigative evidence regarding Mafia infiltration of public procurement and the links between Cosa Nostra, the business world and politics did exist. No one is claiming that this line of inquiry represents the sole motive behind the massacres, but it is difficult to deny that it touched upon particularly sensitive interests. And the matter of the case being dropped deserves far greater attention: on 13 July 1992, whilst Borsellino was still alive and showing an interest in those investigations, magistrates Lo Forte and Scarpinato signed a request to dismiss the case concerning numerous individuals, including businesspeople. On 22 July, just three days after the Via D’Amelio attack, the request was submitted to the investigating magistrate, who approved it on 14 August, right in the middle of the August holiday period. Formally, it concerned only part of the investigation, not the whole of it. But to dwell on this distinction is to sidestep the fundamental question: why proceed with that timetable when further investigative work was still possible? And what impact did that decision have on the future of the investigation? Finally, Antonio Di Pietro’s testimony regarding his direct contacts with Falcone and Borsellino confirms just how important the two magistrates considered it to be to probe the public procurement system. Can we really dismiss all this as mere speculation? Dismissing a case does not prove a cover-up, but it does not erase the questions.
Matteo Zilocchi
A dismissal proves exactly what it is meant to prove. Namely, that the disputed facts were clearly not open to dispute and that magistrates should conduct investigations based not on theories but on evidence. A perfect article. But thank you for the inspiration.
To the editor – “We have always lost when taking the centre ground, and we will never again enter into broad coalitions” (Elly Schlein, October 2026). “Parties wishing to join the Communist International are obliged to recognise the absolute necessity of a complete and total break with reformism and with ‘centrist’ politics” (from point 7 of the 21 points of the Third Communist International, August 1920).
Giuliano Cazzola
For the centre-left, moving slightly towards the centre has never been enough to win elections decisively and achieve stability. Yet, at the same time, moving far to the left has never helped the centre-left win elections either. Is it better to lose than to lose one’s way, or better to lose one’s way than to lose?
To the Editor – I have been quoted in your newspaper and I intend to exercise my legal right to a correction, as I have been attributed views and opinions that do not correspond to my own and which, indeed, I consider damaging to my reputation. In the interview I conducted with Kenneth Stern for Kritica, the scholar states that the IHRA definition ‘has been used to claim that if someone violates what, according to some, the definition establishes – particularly with regard to Israel – they are expressing anti-Semitism’. This is precisely what Guido Vitiello does in his article: he takes my critical remarks about Israel – made in response to events over the last three years – and arbitrarily labels them as ‘anti-Jewish stereotypes’, in order to brand them as anti-Semitism. In doing so, he turns the definition into a weapon, directing it against me. In the interview, Stern denounces such practices as ‘weaponisation’ and explains how they have undermined the health of democracy. Not content with attributing to me concepts and views I have never expressed, the author repeats the same tactic with Stern himself, claiming that it would in fact be the scholar himself – and not Vitiello – who would consider my statements to be anti-Semitic ‘if he were aware of them’. In essence, he treats Stern as if he were unaware; for if he were not unaware, so the implication goes, he would think and say the very same things that Vitiello believes. Not even in a work of fiction can one get away with falsely attributing to real third parties concepts, ideas and positions they have never expressed, and which are merely the product of one’s own imagination. Let alone in a newspaper article.
Federica D’Alessio
Guido Vitiello responds. I must correct the correction, because Federica D’Alessio is attributing views to me that are not my own. I am not saying (nor am I implying) that D’Alessio, when speaking of Israel, is in fact alluding to the Jews, as Meloni did when she called Soros a ‘loan shark’; if anything, I am saying that the accusations she levels at Israel – of being driven by hatred for humanity, of being a sadistic state that takes pleasure in ruining Christmas for Christians (and Muslims), of being a country founded on a grand deception – are, word for word, the very same accusations levelled at the Jews for millennia. Well-known elements from the anti-Semitic repertoire. Whether D’Alessio is aware of this or not is entirely irrelevant: prejudices are precisely that because they are unconscious (otherwise they would be judgements), and stereotypes circulate more easily amongst those who are unaware of their origins. In my view, this is a textbook example of the principle Stern illustrated: anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism “when one uses the classic stereotypes about Jews and applies them to Israel”. Exactly.