The rift over the Anti-Semitism Bill. “Ready to leave the PD”, writes Emanuele Fiano

No one chooses the moment when news breaks. Perhaps they do not even choose in advance the point beyond which mediation and compromise become impossible. It is life that presents it to them. I am not at the centre of what I am trying to say. Let me state this first: do not accuse me of playing the victim, because you’ve got the wrong person – far from it. At stake is the very essence of a collective political choice and, for me, also the future of a modern left—one capable of countering the rise of backward-looking nationalism with something other than a left that merely repeats the rhetoric of decades past. (continued on page two)

My person and my decisions count for nothing. What matters is the substance of what is happening.

The Democratic Party has decided to vote against the bill on anti-Semitism, which was approved by the Senate and is now under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies. If that decision is confirmed, for me it will represent a line that cannot be crossed. Over the past few months, I have tried to ask those responsible in the Senate to open a public debate on the issue, and not just between the Senate building and Via Sant’Andrea delle Fratte. I would say that this has not happened. I asked my party, both locally and nationally, to organise initiatives, meetings and studies on what was happening. Silence.

The news reaches me in Birkenau. I am here for the meeting of the International Auschwitz Committee, of which I am a member of the executive committee, and, together with a representative of the German Romani community, I am looking at the site where the Zigeunerlager once stood – the section where Romani and Sinti people were imprisoned. I tell him about my father, who remembered the night between 2 and 3 August 1944, when thousands of Sinti and Roma were gassed and then burned, and that section of the camp was emptied once and for all. The same fate befell hundreds of thousands more Sinti and Roma.

My father worked on the platform at Auschwitz. He helped the deportees get off the carriages and collected suitcases and personal belongings. We are right there, on those stones. It is something that cannot be put into words. It was here that my father embraced my grandmother for the last time; it was here that he swallowed the slip of paper bearing his death sentence. This is where the sadistic criminal Mengele would stand to select the children – especially Sinti – from whom to gouge out the eyes or inject poison. Then Dad had to clean those carriages of excrement, blood, the dead, and abandoned newborns. He remembered the Roma and Sinti camp still full, and then, on the next shift in the morning, empty.

I am not sharing this to seek sympathy for myself. I am not a victim. The circumstances have led me to write from here, where I know many of the roots of my thoughts lie. I am fully aware of who has paid the price for the three terrible years we have left behind: the innocent victims of 7 October, then the thousands of innocent civilians killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, and the victims of the inhuman violence perpetrated by settlers in the West Bank and of the war in Lebanon. However, I am not opening a discussion on this. I am clarifying what I am concerned with. Not myself.

I have just returned from a trip to Israel and Palestine with friends and fellow members of Sinistra per Israele – Due popoli, due stati (The Left for Israel – Two Peoples, Two States). The organisation has grown in recent years to include thousands of supporters and branches in eight regions. We met with the Israeli opposition, the leadership of the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority, the Catholic Church in Jerusalem, and our own diplomatic representatives. Above all, we met Israelis and Palestinians who work together every day. An Israeli woman, Rina, who used to be an executive in the hi-tech sector, now helps thousands of children in Gaza alongside her partner, a Palestinian doctor she met on LinkedIn: so far, they have helped 21,000 children under the age of fifteen. It was she who told us that talking about peace is no longer enough: we must build peace. She has had enough of conferences, seminars and official party statements, and of their electoral tactics. She wants to save lives, nurture lives and combat hatred.

That is where I intend to focus my energies in this final stage of my adult life. Action is required, not merely filling halls with high-sounding names; for mutual recognition to pave the way for a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli one, we need to grow the ranks of those who see one another as brothers and sisters. Of those who raise their children with this in mind. We need to rebuild a trust that is extremely difficult to regain.

Precisely for this reason, I do not accept that the fight against antisemitism should be presented as an obstacle to criticism of the Netanyahu government, the Israeli army or settler violence. Such criticism is legitimate and necessary. The intensity of criticism levelled at the government within Israel is far greater than that expressed here, to give just one example, and it is certainly not antisemitism. Opponents of the bill argue that the reference to the IHRA definition could become a tool for censorship. However, the first article of the text expressly safeguards the freedom of political criticism and freedom of expression. If this risk were real, I believe President Mattarella would make his voice heard, as he did in the case of the moratorium on the number of foreign pupils in classes. The IHRA definition itself makes it clear that criticising Israel in the same way one criticises any other country is not anti-Semitism. Even the Jerusalem Declaration considers certain forms of hostility towards Israel to be anti-Semitic, whilst drawing the line for legitimate criticism differently. So what is the PD after? What kind of identity-based pipe dream?

There is also a contradiction that the PD must explain if it wishes to be consistent. In 2017, Elly Schlein, together with Cécile Kyenge – then a PD MEP – and other MEPs, signed a motion for a resolution against antisemitism tabled on behalf of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, of which the PD was a member. At the time, Schlein was a member of Possibile. The European Parliament subsequently adopted a resolution calling on Member States and European institutions to “adopt and apply” the IHRA definition. “Apply”: a much stronger directive than merely referring to it in a law. That request applied to every state, and all the more so to the parties that had promoted and supported it. Then, during the Conte II government, in which the PD was a partner, Italy adopted that definition. The entire definition. The PD played a decisive role at the government table. It was subsequently made the basis of the National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, which was also supported during the Draghi government, in which Andrea Orlando, Dario Franceschini and Lorenzo Guerini held posts, as did Roberto Speranza, then of Articolo 1.

One can, of course, change one’s mind, but in politics one ought to explain why one is changing one’s mind if the circumstances have not changed, lest one risk losing one’s identity. And one cannot dismiss as a threat to freedom of speech a measure that one has called for, adopted and made the cornerstone of the National Strategy, without explaining what new development has made this reversal necessary. When the European Parliament called for its implementation in 2017, Gaza had already endured several wars, the occupation of the West Bank had been ongoing for decades with its accompanying violence, and Netanyahu’s intentions were crystal clear, as were his actions. Opposition to his governments was extremely strong within the European left, and within the Israeli left as well; therefore, the conditions were the same. What has changed so radically?

I would like an Italian magistrate to tell me in concrete terms what would happen once the law is passed. If Arturo Scotto were to voice harsh criticism – for instance, by presenting a book on the flotilla, the Israeli police intervention or the assault on the vessels – for what offence would he be investigated? If a member of the PD were to demonstrate in support of Palestinian freedom, which provision of the text would make his voice a punishable offence? Are there any offences specified in the law? Are there penalties? I cannot find a legal answer to these examples. And before describing a law as a gag, I believe it is only right to specify the precise mechanism by which that gag is supposed to work. This is a preventive law, not a repressive one. And if you reply that it is a useless law, why have you not put forward a better one in the last three years?

Some object that there should not be a specific law against anti-Semitism: why reserve specific protection for Jews? Unfortunately, this is also Vannacci’s argument, but that is a dark chapter that has nothing to do with the PD; it has to do with fascist culture. I have supported a law against anti-Roma sentiment; I have signed the Zan proposal against homophobia and transphobia – which, incidentally, was modelled on my own law on the glorification of fascism, as an addition to the Mancino Act; and I have tabled a proposal on combating Islamic radicalisation which also addressed the fight against Islamophobia. Every form of racism must be combated, but each has its own history and specific manifestations. A specific measure against anti-Semitism in no way detracts from the need to combat Islamophobia, anti-Gypsyism or homotransphobia. Yet why was this specificity considered appropriate when the PD was defending the Zan proposal – which, incidentally, was a criminal law setting out offences and penalties – but it becomes grounds for objection when it comes to anti-Semitism in the context of a law on prevention? And where, today, are initiatives with the same vigour addressing other forms of discrimination? Are there any proposals from the PD?

I am not interested in speculation about the primaries, the broad coalition, or the political manoeuvring that might be driving this decision. I am interested in the substance of the matter. I am interested in ensuring that the left does not leave it to the right to respond to anti-Semitism. Anyone who considers themselves the heir to Umberto Terracini, Giorgio Napolitano, Gianni Cervetti or Piero Fassino – and to the words they spoke on the Jewish question and racism – should not back down.

Here in Auschwitz, we are discussing with representatives from many countries, as well as with representatives of the Roma and Sinti communities, how to preserve memory and combat hatred. I am not asking my party to share my family history or the emotions I feel when standing before those places. I am asking it to consider the text, its precedents and the consequences of the choice it is about to make. It is a choice concerning its identity. And it is a choice from which I cannot feel detached. No home is necessarily forever; it depends on the choices one makes.

In Tel Aviv, we meet Maoz Inon, whose parents were killed on 7 October. Together with Aziz Abu Sarah, who lost his brother after his release from an Israeli prison, he has written "The Future is Peace", which is due to be published shortly in Italy as well – a compelling book that I am currently reading. Following that loss, Abu Sarah initially wrote political pieces critical of Israel. He then learnt Hebrew, joined an organisation bringing together Israeli and Palestinian families united by grief, and began speaking in schools against violence. It was the Parents Circle. Maoz is one of the leaders of the peace movement in Israel. In the book, they write: “We do not see ourselves as Palestinians and Israelis, nor as Jews and Arabs, but as human beings who believe in promoting a culture of dialogue, forgiveness and peace. To those who see only dividing lines, we say: if you must divide us, let it be between those who believe in peace and equality and those who… do not yet.”

I believe in those who bring people together today; I do not believe in those who divide, and unfortunately I sense a rift that is growing ever wider. What is happening to the PD over this vote is not simply the loss of the support of Emanuele Fiano and those who share my views; it is the loss of their very identity.