I’ve lost count of the pages decrying leftists to be ‘Anti-Semitic’ who question the humanity of any action of the Israeli govt.
Volumes have been written on the subject accompanied by charges their authors are ignored by feminists among other human rights activists.
I would appreciate even one line of protest from George in response to the recent statements of his good friend Silvio Berlusconi.
I demand, a lot of good it will do me, that those same people who tar and feather with the label ‘Anti-Semitic’ anyone seeking to debate Israeli policies, to pluck those feathers and get out your buckets and brushes for George should he fail to do so.
A pattern is beginning to be discernible in the aftermath of Silvio Berlusconi’s renowned “gaffes”, if that is indeed what they are.
First, he seems to apologise. Then he says he didn’t. It is what happened after he told a German MEP in July that he reminded him of a concentration camp guard. And it is what has now happened over his claim that Mussolini “never killed anybody”.
At the Rome synagogue on Wednesday those present heard what they thought was a “sorry”. Amos Luzzato, head of the federation of Italian Jewish communities, said afterwards: “He apologised to us and specifically to me …”
But then came a statement from the prime minister’s office claiming he had merely “expressed his sorrow for the pain caused to the Jewish community by a manipulative interpretation of his words, not attributable to him”.
In other words, Mr Berlusconi was sorry – not for what he had himself done – but for the effect of what had been done by other people: his enemies in the media who had, as usual, wilfully misinterpreted and misrepresented his words.
There are many who think it is deliberate: that the wily billionaire politician is trying to push back the bounds of the sayable, always taking two steps forward then one step back. Certainly, his recent assertion that Italy’s judges were “mentally disturbed” could well have been part of a campaign to discredit them in the eyes of the public.
But it is hard to see what possible advantage Mr Berlusconi could derive from upsetting Jews by sticking up for a dictator who allowed some 7,000 to be deported to the Nazis’ concentration camps.