Ventimiglia. «If there is a context in which the disorientation of the people who occupy Italian universities with slogans about a conflict they know very little about is revealed, it is the places of confrontation. If in a square with the military lined up the temptation to physically oppose the police or the adversary may even appear reasonable for those who are at an age of hormonal storms, use the same communicative register by shouting about fascism, the regime, racism in a circumstance in which the comparison between different positions would not only be possible, but also desirable, the short circuit manifests itself in all its grotesque evidence”.
The professor declares it Alex Zarfati who intervenes on the disturbances that occurred yesterday afternoon at the Aprosiana library in Ventimiglia, where the presentation of David Elber’s new book “The right of sovereignty in the land of Israel” was underway.
«But let’s go in order – explains Zarfati -. We are at the end of a 3-day trip between Liguria and the Principality of Monaco dedicated to information on Israel promoted by Maria Teresa Anfossi, president of the Italy Israel Association of Ventimiglia. On the agenda is the presentation of David Elber, historian, researcher, author and brilliant popularizer who will talk about international law, a fundamental requirement for orienting oneself in any discussion which inevitably addresses the issues of sovereignty, land and the status of Gaza and the disputed territories. In the background there is the Aprosiana Library in Piazza Bassi, in the center of Ventimiglia, which these days appears more beautiful than ever, blessed by the beautiful season.”
And again: «The space was granted by Mayor Di Muro, following a practice that goes beyond institutional courtesy and which the large group of police forces guarding the entrance highlights. The request for the granting of a space that touches on the issues of conflict is not just a formal act – and which the opening acknowledgments underline as not to be taken for granted – rather it is a worthy choice of field, one that contrasts legality and dialogue to the attempt at a one-way reading of the war in Gaza and which in recent months makes even just talking about Judaism and the Arab-Israeli conflict a heroic act. The Resistance, a theme that a part of society has misappropriated, today is that of those who make spaces available for an event potentially capable of attracting droves of troublemakers. Courage is on the side of those who decide to travel four hundred kilometres, aware that a handful of very fluid daddies on a June afternoon decide to fight boredom by trying to sell us that they do it out of charity towards the Palestinians and love of freedom and could be sabotaged an event, betraying their disinterest in both causes.”
«At 4pm everything is ready to begin, when among the audience, in addition to those interested in the book and Elber’s words, a large group of young people begin to occupy the seats in the room, too numerous, too colorful and too well distributed not to appear as the dawn of coordinated disruptive action. The speakers, including myself, who has the task of introducing the meeting, and the publisher Guido Guastalla are not upset, indeed they applaud the participation of so many young people in a context in which such participation is rarely seen. I therefore decide to introduce the author by talking about the difficulty of orienting oneself by basing knowledge only on digital platforms, bringing direct experience of dialogue and coexistence by encouraging the new generation to think critically and to the essential study conducted on books, because the elaboration of a position – whatever position one decides to have on the conflict – cannot be the result of shortcuts or regulated by the exposition of any narrative suggested by the algorithms of the new media”.
«But the kids are not attracted to discussion nor do they show interest in respecting the rules that assign space to those who want to ask questions and the patience to listen to the answers. Attempts to explain the complexity of orienting oneself in an era of information bulimia, where having a reasoned idea of the conflict is already a subversive act, are of no avail. But the tasters are not there to listen. They have very precise instructions and don’t even wait for a pretext to explode. With proclamations written on smartphone screens and recited by heart – as if to remind us that today the problem passes mainly through these digital windows – they stand up in turns shouting slogans, preventing the speakers from intervening. Their intent is to prevent the meeting from taking place.”
«They don’t have the cultural tools to appreciate the opportunity to benefit from exposure in the very few places dedicated to balancing information about Israel. They want to take all the space and relegate even the hypocritical equidistance displayed liberally before October 7th to the attic: they are for a single thought, for the pre-packaged thesis “Israel was an illegitimate and murderous state”, the same one advocated by radical obscurantism. It would have been very easy to rub it in their faces that, as they are in Gaza, many of them would end up like the Israelis lynched by the crowd. But words are worthless in the era of post-truth, of one-way pity, of other-directed indignation. These guys are an unwitting propaganda tool of the fifth domain, the psychological warfare used by Hamas and the dictatorships that support it. But they delude themselves into thinking they are fighting for themselves. In their iconoclastic madness they attack not only everything “Israeli” but also everything Jewish, confirming the overlap between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, if ever there was still anyone who wanted to distinguish them. They appropriate false quotes from Primo Levi, draw parallels with Auschwitz, talk about open-air concentration camps, about genocide. All well-chosen words because the real struggle of the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas axis is not for the conquest of a small piece of land – militarily impossible to achieve – but for a spoil capable of giving much more satisfaction: the minds of young Westerners, easier to conquer given their naivety and self-harm.”
«The words and placards they carry with them – together with the Palestinian flag alone which betrays the overcoming of the anachronistic “two peoples two states” – resonate as artificially as the graphics of intelligence without artificial intelligence which obtain tens of millions of shares thanks to a new form of anti-Semitism. It is the one that proceeds by imitation, that of compulsive aggregation in the wake of protests hatched around the table by the grandchildren of the KGB who have updated the manuals since the Cold War by investing enormous opaque capital in the exploitation of the network and artificial intelligence.”
«The author’s exposition continues, saved by the providential intervention of the Digos agents who remove the spoilers one by one as they reveal themselves, shouting phrases written on smartphones and invited to jump up thanks to a director who imposes orders on WhatsApp. David Elber’s words are a fundamental tool for understanding the basis of the conflict, if any of them had the goodness to listen to them. The meeting ends with the organizers forced to exit – chased – through a back door, while in the square below even more signs and megaphones appear in the hands of protesters who have come from Imperia, Genoa, Milan”.
«Without fear of offending the author, the real lesson today came from the behavior of the police, increasingly indispensable in defending the few spaces of (potential) authentic confrontation and from the sociological study of an event which represents yet another example of what awaits us in the near future. “Italy in miniature” is not in Rimini, but in Ventimiglia, today. The ingredients are all there. Protesters, police forces attacked, “bad teachers” at a distance, hypocritical side dish of claque that applauds with faces, eyes, coarse words, which betrays the religion of hatred that animates them and with which, unfortunately, we will have to live for a long time ».
