MILAN: Italian Premier Giorgia Melon i has admonished the youth wing of her far-right Brothers of Italy party after an Italian news outlet published videos showing some of its members glorifying fascism.
“I have said and repeated dozens of times, but perhaps I need to repeat it: There is no space in Brothers of Italy for racist or antisemitic positions, just as there is no space for nostalgics of totalitarianism of the 1900s, or for any other show of stupid folklore,’’ Meloni said in a letter to her party published by Italian media on Tuesday.
The online news outlet Fanpage released the videos last month filmed with a hidden camera by a journalist posing as an activist with Brothers of Italy’s youth wing. They showed members of the group praising the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, doing fascist salutes and yelling the Nazi cry “Sieg Heil.”
Meloni has decried the fascist regime’s anti-Jewish racial laws and the suppression of democracy, but critics have long said she has not done enough to distance herself from her party’s neo-fascist roots.
The Brothers of Italy has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, which was founded in 1946 by former Mussolini officials and drew fascist sympathizers into its ranks. It remained a small far-right party until the 1990s, when it became the National Alliance and worked to distance itself from its neo-fascist past.
Meloni was a member of the youth branches of MSI and the National Alliance, and founded Brothers of Italy in 2012, keeping the tricolor flame symbol of the MSI in her party logo.
Liliana Segre, a 93-year-old senator for life and Holocaust survivor, told Italy’s La7 private television that such sentiments had always existed in Italy but that with the new far-right-led government “they don’t have shame in anything.”
She said the Nazi mottos had revived memories of being deported. “Now at my age, will I be forced from my country, as I was already once?”
Italian Premier Meloni rebukes the youth wing of her far-right party for glorifying fascism
https://arab.news/2z5gu
Italian Premier Meloni rebukes the youth wing of her far-right party for glorifying fascism
- “There is no space in Brothers of Italy for racist or antisemitic positions, just as there is no space for nostalgics of totalitarianism of the 1900s,’’ Meloni said
- Meloni has decried the fascist regime’s anti-Jewish racial laws and the suppression of democracy
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
