Teresa Mieli, senator of the Fratelli d’Italia, is the victim of a new case of alleged anti-Semitism. Aside from the terminological absurdity: the Arabs, for example, are also Semites. Instead, anti-Semitism concerns only Jews, the majority of whom are Indo-European, as Ashkenazis or converts to Judaism from the Caucasus.
The absurd multiplied to the nth degree! Faced with the accusation of anti-Semitism, however, a void is created around the alleged culprit, sometimes in good faith. It recently happened to Giorgio Zanchini, host of “Radio anch’io”. He dared to ask Senator Ester Mieli of Fratelli d’Italia, committed among other things to defending Israel, verbatim: “Are you Jewish?” Open up heaven, the world has fallen! Such a question cannot be done.
Yet, a possible conflict of interest given her belonging not only to a religion but to the ethnic group it could affect his objectivity in expressing a judgment on current events in which Israel is at the center of attention. Senator La Russa argued in this regard: “A person’s opinion cannot in any way be linked to the religion he professes.”
Yet the Jewish religion is firmly linked to ethnicity. Evidently La Russa doesn’t know or pretends not to know that religious belonging to Judaism is one and the same with ethnic belonging. You are born Jewish if you are the child of a Jewish mother (matrilineal transmission). There is much to be said about the objectivity of Jewish parliamentarians when it comes to issues involving their ethnicity.
It takes little these days to be considered anti-Semitic. Just don’t agree with the systematic massacre that Israel is carrying out in Palestine. The world condemns it in the vast majority, but the massacre continues. Are they all anti-Semites?
