Italy Searches for Its Soul

...Like others, he applauded Barbara Lee, the Berkeley Congresswoman who alone voted against military intervention...

...Anti-immigrant sentiments were simmering here well before September 11...

...The text said some sort of public commemorative ceremony or statement was being planned, but the office felt it should also transmit a more personal message to its American neighbors...

...she exclaimed...

...Antiterrorism police had been watching the center for years...

...our homeland...

...government bluntly described Milan's Islamic Cultural Center and mosque as "the main station house in Europe" for the Al Qaeda terrorist network...

...He belongs to everyone, and the application of justice is a necessary part of peace...

...And if there were, I would not give it to them...

...Within a week, CenterRight forces announced plans to counter it with a full-scale pro-America rally...

...What followed was the verbal equivalent of spitting venom...

...I was moved by the unexpected gesture...

...over Middle East policy—both regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the broadening of links to countries such as Iran and Libya, considered "rogue states" by Washington...

...Later, one of Foreign Minister Renato Ruggieri's key missions on a tour of the Middle East was to assure Muslim leaders that "relations between our governments are excellent and will remain so also under this administration...

...and models his leadership style on that of American politicians, has struggled to present himself as the honest and responsible head of a country fully committed to America's antiterrorism war...

...Some demonstrators, while denouncing the air strikes as simply a different form of terrorism, loudly heckled leading Leftist politicians who backed the U. S. strategy...

...Writing in Corriere della Sera's magazine section, Vittorio Zincone concurred: "Reading Fallaci's article, one encounters the desperate force of someone who, from outside, is aware of the reality and has the will to denounce something that to everyone else by now seems normal...

...He and his government were already smarting from the violent clashes in July between police and antiglobalization protesters at the Group of Eight summit in Genoa...

...Some, like novelist Dacia Maraini, warned that she was playing into the hands of bin Laden by taking the bait of Holy War...

...Thirty-eight per cent said that Muslims "did not inspire trust," and 43 per cent said they felt Islam was "intolerant...

...Sergio Romano, a former ambassador to Moscow who is now a highly respected commentator, wrote in Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera: "It is unpleasant to say, but it appears that for a part of Europe's public Berlusconi has become a Milosevic-like figure for whom constant democratic surveillance is in order...

...From outside Italy," wrote Ernesto Galli della Loggia, "we are often seen just the way Fallaci depicts us...

...On the other hand, gaffes and all, Berlusconi has remained popular in Italy...

...But Fallaci's rebuke of Italy itself as a flawed and divided nation struck a receptive chord...

...our cultural identity cannot support a migratory wave composed of people who in one way or another want to change our system of life...

...Fallaci, who now spends most of her time in New York, became famous in the 1970s for her battlefield reporting and no-holds-barred interviews with world leaders...

...The formal, slightly flowery phrases were self-conscious expressions of human decency...

...An estimated 250,000 people participated, far more than usual...

...This time around she trained her sights on two main targets...

...Fallaci said she decided to speak out after hearing that some Italians had celebrated the September 11 attacks...

...Divided even when it would seem natural to remain united...

...Another one cited "a longstanding problem: divisions over foreign policy, especially when Italy's friendship with the U.S...

...At the same time, though, they reflected the conflicting emotions felt by Italians amid the fear and confusion provoked by September 11 and the consequent "war on terrorism" with its bombing of Afghanistan...

...Let's face it," she wrote, "our churches and cathedrals are more beautiful than their mosques...

...The Crusade has been going on for some time...

...The official theme —"food, water and work for all"—was quickly extended to include another—"to uproot terrorism, stop wars and construct peace...

...And whoever believes differently is deluding himself...

...And it touched some of the country's rawest nerves, triggering a wide range of rejoinders...

...I am telling you that...

...True, a few days earlier Berlusconi received a warm welcome from President George W Bush in Washington...

...To reason, unthinkable...

...She bitterly denounced contemporary Italy as a materialistic and self-absorbed society, where local political rivalries dictate policy and political leaders bury their heads in the sand in the face of obvious dangers: "I am absolutely convinced that if Osama bin Laden had blown up the Tower of Pisa, the [political] opposition would have blamed the government and the government would have blamed the opposition...

...But Italian pundits were quick to note that he was the last major European leader to make the trip to the White House to offer support in the current crisis...

...I am very, very, very angry," she wrote...

...Soon after 9/11, for example, he was forced to do serious damage control because he was quoted as telling Italian journalists during a trip to Berlin: "We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion...

...A rage that eliminates any distance, any indulgence...

...He claimed to have been set up by his political opponents...

...It broke a self-imposed silence that the 71-year-old Fallaci, ill with cancer, had maintained for a decade...

...Titled "The Rage and the Pride," the piece took up four full pages in the standard size Corriere della Sera...

...But some have come under sharp criticism for failing to condemn bin Laden himself...

...Initiated 40 years ago, the 16-mile procession is usually dedicated to such themes as religious tolerance...

...A typical infuriating, but telling, reaction to any foul-up is the phrase, "Siamo in italia"—"What do you expect, we're in Italy...

...Against this background a furious, inflammatory essay by the celebrated journalist-provocateur Oriana Fallaci has proved a primary catalyst of the post-September 11 debates...

...The center's present leaders and other prominent Muslims in Italy deny any connection with Osama bin Laden and have condemned 9/11...

...As it turned out, there were no disruptions...

...In recent years, Italy, along with other European countries, has been increasingly at odds with the U.S...

...The Center-Left opposition lapsed into confusion, with hard-line Leftists branding the pro-U.S...

...It functions like a Swiss watch, sustained by a faith and a perfidy comparable only to the faith and perfidy of Torquemada when he ran the Inquisition...

...Our values...

...Not to mention the so-called "years of lead," when the homegrown Red Brigades and other Left and Right extremists carried out thousands of terrorist acts...

...Charging that Italians have no sense of patriotism, she added: "My Italy is not the Italy of today...

...The September scandal, however, was merely one of the image problems that have dogged Berlusconi, put a chill in Italy's relations with its European Union allies, and apparently lowered the country's stature on the world stage...

...Given that this year it was taking place just one week after U.S...

...Francis, he said, "cannot be exploited or expropriated...

...She painted a picture of Italy's growing Muslim population as hypocritical, uncivilized hordes who defecate on monuments of Italian culture and intimidate critics by calling them racists...

...Fallaci's abusive anti-immigrant rhetoric and rabble-rousing tone drew almost universal rejection from the commentators and intellectuals who answered her essay in interviews, talk show appearances and lengthy articles of their own...

...I won't give Italy away...

...Her new book, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe, will be published in January...

...That orders me to respond to them and above all to spit on them...

...forces in Afghanistan, as political commentators have pointed out, Italy's Constitution "repudiates war as a means for settling international disputes...

...Berlusconi, who loves the U.S...

...The search has been spurred on by a complex of stimuli—including the media, political posturing and Assisi-like popular demonstrations—which have laid bare an uncomfortable mix of uncertainty, divisiveness and insecurity in the face of new global challenges...

...If anything, his unguarded remark about Islam seems to have mirrored the sentiments of a sizable part of the population in a country that is home to an estimated 800,000 Muslims, many of them illegal immigrants...

...Holy God...

...A Franciscan spokesman was quoted as saying that the march was one "of solidarity with the United States as well as all people who are suffering...

...It was sent from an administrative office of the Forestry Management Department in the rural district of Umbria, where I have a house, sol thought itmustbe something about one more new tax or bureaucratic detail I had to deal with...

...The squalid, imbecille, soulless Italy of presumptuous and incapable parties that don't know how to win or to lose but do know how to glue the fat bottoms of their representatives into the chair of an MP or minister or mayor...

...I'm sure that if you really could search the souls of Americans, British, French, Germans, you'd probably find similar feelings...

...The evil, stupid, cowardly Italy of little hyenas who would sell their daughter to a Beirut brothel just to shake hands with a Hollywood star, but when bin Laden's kamikaze reduces thousands of New Yorkers to ashes, laugh and say it serves America right...

...This is due partly to commercial and economic interests, partly to the fear of terrorism, and partly to geography—the desire to reach a modus vivendi with an Arab world at Europe's doorstep...

...In the end the Assisi peace march, as it came to be called, was judged to have exhibited excessive ambivalence toward the United States...

...Francis and amajor destination of Catholic pilgrimages...

...Likewise, the societal foibles she blasts are so visible, and have become so accepted, that they are part of stock stereotypes, often acknowledged by a shrug or a wink...

...In 1995, a prayer leader was one of over a dozen people charged with supplying arms to Muslim extremists in Egypt and to Bosnian Muslim fighters, in violation of a UN arms embargo...

...and their overall lack of political ideals and moral principles...

...Many straddled the fence...

...I marched carrying an American flag to show my solidarity," said one longtime Italian pacifist...

...Lacing fiery language with expletives, Fallaci went far beyond Berlusconi's assertion of the superiority of Western culture...

...Incapable of aligning ourselves in the world in a significant way...

...Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi eagerly seized the initiative and said his own party, Forza Italia, would organize what was envisioned as an extravaganza of stars and stripes in the heart of Rome...

...The pleasure-loving, sneaky, vulgar Italy of people who think only of retiring before the age of 50 and who only get excited about foreign vacations and soccer...

...It would mean giving Italy away to them...

...INDEED, since September 11, and particularly since the bombing began in Afghanistan, Italy has been publicly searching for both its national soul and its political standing in the world...

...This prompted an even more intense debate among political figures and in the media that revealed serious political disarray, notably on the Left...

...In October, Italy was excluded from a minisummit held by Britain, France and Germany prior to an EU summit...

...To negotiate with them is impossible...

...Some of this stems from a lingering love-hate relationship with America that dates back decades...

...Angry with a rage that is cold, lucid, rational...

...hangs in the balance, damage the country...

...First, she lambasted today's Italians for their ambivalence toward the U.S...

...Every month this summer close to 1,000 individuals, largely from Afghanistan and Iraq, landed on Italian shores in crowded boats frequently operated by criminal gangs...

...Then, in politically incorrect terms that spilled over into racist invective, she warned that the current "war on terrorism" was actually a war of cultures and religions, in which Italy's Muslim immigrants constituted a "secret invasion...

...Fallaci's view of Italian politicians as corrupt, incapable and obsessed with hanging on to power has long been held in varying degrees by Italians...

...Ruth Ellen Gruber is a longtime contributor to the NL...

...But the procession was branded a "war among pacifists," because its tenor and agenda sparked a heated political debate and sharply divided traditional peace activist allies...

...This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries...

...Furthermore, although Italian troops have now joined U.S...

...Several Catholic groups boycotted the event, fearing disruption by radical antiglobalization protesters, who have strongly opposed the war...

...Yet he appeared to back the bombing campaign...

...The billionaire media magnate, who presides over a Center-Right government that swept into power this past June, rejected a consequent loud wave of international criticism...

...In fact, the letter indicated that the forestry office was sending a delegation to the annual October march from Perugia, the Umbrian capital, to Assisi, the hometown of St...

...Other U.S...

...Couching her essay as a wake-up call, she deliberately set out to shock...

...A public opinion poll conducted across Italy on October 21 found that 30 per cent of respondents considered themselves "more diffident" toward Muslim immigrants than they were prior to September 11...

...To treat them with indulgence or tolerance or hope, suicide...

...One demonstrator was killed, prompting charges of police brutality abroad...

...air strikes started, it assumed an added dimension...

...The flame was raised, though, after the U.S...

...That doesn't take away from the fact that I think the bombing of Afghanistan is a huge mistake...

...After all, many of today's leading Italian politicians cut their teeth in the era of street protests here against the Vietnam War and American cultural, political and military "imperialism...

...Fallaci's shrill denunciations show the Italians how we are made and only time and awareness of our limits can help us to change...

...antiglobalists marched alongside priests, families, boy scouts, aging hippies, even Afghan refugee women dressed in burkas...

...Because this would be equivalent to throwing away Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, the Renaissance...

...Beppe Severgnini, a columnist for Corriere della Sera, said Berlusconi "expressed what many people think, not only in Italy...

...In personal meetings with Arab and Muslim envoys, he said the Leftist media had manufactured the offending quotes to discredit him In addition, he handed out cassettes of his Berlin remarks that did not contain any offending statements—cassettes the Italian media said were doctored...

...Instead, I was astonished to find a formal letter, adopted and signed by a long list of local officials, expressing condolences and solidarity to me as an American citizen, and to the United States as a whole, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon...

...I'm telling you that here there is no place for their muezzins, for their minarets, for their false abstemiousness, for their f— ing Middle Ages, for their f—ing chador...

...Muslim militants led by bin Laden were waging a "Crusade in reverse" against the Christian West, she declared...

...citizens in the area received identical letters: It was clear that the administrative office had combed through local residency lists in an effort to contact each American living in the area...

...A number of the commentators who discussed Fallaci therefore welcomed her brutal critique as a means of making Italians look in the mirror...

...march as inappropriate and moderates scrambling to criticize the march to avoid appearing to be puppets of the U.S.," wrote a newspaper commentator...