Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Italy. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Italy. Afficher tous les articles

05/09/2023

HILO GLAZER
In Italy's Alpine Foothills, Israelis Are Starting an Expat Community. Similar Initiatives Aren't Far Behind


Editor's Note

A joke circulated a few years ago in Tel Aviv bars, “An optimistic Israeli Jew learns Arabic, a pessimistic Israeli Jew learns English, a realistic Israeli Jew learns to swim.” It seems that what the Palestinians or Arabs have failed to do (if they ever really intended to), Netanyahu and his government acolytes are causing: a stampede has broken out among Israeli Jews. Indeed, hundreds and thousands of Israelis of various socio-economic conditions and all ages are scrambling to find an alternative to the life in the Jewish state. And in this way a new business, which could be called the relocation industry, has emerged. Hilo Glazer's article tells of the Baita Project, launched in the Sesia Valley, in the province of Vercelli, and other projects, including ambitious plans to create “Israeli cities” in Europe, from Cyprus and Greece to Portugal, and elsewhere. One of them even speaks of creating a “settlement community”, which is reminiscent of the so-called settlements (colonies) in the West Bank. It's legitimate to wonder whether these projects can constitute a definitive overcoming of Zionism and tribalism, or whether they will simply create "little Israels" scattered like confetti across the world.-FG

Hilo Glazer, Haaretz, Sep 2, 2023

In the wake of the judicial coup, Israeli discussions about relocating abroad no longer stop at social media groups. In a lush valley in northwestern Italy, ideas of collective emigration are being played out on the ground – and similar initiatives are taking shape elsewhere as well

“As the number of hours of light in their country’s democracy keeps diminishing, more and more Israelis are arriving in the mountainous valley in their search for a new start. Among them are young people with babies in carriers, others with children of school age, and there are the graying-balding people like me. A teacher, a tech entrepreneur, a psychologist, a dog groomer, a basketball coach. Some say they’re only exploring, still ashamed to admit that they are seriously considering the option. Others look purposeful and motivated – looking into how to get a residency permit, how much a house costs, how to open a bank account and transfer your provident funds while it’s still possible. Underlying all this is a layer of pain, the pain of good Israelis who believed that after 2,000 years they could rest on their laurels, but were now taking up the wanderer’s staff once again.”

The writer is Lavi Segal, the mountainous area he is describing is in the Sesia Valley (Valsesia), in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, at the foot of the Alps. Segal, the owner of a tourism business from the Galilee, shares his experiences with members of a Facebook group called Baita, which offers information to Israelis seeking to immigrate to and create their own community in Valsesia, many of whose original inhabitants have left in recent decades. The group’s name is an amalgam of Bait (Hebrew for “home,” or “house”) and Ita – short for Italy. Baita in Italian also translates as “hut in the mountains.” And these are not just any mountains: Valsesia is known as “the greenest valley in Italy.” Segal says what he’s presenting is a case of truthful advertising.

“With all due respect for the talk about ‘the beautiful Land of Israel,’” he tells Haaretz in a phone interview, “Israel is perhaps beautiful compared to Syria or Saudi Arabia [but] Europe and the Alps are a different world. The landscape is breathtaking, the weather is marvelous, and all the well-known troubles of Israel – wars, dirtiness, overcrowding, cost of living – simply don’t exist here.”

Segal has lived in Valsesia with his wife, Nirit, for two months; both are in their 60s. “We’re on a journey of familiarization and exploring,” he explains. “We’ve rented a house here, and every so often we talk to real estate agents about the possibility of buying one. At the moment we’re not talking about permanent uprooting, though that could happen if life in Israel becomes intolerable. For the time being we’re looking for a place where we can divide our time between Israel and overseas. Israel is very dear to us: When we’re there we’re active in demonstrations” against the government’s plans for a judicial overhaul.

Nirit, who organizes art retreats, is of two minds: “This place is a dream when it comes to creating art, but I’m very attached to Israel, and like many people in my circles I feel it today especially. I’m apprehensive about the implications of the wave of migration for the protest movement.”

For the time being, she’s decided not to decide, she admits. “I want to hold the stick at both ends. To take part in the protest, but also to stay here for long periods. To move between the two. We have been received here cordially. Despite the language difficulties, we’ve developed some pleasant and natural ties with people. It’s odd, but I’m getting attached.”

Lavi attributes less importance to the political upheaval back home when relating to the decision to investigate other options. “I didn’t need to witness current events in order to grasp that Israel is heading in directions that aren’t good,” he says.

The path of the Segals, who have three grown children, to settle in the valley is being paved thanks mainly to Lavi’s Lithuanian passport. “With it, we can stay indefinitely within the boundaries of the European Union, and the children can study and work. Who would have thought that after everything that happened to our people and to my family on Lithuanian soil, that a Lithuanian passport, of all things, would make this freedom of movement possible for us?”

In the meantime, they’re living in a quiet town that’s 650 meters above sea level.

Download pdf to read more


22/01/2022

ANNAMARIA RIVERA
On racism: let’s bring some clarity

 Annamaria Rivera, Comune-Info, 20/1/2022
Translated by
Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala  

As a premise, it should be noted that the term "racism", in the singular, is preferable to "racisms", if we want to grasp the unitary character of the concept, beyond the historical and empirical variations of the phenomenon. Paradoxically, to name such a system, we are forced to use a term whose etymology refers to the belief in the existence of "races", criticized and then abandoned by a large part of the same social and biological sciences that had contributed to its elaboration. "Race" is, in fact, a pseudo-category as unfounded as it is paradoxical, since it is based on the postulate that establishes a deterministic relationship between somatic, physical, genetic characters and psychological, intellectual, cultural, social characters.

In short, racism can be defined as a system of beliefs, representations, norms, speeches, behaviors, practices, political and social acts, aimed at devaluing, stigmatizing, discriminating, inferiorising, subordinating, segregating, persecuting categories of people who have been othered, and this up to massacre and extermination.

I write "othered" because in reality, the "color" or the actual cultural and/or social distance from the us are quite irrelevant in the choice of victims, as the tragic history of anti-Semitism proves. The stigma applied to certain categories of people can disregard any somatic, phenotypic, cultural difference or related to the origin, being the result of a process of social, symbolic, political construction.

  

Fascist group Vox's racist propaganda in Spain against  unaccompanied foreign minors, supposed to get eleven times more from the State than a poor indigenous retiree ("your grandmother")

04/08/2021

Achille Lollo: farewell to a fighter

Fausto Giudice, Basta Yekfi!, 4/8/2021
Translated by Andy Barton

I have just learned, via common Brazilian comrades, of the passing of Achille Lollo, yesterday in Trevignano Romano, to whom I wish to pay tribute.


 

Achille was born in Rome on 8th May 1951. Salvatore, his father, had been a resistance fighter, a deported communist and an anti-fascist guerrilla fighter in Italy and Yugoslavia. Should Achille have been born just 30 years earlier, he too would have taken up arms against fascism. And yet more, should he have been born 130 years earlier, he would doubtless have been an Italian Redshirt, among the Garibaldini defenders of Montevideo besieged by the cruel Argentinian general Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Yet his actual biography has little to envy of the adventures of the heroes of Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo. He belongs to a long Italian tradition of causing trouble in every corner of the world. His 50 years of adult life played out on three stages: the suburbs of Rome, Angola and Brazil.

It all began in 1973 in Primavalle, a volatile suburb in Rome. Achille, together with some of his comrades from the operaista movement Potere Operaio, was accused of having started a fire in the apartment belonging to the local head of the fascist party, the Italian Social Movement, in which two of the fascist leader’s sons died. Achille was arrested. He denied having wanted to kill anybody; rather, his aim was to intimidate the local fascists with whom leftists were locked in an endless conflict. After two years of preventative prison, he was paroled, going on to seek refuge in Angola in 1975. Achille participated in the anti-colonial struggles together with the MPLA, the SWAPO and the ANC. In 1986, with his Angolan wife and their four children, he emigrated to Brazil. There, he was an active member of the PT (Brazilian Worker’s Party) as part of the Força Socialista tendency. Later, he would participate in the founding of the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party) in 2004. A few years prior, in 1994, he was arrested after an extradition request from Italy, being freed after one year in prison.

In 2005, the 18-year prison term he had been sentenced to in Italy expired, but the damages and losses he had been sentenced to pay (1 million euros) had not. This prevented Achille from owning anything (which perhaps is not such a bad thing).

In 2010, now with health problems, he returned to Italy, where he devoted himself to ecological agriculture. The irruption of COVID-19 would seriously compromise this activity. However, it was not the virus that eventually killed him: as a diabetic with cardiac problems, he was struck by pancreatic cancer, known for its aggressive development.

Achille leaves behind him an immense body of work, both written and audio-visual, primarily about Latin America, and scattered across many different media platforms. Hopefully, one day, someone will be able to draw it all together. 

 One of Achille’s last photos, with his son Achillinho