Pro-Palestinian Chaos in Italy

The National

"[Ms Meloni condemned the] outrageous images [and the rioters as] self-proclaimed ‘pro-Pal’ individuals, self-proclaimed ‘antifa’ members, self-proclaimed ‘pacifists’ [who were] “wreaking havoc”."

"[The violence and destruction was nothing to do with solidarity and] would not change a single thing in the lives of people in Gaza, but will have concrete consequences for Italian citizens, who will end up suffering and paying for the damages caused by these thugs." 

"[Law enforcement officers have been] forced to endure the bullying and gratuitous violence of these pseudo-protesters." 

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni 

 

"This doesn’t mean we’re anti-Jews or antisemitic, and we’re tired of the media and politicians playing on this misunderstanding." 

"It just means we’re against a government that’s committing genocide while the international community looks the other way."

Alessandra, Italian student 

Clashes break out as thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate across Italy – still from video

 In part of a day of action to "denounce the genocide in Gaza", tens of thousands of people in Italy demonstrated across the country, including transport strikes and port blockades. Italian unions were front and centre, aiding and abetting the organizers with their union clout. There are now close to a million Muslims living in Italy, mostly from North Africa. Their  collective voice is substantial enough, yet adding the support of Italian students and union members gives them even greater voice. Everyone sympathizes with the victimhood of Palestinians, lacking the knowledge that these are self-made victims.

While pursuing their victimhood status with great gusto, as a badge of empathetic honour, it is the Palestinians and their terrorist leaders who are the aggressors, those whose intransigence over refusing to diplomatically argue in good faith with their Israeli neighbours to negotiate agreeable terms for statehood. The  terms that Israeli negotiators emphasize are the beginning and the end of any agreement that boil down simply enough to recognition of Israel's right of existence, and peace to cement that recognition.

 

A bridge too far for Palestinian leadership who have time and again over the plus-70 years since Israel's re-existence have instead plotted unremittingly to destroy the state, disinterested in two states living side-by-side if not amicably, then with a restrained peace agreement. Instead Palestinian leadership generation after generation, incited the population to believe that Israel must be destroyed, that all the land in question must be exclusively 'Palestinian'. The very designation of Palestine historically was a name given to Judea by the Romans. How ironic is that?

 

Protesters pack the central railway station in Naples. Photograph: Matteo Ciambelli/Reuters

Following the Holocaust and the end of the Second World War, only 28,000 Jews now live in Italy, far fewer in number than the figure given for Muslims dating to 2021. Jewish influence in the country is minimal in comparison to that of a demographic of some 800,000+ Muslims whose narrative echoes that of the Palestinians from abroad. The very day that France, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Canada declared their readiness to accept and support a Palestinian State at the United Nations General Assembly, massive demonstrations appeared throughout Italy; not spontaneous, but pre-organized.

Italy's government, speaking through Prime Minister Giorgia Melono is not prepared to recognize a Palestinian state at the present time. For her, and for the government she leads, it seems far more sensible and just for a government-in-waiting to be one for which constant violent attacks against a neighbour stop. The Palestinian Authority is notorious for paying a 'martyrs fund' for Palestinians who commit violent crimes against Israel; funding terrorism, aside from inciting its children to aspire to martyrdom against the Jewish 'enemy'. 

Italian protesters gathered at the main Terminal train station in Rome, among them students shouting "Free Palestine!" and carrying Palestinian flags. Those  at the front of the march held a giant banner proclaiming "Against Genocide, Let's block everything". "Italy must come to  standstill today", 52-year-old Federica Casino, a worker protesting with the students, stated. "Italy talks but does nothing." 

 

Dock workers and protesters block the port of Genoa. Photograph: Matteo Minnella/Reuters

 

Organizers boasted in the northern city of Milan that 50,000 people had turned out, where protesters burned an American flag and in Bologna, over 10,000 marched through the streets, protests also taking place in Turin, Florence, Naples and Sicily. In Livorno and Genoa, dock workers blocked entrances to ports. Local buses and the metro service were disrupted by strike action in Rome; national train operators warned of delays and cancellations.

 

The Italian government states it does not intend, for the present, to recognize a Palestinian state, and is reluctant over implementing the European Union's proposed trade sanctions on Israel. On the other hand, it has condemned the Israeli assault on Gaza, and has not sold Italian weapons to Israel since the October 7, 2023 attack inside Israel by Hamas. Close to 64 percent of Italians feel the humanitarian situation in Gaza to be "very serious", and 41 percent support recognition of a Palestinian state, according to a recent survey. 

 

Workers took to the streets in many of Italy's biggest cities in pro-Palestinian protests Anadolu via Getty Images

Canada Cosseting Extremist Islamists

"When officers were chasing some protesters, two Molotov cocktails were thrown in the direction of police."

"They didn't hit them."

Jean-Pierre Brabant, Montreal Police spokesman

"A demo for Palestine attacked Concordia University Sunday evening. Many windows of luxury stores on Sainte-Catherine street were also broken."

"The police were kept at a distance with the help of molotov cocktails."

Clash MTL anarchist group

Maintenance workers board up broken windows at Concordia University's Hall Building in Montreal Monday Sept. 30, 2024. The windows were smashed during a pro-Palestinian demonstration Sunday evening. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

"We express our deepest mourning & our highest salutes to the great leader, the martyr, inspiration of so many around the world, symbol & strategist of resistance, tireless anti-imperialist, anti-colonial liberator, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah."

Samidoun statement

In Windsor, Ontario, the Ahlul Bayt Mosque advertised an event for Sunday to "commemorate the martyrdom" of "The Great Martyr Sayed Hassan Nasrallah". This is the broken Canada of today where, although the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, just like the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, clients of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are officially listed as proscribed terror groups, their flags are flown in Canadian cities where pro-Palestinian protests take place, and Canadian Islamists mourn the passing of arch-terrorists as 'martyrs' of 'resistance'.  

Contrast that with the news of this arch-terrorist's death coming as a profound relief -- leading to hope for a new day to dawn without the malicious threats of psychopaths that roil the world order as they scheme to destroy Israel and set out on missions to slaughter Jews both in the Jewish state, and elsewhere across the globe -- to many Arabs in Syria and Lebanon who suffered from Nasrallah's malign agenda, and above all, to Persians in Iran for whom their theocratic government is a despised dictatorship.

 

Smashed windows in downtown Montreal on Sept. 30, 2024, a day after a protest. (Martin Daigle, CityNews)

 

But in Canada, given the inaction of the government of Justin Trudeau, the pro-Islamist, anti-Israel protest contingent, having suffered no lawful penalties of any substance, continue to feel emboldened to use louder, more violent tactics in their persecution of Canadian Jews. Extremist Islamists and their enthusiastic supporters for whom antisemitism is a cause they revel in, the lack of lawful intervention in their chaotic and threatening rallies has served predictably, to convince them there will never be any penalties for their unlawful, anti-human-rights bedlam.

They have graduated to attacking police as they wave the flags of terror organizations while promoting the destruction not only of Israel, but Canada, as well. Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante condemned "unacceptable" behaviour of yet another anti-Israel protest on Sunday when protest thugs took to breaking windows and tossing firebombs at police attempting to restore order.

Montreal's central core saw a group of some 60 protesters setting off fireworks, breaking shop windows, spray-painting graffiti on buildings. Saturday saw downtown Toronto facing a demonstration with thugs there hoisting the flag of Hezbollah, listed by Canada as a terror entity. The English-language state media outlet of the Islamic Republic of Iran carried the Toronto protest live on Press TV. Its correspondent Firas Al-Najim stated it is only as a result of the "Zionist lobby's" influence that Hezbollah is labeled a terrorist group.

 

Protestor waving smoke at protest on Saturday in Toronto. (OTR/Laviza Syed)

 

Mask-wearing protesters carried portraits of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated the day before by an Israeli airstrike, some wearing green headbands reflecting Hamas. A banner read Long Live Legal Armed Resistance to Occupation, an inverted red triangle on the banner; the triangle associated with Hamas which has popularized it as symbolic of its intentions as a marker identifying Israeli targets. 

Samidoun, based in Vancouver as a non-profit, has direct ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, yet another and even older active Gaza terrorist group, which on October 7 of 2023 took part in the Hamas-led surge of terrorists into southern Israel bound on a mission of savage atrocities. Samidoun issued a mourning message for the death of Hezbollah's Nasrallah; unsurprisingly since its co-founder refers to members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as 'friends and brothers'; yet the Liberal government takes no steps to outlaw it in Canada, much less withdraw its charitable status.

A masked speaker in front of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill tells a cheering crowd that they will fight until "this country crumbles to the ground." Photo by X.com/@l3v1at4an