[News] The Mussolini-Jabotinsky Connection: The Hidden Roots of Israel Fascist Past

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-mussolini-jabotinsky-connection-the-hidden-roots-of-israel-fascist-past/ 



  The Mussolini-Jabotinsky Connection: The Hidden Roots of Israel
  Fascist Past

February 4, 2020
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Vladimir Jabotinsky (R) meeting with Betar leaders in Warsaw. (Photo: File)

*By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo 
<http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud-romana-rubeo>*

It is hardly surprising that Italian opposition leader, Matteo Salvini, 
has vowed that if he becomes Italy’s next Prime Minister, he will 
recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Salvini heads Italy’s Lega Party, formerly known as Lega Nord – Northern 
League – a party that has long been perceived as a modern expression of 
the country’s long-dormant fascist ideology.

Salvini’s track record of pro-Israel statements and blind allegiance to 
Tel Aviv is as old as the man’s political career. The fact that Salvini 
made his political debut at a national level through an announcement 
made 
<http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/politica/2016/03/30/la-prima-di-salvini-in-israelee-modello-sicurezza-_f3692753-52e0-4445-b2f3-787586db10b1.html>, 
not from Rome, but rather from Tel Aviv, is sufficient to express the 
centrality of Israel in his political discourse.

Moreover, Salvini is the golden child of  Italy’s far-right politics as 
a whole. Considering Lega’s performance 
<https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/27/matteo-salvini-far-right-league-party-tops-italy-eu-election-polls> in 
the May 2019 European elections, one could argue that the Italian 
politician is Europe’s most important far-right leader.

It is no secret that Israel has openly aligned 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/union-israel-european-180716085952930.html> its 
politics with that of the ascending far-right political movements 
everywhere, especially in the West. This applies to the Israel-India 
alliance as much as it applies to Israel’s disturbing ties to the US 
Trump administration, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, and the 
Tories-dominated British government.

Israel’s links to Italy, however, deserve further probing, and should 
not be lumped together with Tel Aviv’s growing political intimacy with 
the global far-right. The reason for that is that Italy was the 
originator of the modern fascist ideologies, which are linked directly 
to Israel’s Zionist ideology.

n the post-World War II era, Italy successfully managed to suppress the 
fascist political strand from within, starting with the last two years 
of the war when Rome joined 
<https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/oct-13-1943-italy-switches-sides-in-world-war-ii/> the 
global push against the Nazi-fascist alliance. Italy’s post-war 
constitution has gone to great lengths to confront any form of fascism 
that continued to lurk within Italian society.

It was only natural, then, that on many occasions, the revolutionary 
forces that had a tremendous impact on shaping the Italian political 
discourse after the war found 
<https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/19/world/2-allies-in-discord.html> common 
ground with the Palestinian quest for freedom and the Palestinian 
people’s ongoing fight against Zionism and its reactionary allies 
anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. As the truly radical left in 
Italy persists in its political hibernation – a process that began 
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/45132554?seq=1> soon after the collapse of 
the Soviet Union in the early 1990s – far-right forces have made great 
strides, allowing in recent years, the likes of Salvini and his racist 
hoards to return to the political arena. Expectedly, Salvini’s 
ascendency began paving the road for restoring a long-dormant 
neo-Zionist-fascist alliance.

Concurrently, the rise of far-right forces in Italy is forcing all 
political parties in the country’s parliament to redefine their own 
political agendas by inching closer to the right in a desperate attempt 
to appeal to the emboldened far-right constituency.

Pro-Israel Zionist groups, in Italy and elsewhere, are now exploiting 
the country’s fractious political scene to advance Tel Aviv’s global agenda.

On January 17, the Italian government unanimously adopted 
<https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Italy-adopts-IHRA-definition-of-antisemitism-614655> the 
erroneous and self-serving definition of antisemitism, as envisaged by 
the pro-Israel International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which 
equates antisemitism with anti-zionism.

The troubling “working definition” has little to do with racism and 
everything with politics, since Zionism is a modern political ideology, 
and is neither a race nor a religion. An Italian equivalent of this 
bizarre undertaking would be equating antifascism and anti-Italian or 
anti-Catholic sentiment. If this sounds odd in the Italian context, it 
should sound equally strange in the Zionist-Israeli context.

However, this apparent oddity makes perfect sense when analyzed within a 
historiographical context.

Anti-Zionism critics often describe the Zionist movement as fascist. 
This seemingly haphazard analogy is fully justifiable on historical grounds.

Indeed, what many are not aware of is that, during their formative 
years, Zionist and Fascist ideologies, had similar intellectual roots 
and numerous overlappings in terms of their philosophical and political 
structures. Some of the founding fathers of Zionism, especially 
revisionist Zionists, regarded themselves as ideological fascists, and 
their progression from Fascism to Zionism was a logical one, 
necessitated by political expediency only.

Before the opportunistic alliance between Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf 
Hitler, and Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1936, 
resulting in Italy’s infamous racial laws, a degree of affinity existed 
between Zionist and Fascist leaders in Rome.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which 
Israel’s current Likud party and other right and far-right groups are 
the offspring, saw in Italy “a spiritual homeland”.

“All my views on nationalism, the state, and society were developed 
during those years under Italian influence,” Jabotinsky wrote in his 
autobiography, referring to his ideological formation years 
<http://en.jabotinsky.org/zeev-jabotinsky/biography/> in Italy*.*

In return, Mussolini had expressly spoken in support of Zionism and of 
Jabotinsky in particular: “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a 
Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who 
understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky,” Mussolini said during a 
private conversation with Nahum Goldman, founder of the World Jewish 
Congress, in November 1934, as reported 
<https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/agedict/ch10.htm#n19> by 
Lenni Brenner in his volume ‘Zionism in the Age of Dictators’.

Il Duce – the fascist reference to Mussolini, which translates to “The 
Leader” – had already allied with Jabotinsky’s Betar youth movement, 
which modeled itself around fascist ideas and symbols.

“By 1934, Jabotinsky and his Betar youth movement had allied with Il 
Duce, when the Betar established a naval base north of Rome,” Steven 
Meyer wrote in his article ‘Will Israel outlive its fascists?’, 
published 
<https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2002/eirv29n23-20020614/eirv29n23-20020614_033-will_israel_outlive_its_fascists.pdf> in 
the Executive Intelligence Review in 2002.

Meyer elaborates: ‘L’Idea Sionistica, Betar’s Italian-language magazine, 
described the dedication ceremonies which launched the academy: ‘The 
order-’Attention!’ A triple chant ordered by the squad’s commanding 
officer – ‘Viva l’Italia, Viva Il Re! Viva Il Duce!’, resounded, 
followed by the benediction which rabbi Aldo Lattes invoked in Italian 
and in Hebrew for God, for the King and for Il Duce… ‘Giovinezza’ [the 
fascist party’s anthem] was sung with much enthusiasm by the Betarim.’

This account is confirmed in other sources, including by Italian 
historian, Furio Biagini’s Mussolini e il Sionismo – “Mussolini and 
Zionism”. Biagini argues 
<http://www.freeebrei.com/anno-v-numero-2-luglio-dicembre-2016/livio-spinelli-il-sionismo-in-italia-e-la-politica-estera-fascista> that 
“in principle, Mussolini wasn’t against Jews’ aspiration to create a 
Jewish homeland in Palestine.”

Biagini also explained 
<http://www.tuttostoria.net/storia-contemporanea.aspx?code=1191> the 
budding Fascist-Zionist alliance based on geostrategic necessity,

“In its expansionistic design throughout the Mediterranean region, 
fascist Italy was in direct contrast with the British presence. The 
British fleet dominated the Mediterranean region from Gibraltar to 
Cyprus, unto Palestine. By supporting the Zionist movement in its fight 
against British Mandatory power, Italy wanted to weaken the British 
empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, while increasing Italian prestige 
at an international level.”

In truth, Jabotinsky was not Mussolini’s only link to Zionism, but one 
of many important allies who proved consequential in later years. 
Goldman wrote 
<https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/agedict/ch14.htm#n12> in 
his autobiography “The Autobiography of Nahum Goldman: Sixty Years of 
Jewish Life”  that Mussolini was a great admirer of Zionism.

“You must create a Jewish state. I am a Zionist, and I told Dr. Weizmann 
so. You must have a real country, not that ridiculous National Home that 
the British have offered you. I will help you create a Jewish state,” 
Goldmann wrote, conveying Mussolini’s message to the Zionist leadership 
at the time.

Mussolini’s enthusiasm to establish a “Jewish state” paralleled the 
British plot to turn the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which committed 
the British crown to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In October 1933, the head of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, Victor 
Jacobson, wrote 
<https://books.google.it/books?id=fOpdb3jmqsMC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=porte+della+Palestina+immigrazione+Mussolini&source=bl&ots=BxHC5y66hl&sig=ACfU3U1222a3kgK_QqgGOV7ovo7bjy5DXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjErNzt6pfnAhXBDOwKHTz6CxAQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=porte%20della%20Palestina%20immigrazione%20Mussolini&f=false> to 
Chaim Weizmann, who served as the President of the World Zionist 
Organization, and later as the first President of Israel, 
that,/ “/Mussolini is eager to open even wider the doors of Palestine to 
Jewish immigration, particularly to the refugees coming from Germany”.

In his afterword to the book, “Stato e Libertà” – State and Freedom –  
Italian diplomat Sergio Minerbi wrote 
<https://books.google.it/books?id=fOpdb3jmqsMC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=porte+della+Palestina+immigrazione+Mussolini&source=bl&ots=BxHC5y66hl&sig=ACfU3U1222a3kgK_QqgGOV7ovo7bjy5DXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjErNzt6pfnAhXBDOwKHTz6CxAQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=porte%20della%20Palestina%20immigrazione%20Mussolini&f=false>: 
“Mussolini thought that it was impossible to reconcile Jews and Arabs 
and that they had to be politically separated, so he floated the idea of 
the partition of Palestine”.

All of this changed in 1936 when Mussolini’s son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, 
was appointed as Italy’s foreign minister. It was then that “Mussolini 
allied Italy unequivocably with Hitler,” as Susan Zuccotti wrote 
<https://www.amazon.com/Italians-Holocaust-Persecution-Rescue-Survival/dp/0803299117> in 
her book ‘The Italians and the Holocaust’. Italy’s fascist party was 
then compelled to part ways with the Zionist leadership, leading to 
Mussolini’s decision not to meet with Jabotinsky.

Following the triumph of the Zionist movement, crowned in the 
establishment 
<https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-israel> of 
Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in May 1948, Zionists have, 
once again, successfully managed to rebrand their movement as a 
progressive force, though it never truly abandoned its fascist ideology.

The Nation-state law 
<https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nation-state-law-fascist-step-towards-apartheid> of 
July 2018, which defines Israel as an ethnic-racial state was one of 
many proofs that Israel remains, until this day, fully committed to Fascism.

To say that Zionism is a form of fascism is neither an overstatement or 
a haphazard claim. Indeed, the root causes of both ideologies should be 
apparent to any astute student of history.

The fact that Salvini and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, 
are now renewing or, at least, openly embracing the old bond between 
these two destructive ideologies, reflects two troubling realities – on 
the one hand, it speaks of Italy’s failure to uproot Fascism as a 
political model following World War II, and, on the other hand, the true 
ideological basis of Zionism, thus the State of Israel itself.

/– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine 
Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “//These Chains 
Will Be Broken/ 
<https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092>/: 
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” 
(Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research 
Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim 
University (IZU). His website is //www.ramzybaroud.net/ 
<http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>

/ – Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and an editor 
at//PalestineChronicle.com/ <http://www.palestinechronicle.com/>/. Rubeo 
holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature, and 
specializes in audio-visual and journalism translation./

-- 
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