This flyer Italiano

 

Call from Assemblea Free Palestine for 10 May Turin demo

 

Turin demonstration 30000 people, 1 May 2008

 

Palestinian Appeal to International Civil Society

 

Italian publishers’ appeal against the invitation of Israel  as the guest country to the Turin Book Fair.  In Italian see.

 

Revoke now the decision to devote the Turin Book Fair to Israel - signed internationally by academics, MEPs, students, workers & teachers.  In Italian see.

 

Demonstrations in Italy (Italiano)

 

Michael Kalmanovitz & Giorgio Riva interviewed on local Italian radio

 

Picket the Italian Embassy flyer & Italiano

Photos of the picket

 

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PROTEST IN LONDON AGAINST ISRAEL’S INVITATION TO TURIN BOOK FAIR

On Monday 31 March over two dozen people picketed the Italian Embassy in London with placards, banners and loudhailers, calling for a boycott of the Turin Book Fair, which has invited Israel as the “guest of honour”.

Protesters were appalled that the President of the Italian Republic has added his weight to this decision by publicising his intention to open this Book Fair on May 8, even though this is in the week of Nakba – the 60th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people by the Israeli state.

Jewish anti-Zionist women and men in the Global Women’s Strike and Payday men’s network, who called the picket, and activists from Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG) and Camden - Abu Dis Friendship Association (CADFA) were vocal in their denunciation of Israel’s deputy defence minister Vilnai’s call for a “shoah” – a holocaust – against people in Gaza.  A speaker from the Utility Workers Union of America (AFL-CIO) decried that the AFL leadership had helped support and finance the occupation.

Anti-Book Fair demonstrations at the weekend in Turin, Rome & Milan were reported to the picket. Over 700 people had rallied in Turin’s main square, with street theatre and a photo exhibition; and there were sit-ins at Feltrinelli bookshops in Milan and Rome because they announced that they would take part in the Book Fair.  The police attacked the demonstrators in Milan following an afternoon of provocation by Zionists, who tried to tear up one of the banners.

Representatives of the London picket tried to deliver a letter of protest to the Ambassador, but the carabiniere representing the Embassy said that the Ambassador would not accept the letter without an appointment!  A demonstrator commented on her loudhailer that “They’d rather welcome Israeli Zionists!”

Demonstrators, who were also from Canada, Egypt, Germany, Iran, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, Turkey and the US, were incensed at the Ambassador’s refusal and declared that they would contact their networks to flood the Embassy with letters. 

 

 

Please email this letter or write your own
& cc Global Women’s Strike & Payday men’s network

LETTER TO THE ITALIAN EMBASSY

To find email of the Italian Embassy where you are: http://www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-of/Italy
If you are based in the UK send faxes to: +44 20 7312 2230 or email: sa.amblondra@esteri.it

We protest against the outrageous decision of the Turin Book Fair to make Israel its guest of honour.   If this decision to invite and honour Israel is not rescinded, the Book Fair must be boycotted.

The invitation has sinister echoes: on 7 April the Royal Family in Britain hosted a dinner at Windsor Castle for the Jewish National Fund, a key Zionist organisation that has dispossessed and expelled Palestinian people from their land. 

We find it all the more astonishing that President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano plans to open the Fair on 8 May considering that the Fair’s President, Rolando Picchioni, was a member of the Masonic Lodge P2, led by Lucio Gelli, who was not only a fervent admirer of the Fascist leader Mussolini, but a liaison officer with the Hermann Goering SS division.  In the ‘70s the P2 infamously planned a right-wing coup d’état in Italy. 

Those of us who are Jewish are particularly outraged that the Israeli State is so eager to take a part in the fair organized by an old associate of Nazis.  This collaboration, however, is less surprising following Israel’s deputy defence minister Vilnai’s call for a “shoah” – a holocaust – against people in Gaza.  To propose a shoah against Palestinians validates all shoahs – including that inflicted on the world by the Nazis. 

Calling for a boycott in response to inviting the Israeli State to the Paris and Turin Book Fairs, Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai said:

“The book event, or any other kind of exhibition in which the Israeli State is invited, is not a way to promote peace in the Middle East, and not a way to bring justice to the Palestinians, but only propaganda to give Israel an image of being a liberal and democratic society. A State which maintains an occupation and commits daily crimes against civilians does not deserve to be invited to whichever cultural week.”

The Union of Palestinian Writers and Intellectuals has also called for a boycott.  And there are protests, demonstrations and boycott demands planned throughout Italy: on 5th February the headquarters of organizers of the Fair, Fondazione del Libro, was occupied; Italian book publishers have launched an appeal; a petition is being circulated and signed internationally by MEPs, students, workers, teachers and prominent individuals; demonstrations took place in Turin, Milan and Rome on 29th March; and the Italian Embassy in London was picketed on 31st March. 

For the organisers of the Book Fair to honour Israel in the week before Nakba is not only a provocation but also a disgraceful defence of the murder, rape and torture that is the Israeli occupation.  

This occupation is one with the occupation of Iraq: military control of oil and water in the Middle East for the real axis of evil – US, Israel and their European stooges.  And now the Italian authorities have shown they are complicit in the additional crime of Nakba denial.

Global Women’s Strike www.globalwomenstrike.net  020 7482 2496

Payday men’s network www.refusingtokill.net  020 7209 4751