Italy’s president: ‘No dialogue is possible if there is a refusal to recognize Israel’ From EJP.
TURIN
(EJP)---Italian President Giorgio Napolitano opened Thursday the
prestigious Turin's book fair amid Muslim and Italian left opposition
over the choice of Israel as the event's guest of honour.
"No dialogue is possible if there is a refusal to recognize Israel," Napolitano said at Israel's special stand at the fair.
There can be no "rejection of the
reasons for its birth (60 years ago) or of its right to exist in peace
and security," he added.
Israel's
stand was swamped by hundreds of people, many draped in the Israeli
flag, with one group holding a banner that read: "I feel Jewish today."
"A special thanks with all my heart
goes to President Napolitano for his strong position this year, after
the calls over recent months to boycott the Book Fair because of
Israel's presence," said Israel’s new ambassador to Italy Gideon Meir
at the fair's opening.
Like its Parisian counterpart in
March, the Turin fair is honouring Israel on the 60th anniversary of
the Jewish state's creation, sparking fresh Muslim protests and boycott
calls.
Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan said
the fact that Napolitano will be the first head of state to open the
fair, now in its 21st year, would make it "a political and not a
cultural event."
Ramadan, who is backing the boycott calls, is the grandson of Hassan El-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But Yahya Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian
Islamic religious community, expressed his “complete solidarity” with
the Italian president’s decision to inaugurate the fair.
Napolitano arrived at 10:00 am by
helicopter at the fair in the northern Italian city along with Israeli
novelist Abraham B. Yehoshua to cut the inaugural ribbon.
David Grossman, Amos Oz, Aaron Appelfeld and Meir Shalev will be among the other featured Israeli authors.
In a statement released earlier
this week, Napolitano’s office said: "Criticism of the policies adopted
by the Israeli government is quite legitimate, especially within
Israel. What is inadmissible is any position that tends to deny the
legitimacy of the State of Israel, which was established by the will of
the United Nations in 1948, and it's right to existence in peace and
security".
Protest planned
Ahead of the five-day expo, several
Muslim writers, intellectuals and artists as well as the Free Palestine
association staged a two-day protest seminar at the University of Turin
titled "Western Democracies and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine."
And far-left activists burned Israeli and US flags after the traditional May Day march.
Meanwhile, Free Palestine is planning a protest on Saturday.
Turin's Chief Rabbi Alberto Moshe Somekh said Wednesday that the city had shown "great courage" in deciding to honour Israel.
At a special service in Turin's
main synagogue, he said the tribute marked not only the state of
Israel's 60 years but also "4,000 years of our presence on the world
stage as 'People of the Book'."
Israel’s ambassador
to Italy, Gideon Meir, said calls for a boycott of the Italy's
prestigious Turin book fair were “an attempt to undermine the state of
Israel.”
"The president's choice of
inaugurating the book fair dedicated to Israel, represents a very
important moral position to left and right wing extremists that come to
Turin to boycott the fair and want to deligitimize Israel," he told
Italian daily La Repubblica.
Organizers of the book fair say
they expect some 300 people to take part in the Saturday protest, while
activist Sergio Cararo of the Palestine Forum predicted there would be
at least 10,000.
Security has been tightened for
this year's event in Turin, coming two months after the Paris book fair
which was inaugurated by Israeli President Shimon Peres and marred by
boycotts and a bomb threat that forced an hour-long evacuation of the
venue.
More than 300,000 people visited
last year's book fair in Turin, to be attended this year by some 1,400
publishers, both Italian and foreign, which director Rolando Picchioni
said was an "absolute record."