Palestinian students angry over Saturday march move

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 26 - Palestinian students on Friday reacted angrily to the decision by the police chief's office to move a pro-Palestinian march planned for Rome on Saturday to another date to avoid clashing with Holocaust Remembrance Day and possibly prompting anti-Israeli or even antisemitic incidents.
    "It is extremely serious that the Jewish community should have influenced a decision already taken by the competent authority authorizing the march," said the president of the Palestinian Students' Movement Maya Issa.
    "It is a decision that increases the anger," she added.
    '"We will reserve the right to decide whether to demonstrate on Sunday January 28, but we cannot guarantee that people will not take to the streets tomorrow anyway," said Issa.
    On Friday the Milan city prefect issued a ban on pro-Palestine demonstrations in the regional capital on Saturday and other cities looked set to follow suit after the department of public safety and security on Thursday issued a circular urging organisers to put off the marches to another date so as to reconcile the freedom to demonstrate with respect for Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Some demonstrations could have consequences that harm some legally sanctioned values, like the commemoration of the Shoah," said Piantedosi, adding that he was confident that public order authorities, especially in the two major cities, would be able to negotiate with organisers "so as not to deny a right, but to make the marches compatible with values".
    Rome's Jews on Wednesday called on authorities to ban the pro-Palestinian march in the Italian capital on Holocaust Remembrance Day, saying it would be a "defeat for everyone" if it went ahead.
    "We don't understand how it was possible to grant authorisation on a Day that is international, all the more so in the context of October 7, an anti-semitic massacre (by Hamas) the like of which had not been seen since the times of Nazism, said the president of Rome's Jewish Community, Victor Fadlun.
    "We ask the institutions, national and local, to prevent this disgrace," he added, insisting that an allegedly anti-semitic event onHolocaust Remembrance Day would reopen the "wound" represented by the Shoah. (ANSA).