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.
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