Shocking rally: Hannoun challenges banishment order
The anti-Israel leader attacks the government and the “Zionist lobby” on the outskirts of Milan.
Hannoun raises the stakes. The pro-Palestinian leader shows up on the outskirts of Milan , defies the police commissioner’s ban, insults the government (“servants of the Zionist lobby “), attacks the Friends of Israel square, and announces: “I’m calm and determined to move forward.” And now the Brothers of Italy (FdI) and the League are loudly calling for his expulsion. While a slim hope for a truce hangs by a thread in the Middle East, anti-Israel protests in Italy are increasingly extremist, and show no signs of abating. And so the president of the Association of Palestinians in Italy resurfaces, having just been served a “departure order”—the second of its kind—ordering him not to set foot in Milan for a year. The preventive measure was issued by the police headquarters after his statements on October 18, in which he spoke of the cold-blooded executions seen in Gaza: “Those who kill must be killed. Why cry for these criminals?” The phrase is also reported on the expulsion order. And the ink from that preventive measure—served at Linate along with a complaint for “incitement to violence”—is still fresh, and he shows up a few meters from the “border” with the capital, in Sesto Rondò, and launches an attack on the measure: “It’s a warning from the Meloni government,” says the person concerned on the sidelines of the event, “not to Hannoun personally, but to the constant march that has never stopped in the city of Milan for two years , so as to put pressure on us, who have defeated both the Zionist lobby and the narrative of the Italian Nazi-Fascist government.” He then announces an appeal: “My lawyers are already at work.” The obsession with “Zionism” and the Jewish state remains the underlying theme of his invective. He dismisses Thursday’s demonstration in Rome (promoted by SetteOttobre with friends from Israel and Jewish communities). He calls the politicians who joined “Zionist parliamentarians,” and brands the executive branch a “servant of the Zionist lobby .” He paints Israel as a “racist” and ” Zionist” state.“forever.” And, in an attempt to demonize the Jewish state, he even ventures into a historical examination, all the way back to the “Balofour Declaration,” the historic letter with which the British government, after the end of the First World War, promised to look favorably upon the creation of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. “A damned declaration,” he calls it, and adds that it was “updated by Trump.” “They will be defeated,” he proclaims. And he smooths over the “woke” narrative, assuring that the movement is against “colonialism,” “imperialism,” and nationalism,” and is “on the right side,” that of the Palestinian people, the “side of humanity.” “Let’s stay human,” is his motto, he assures. He then returns to the vendettas on the streets of Gaza. “We are for the respect of all human life,” he begins, “even those of collaborators, even Israelis,” but then explains that similar things have happened “in all revolutions.” Even with “our partisans”—he calls them like this. “How many revolutionary executions? How many revolutionary trials? Tens of thousands. Tried in the streets.” He calls the militiamen “partisans” and suggests – like himself – that there is a connection between the resistance to fascism and the Intifada. “Does the Meloni government have the courage to say that the partisans are criminals? – he provokes – perhaps because they are fascists.” Meanwhile, “Potere al Popolo Milano ,” which in recent days defended Hannoun, calling it a “ Zionist fascist ” measure, is today protesting an event scheduled for November 4th dedicated to Yitzhak Rabin – the man of peace par excellence and Nobel Prize winner for the Oslo Accords. “An unacceptable initiative,” say the communists at the event organized by “Sinistra per Israele” with the expected conclusions of President Emanuele Fiano, already protested by the collectives at the University of Venice.
