Italian Jewish actor, musician and
playwright Moni Ovadia sparked a row Tuesday night by saying at
a Holocaust Remembrance Day at Massa Carrara that the Hamas
attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 were "fully legitimate".
"The crimes, if there were any, will be judged, the truth about
October 7 will come out but already today we know that 400
civilians were victims of friendly fire, Israeli, because the
military had orders to shoot at anything that moved", said the
78-year-old Bulgarian born poetic cantor of Eastern European
Jewish culture, and especially its Yiddishkeit core.
Ovadia's comments provoked immediate dismay and outrage and the
mayor of nearby Pontremoli, Jacopo Maria Ferri of the
centre-right post Berlusconi Forza Italia party removed his
tricolour mayoral sash and stalked out of the ceremony before it
ended, later denouncing "an obsessive, delirious and even
foul-mouthed speech in front of schoolchildren, a violent
speech, both in terms and in the construction of the reasoning".
The President of the Massa Carrara Province Gianni Lorenzetti
declared that "Ovadia will take responsibility for what he
said".
Ovadia, who spoke last after the institutional representatives,
also said about Palestine and Israel that "it is the right and
duty of an occupied people to rebel against the occupiers.
"If crimes against humanity were perpetrated within that
legitimate action, they will be judged, "but the action as such
was perfectly legitimate. "The taking of hostages is considered
a crime against humanity and will be judged, there was the
killing of civilians but we have not had any independent
investigation".
Furthermore, "there was talk of rapes, there is not a single
proof!", he said raising his voice.
"As a Jew I say that the extermination of my people cannot be
used to justify the extermination of the Palestinian people. It
will be a catastrophe for Israel", while it is "our duty today
to bow before the great majesty of the Palestinian people".
Ovadia praised "the great capacity for resistance of the
Palestinian people, who have suffered every form of violence".
Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in their
attacks, widely condemned as horrific.
Israel has killed, according to Hamas, over 47,000 in Gaza in a
retaliation that has been widely condemned as being
disproportionate and indiscriminate.
Tel Aviv says it takes all care to avert collateral damage but
stresses it is very hard to do that given how strongly the
Islamist militants are bedded down into the civilian fabric of
Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the
International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
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