Storm in Italy after trade union urged boycott of Jewish businesses

ROME (EJP)---The Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, said he would go on shopping at Jewish-owned stores in the city’s centre with leaders of the Italian Jewish community to denounce a proposed boycott of these stores by a small left wing trade union toprotest against Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

Rome’s Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, said he would go on shopping at Jewish-owned stores in the city’s centre with leaders of the Italian Jewish community to denounce the boycott proposal of these stores by a trade union as a protest against Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

The appeal to boycott Jewish-run shops created a storm in the country and was condemned by politicians from both the left and the right.

The small and autonomous Flaica-Uniti-Cub union linked to the retail and food sectors issued the boycott call on its website, saying: "Do not buy anything from businesses run by the Jewish community as a sign of protest.”

"We cannot remain silent about what is happening in Gaza. We had thought of drawing up a list of businessmen who have links with Tel Aviv because people do not know who they are," said Giancarlo Desiderati, the union's secretary who was behind the initiative.

Rome's right-wing Mayor visited Friday the city's ancient Jewish quarter known as the Ghetto and firmly condemned the "mad and criminal” proposal which he said echoed the race laws under fascism in the 1930s.

“The people who came up with this horrible idea are not new to such initiatives, which are a throwback to similar ones in the mid-1930s which set the stage for Italy's anti-Jewish racial laws," Alemanno, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative coalition, said.



Riccardo Pacifici, head of Rome's Jewish community, said he would sue the union under Italian anti-racism laws.

Piero Marrazzo, governor of the region of Lazio of which Rome is the capital, said that ''the idea of boycotting shops because they were run by Roman Jews is blood-curdling''.

''This is certainly no way to support the Palestinian cause nor help the residents of Gaza,'' the center-left politician said.

Italy's three main trade unions denounced the boycott proposal as "shameful" and suggested that Rome shopkeepers throw the Flaica handbills -- which they said listed streets dominated by Jewish shops under the slogan "sales dirtied by blood" -- in the trash.

Riccardo Pacifici, the head of Rome's Jewish community, said he would be suing the union under Italian anti-racism laws.

"I am an Italian citizen and it infuriates me that people don't differentiate between the mentality and opinions of an Italian from what is happening in Israel," Giuseppe Livoli, a Jewish Italian shopkeeper, told La Repubblica newspaper.

Claudia De Benedetti, vice-president of the umbrella group “Union of Italian Jewish communities” (UCEI) told EJP that such thing “never happened in the past.” She welcomed the fact that all political parties “had good reactions.”

Desiderati later said his proposal had been misinterpreted and that he was only referring to a boycott of products imported from Israel. "We never singled out Rome's Jewish community. We condemn any form of anti-Semitism,” he added.

Rome's Ghetto is home to what may be the oldest surviving Jewish diaspora in the world, dating from the 2nd century BC. Singled out by race laws under dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1930s and '40s, thousands died in Nazi concentration camps.

Around 30,000 Jews live in Italy.

The Jewish community will organize Saturday night support rallies for Israel and for peace in the Middle East in Rome and Milan.