Same War Everywhere
Aperture Priorities Contact Sheet #25
By Joel Schalit
Standing in Piazza Statuto, photographing women position Palestinian flags on the pavement, I realised it had been a year I'd spent documenting such scenes in Torino.
I never imagined the Gaza war would last this long.
Even more surprising has been the persistence of the protests against it. They've not only continued but have grown bigger and more intense, taking place once, if not twice a week.
The photos in this edition of Aperture Priorities are a good example.
Shot on a Thursday and a Saturday, at two different demonstrations - No Meloni Day and Basta armi a Israele - they might as well have been taken on the same day.
Both were focused on Israel and Italy's role in the Gaza war to varying degrees. Many of the banners were the same. Some even date back to protests I'd covered a year ago.
I'm probably the only person who noticed or, at least, found it significant. If only because everyone's spirits were so high. No fatigue was evident. The war could have started yesterday.
To many Italians, Gaza and Giorgia Meloni are increasingly indistinguishable. Even if Italy isn't involved in the war in the same ways as the United States, it doesn't have to be.
The Netanyahu government's disregard for Palestinian life and shameless, genocidal conduct embodies for many leftists the spirit of Meloni’s postfascist government.
Italy’s premier doesn't have to conduct herself the same way. She just has to parallel Israel's behaviour ideologically through her legislative reforms and austerity-driven economic policies.
The effect, mainly as young Italians receive them, is perceived as more or less the same in spirit.
The fact Meloni's government continues to provide military aid to Israel, delivering new Augusta Ofer helicopters in November yet insisting it stopped a year ago, underlies the distrust.
As an Israeli journalist, used to hearing family and friends complain about the Antisemitism driving European protests like in Italy, it has been hard to convey this complexity.
Covering a Kurdish solidarity protest last night helped frame this conundrum in a new light. There was nothing about Israel at the event and no references to Giorgia Meloni.
The demonstrators certainly could have targeted the premier. In July, Meloni appointed Italy's first ambassador to Syria since 2012, intending to repatriate refugees to the country.
But the protestors didn't go there. Instead, the only leader mentioned was Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, and an expected Turkish invasion of Rojava to cleanse the region of Kurdish forces.
I enjoyed the break from Israeli topics for obvious reasons and because Turkey is, in many ways, as big a regional issue as Israel, with similar nationalism problems.
Recording the protestors marching into the city centre, I couldn't help but think of my late father and what he would have said about all of this.
A longtime security official, he once told me about Israel supplying Kurdish rebels in Iraq and Syria with arms via Iran in the 1960s. I never asked him for the details. It wasn't surprising.
Please support The Battleground. Subscribe to our free newsletter and make a donation to ensure our continued growth and independence.
Photographs courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.