Do these Italians ever change?
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Mussolini: World should 'beg forgiveness of Israel'
"Not only Gianfranco Fini, but the entire world, including the Vatican and the pope, should beg forgiveness of Israel," Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy's World War II dictator and a member of parliament for the National Alliance party, declared in an interview with Haaretz on Sunday.
The interview coincided with the arrival of Fini, her party's leader and Italy's deputy prime minister, for his first official visit to Israel, during which he has said
he intends to apologize to the Jewish people for Italy's Holocaust-era crimes.
Mussolini's statement is no small matter from someone who once declared: "My grandfather is the greatest of them all; I will continue to believe this all my life." Her father, Romano Mussolini, once said that Alessandra is "more of a Mussolini than me or the whole family put together." In January 2002, when Fini retracted his famous statement that Mussolini was the greatest man of the 20th century, Alessandra was so angry that she demonstratively crossed parliamentary lines to sit with members of the Forza Italia party instead of her own. "In the end, he will circumcise you all," she taunted other members of her party, "so that Fini will finally be able to make his pilgrimage to Israel." Of Fini himself, she declared: "I don't like politicians who try to distort history for their own purposes."
Sunday, when asked what she thought of Fini's plan to apologize to the Jewish people, she said that, in her mind, he had already done so, at the 1995 party conference in which Fini denounced anti-Semitism.
"What is important to me is that Fini listen to the people, as I did during my visits to Israel," she said.
Mussolini, then a movie actress, visited Israel 11 years ago, at which time she also visited Yad Vashem.
"I saw the piles of shoes, and I was shocked. [I wonder how she reacts if she goes into shoe-market? ] When I went outside, I saw soldiers walking around with guns, and I thought how sad it was that you are still not assured even of life itself," she recalled.
As for today, "we need to develop mutual understanding, not disputes, since we are on the same side," she said.
Most analysts view Fini's visit to Israel as an attempt to obtain a stamp of approval for the party's claim that it has abandoned its fascist roots. But Mussolini said the visit is important mainly because of "the [terrorist]
assault on Italy and Europe."
The deaths of 19 Italian soldiers in a suicide bombing in Iraq and the recent terror attacks in Istanbul "make Italy Israel's ally," she explained.[Question: What are Italians doing in Iraq? What's their buisness there? they are indeed Allies of the Jews - allies in surpressing the arab people and spreading the "NWO"]
Referring to a recent survey that found Europeans view Israel as the No. 1 threat to world peace, Mussolini declared that Europe is not afraid of Israel, but of terrorism.
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