SETTEOTTOBRE
L’ESPRIT DU TEMPS
Soon it will be one year since the pogrom with which Hamas declared war on Israel and the West. The Setteottobre Association, which was founded in Italy to combat resurgent anti-Semitism in our societies, has decided to initiate a reflection on what has changed after October 7, 2023, in our individual lives and collective lives.
Gabriella Pinnaro
Even though I am not Jewish. Although I am a feminist, or rather sympathetic, almost always, with women’s approach to interpreting the world. Although my first option would be the pacifist option (let’s face it, much less demanding). Although as a youth I was no stranger to the “Yankee go home” banner, or “out of NATO out of Italy, out of Italy out of NATO”… not only do I stand with Israel without ifs and buts (an expression I don’t love anyway), but I am mortified by the selectivity of memory.
I thought the horror of the October 7 massacre would no longer leave our consciences and our gaze on the Middle East drama. I was almost afraid that thousands of young people would be scarred forever, indelibly, by the dramatic images of their torn apart peers.
Instead-what lies behind the apparent banality of removal? What, behind the de-listing of October 7 from the famous media agenda? Controversial interpretations, militant partisanship that returns to the fore only on the heels of a new attack or a predictable incursion.
L’Esprit du temps: I hoped that the expression chosen for this collection of testimonies, was, in its semantic levity, at least auspicious.
This was not the case. The personal experiences are melancholically and dramatically very similar to each other. Memory, like nature, cannot make interpretive leaps; it can only crumble into the narrative of itself, as among the rubble.
Israel and Jews are, at most, annoying thorns in our side. We do not free ourselves, even very close to us, from a suspicious afterthought, the one that marked even 9/11, even the Shoah. There is no forgiveness or benevolence, pietas is obnubilated. A people too proud, too strong to break, sore but not bent, questioning beautiful souls too much.
I remember the critical amazement with which I watched and censured the brisk speed with which all signs of recent bombings were being erased, whether in front of the pub or on a sidewalk in Tel Aviv: our “Rendezvous in Jerusalem” bus passed by without delay, while Angela Polacco’s grave but unflappable voice explained that the slowdown was due to road works to erase blood or body flaps. Witness what had happened only two hours earlier. No pietism, no captatio benevolentiae…. And then Angela would drop by to point out the magnificent bridge or, even more, the miracle of hydraulic and botanical engineering that had made the desert just outside the city fertile, watered, drained, productive. All signs, “unbearable,” of almost shameless survival skills, indefatigable professionalism, and genealogical pride.
Here, perhaps all this is not forgiven in Israel and makes the memory full of anger.
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