PALESTINIANS MUST RECOGNIZE ISRAEL, ITALIAN PRESIDENT SAYS

(ANSAmed Italian Press Agency) - JERUSALEM, NOVEMBER 27 -

"We must never let matters slide as considers the delegitimization of Israel," said Giorgio Napolitano [President of Italy] at the [Hebrew] University in Jerusalem, expressing his "concern" over the "harsh conditions in which people live in Gaza", but adding that this "can never obscure," for any Palestinian or Arab, "the issue of the full and unequivocal, consistent recognition of the state of Israel, its legitimacy, its right to exist and its security."

This part of his speech met with thundering applause in the auditorium. Immediately afterwards Napolitano left for Bethlehem where, this morning, he will be meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). On the subject of the delegitimization of Israel, Napolitano spoke once again of the condemnation of the negationist and threatening statements made by Iranian president Ahmadinejad (whose name he did not mention, but only referred to him as 'a head of state or government'). To these threats, said the Italian president, "we oppose the tormented history to which we have borne witness or have been active participants in, the ever-present duty of memory especially as concerns the tragedy of the Holocaust."

The duty of memory, said Napolitano, compels Italians to also remember the Italian Jews who are part of Italian history, since they were "among the leaders of the Risorgimento" and "suffered the vile persecutions in our country of the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation," as also Antonio Gramsci and Enzo Sereni and many other Italians who to the Jews "chose to give solidarity and assistance in the most dangerous moment."