Photograph by Michael Leonardi
This autumn the ominous winds swirling from the ever-intensifying, change of season weather carry with them an even more ominous threat of repression, state sponsored police violence and dictatorial fascist that now seems merged with a zionist crackdown on dissent. This is happening across the western world under the hegemonic control of the US and Israel’s zionist campaign of genocide, expanding empire and an unrelenting war machine. In Italy this came to a flashpoint on October 5th. In an unprecedented move the neofascist Meloni led government outlawed national Palestinian led solidarity rallies and marches to be held in Rome to commemorate a year of the genocide being unleashed by the United States and Israel on the Palestinian people in Gaza. And to denounce the now expanding broader regional war targeting the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
Italy was the only Western European country to officially ban protests on October 5th, while hundreds of demonstrations took place across Europe and the world. These rallies and marches were meant to take a stand for Palestinian liberation and against the terroristic violence of zionism. The Police presence in Rome was palpable. People coming from out of town in cars and on buses were stopped by police before reaching the city limits, in a show of police intimidation not witnessed on this level since the protests that took place at the G8 meeting in Genova in 2001. People coming in by train were corralled at the stations and ids were checked and documented before they were able to make their way to the Piramide monument and the Ostiense Plaza.
Despite over a week long campaign of psychological warfare by the Internal ministry of Italy and the local Police department of Rome, who insisted that this demonstration would not be allowed to happen, over 15,000 people converged on the Ancient Capital and this historic starting point for national marches to denounce 365 days and 76 years of the genocidal, settler colonial project.
The atmosphere was charged and tense, yet somehow almost jubilant, as the state and local authorities, despite their draconian presence, decided in the last hours to allow the people defying the ban to gather in the plaza, but wouldn’t let the demonstrators march and move throughout the city. Many people were coerced by the police to show some form of legal identification to pass the police lines, and these ids were often photographed by the various police units. Speaker after speaker representing the Young Palestinians of Italy and some of the over 100 sponsoring organizations and committees from across the country denounced the crimes against humanity happening constantly and before our eyes over the last year.
The complicity of the Italian media and government in seeking to legitimize this state sponsored terrorism was highlighted. The media in Italy has become a progressively more blatant tool of propaganda for the US State Department and the Netanyahu war cabinet over the last year. In the week leading up to the demonstration the national newspaper La Repubblica called those planning to participate in this mobilization, “the pro Hamas galaxy”. In the same week that saw their blatantly zionist director, Maurizio Molinari, removed for his position, possibly for exhibiting such exaggerated bias. The speakers railed against the nonstop crimes being committed by the United States and Israel in blatant defiance of international law, The International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.
In Italy as in other western European countries there has been growing repression against the mass movement standing up against this genocide. The west is attempting to criminalize people for standing for human rights and justice and painting anyone standing against the racist and ethnonationalist ideology of Zionism as antisemitic. This is despite the fact that the United Nations and International legal bodies have repeatedly condemned the genocide being inflicted on the people of Gaza, including through the historic case brought by the country of South Africa before the International Court of Justice in December of 2023.
For several hours the demonstration in Rome was peaceful, albeit tense and contained, as if we were caged in the Ostiense plaza. There were helicopters hovering overhead and police barricades at every entrance and exit of this major Roman intersection where there is also a train and metro station. There were thousands of youths at this demonstration and their enthusiasm was promising, also in its confrontational fervor. Chants of “corteo, corteo” which means “march, march” started to reverberate through the crowd as the time passed. After about 3 hours the police agreed to let the demonstrators march around the large plaza in a circle and this is when the tensions boiled over and a surge of young people refused to allow their freedoms to be constrained any longer. There was a rushed charge on one of the police blockades, paper bombs and smoke bombs began to fly, along with rocks and bottles, and the police fought back with batons, water cannons and teargas. The battles ensued for about 45 minutes to an hour and there were several demonstrators injured along with several arrests. After about an hour the police backed off and the crowds dispersed.
The violence of the state in its attempt to contain this demo was not without precedent over this past year. A forthcoming article will look back at the year from October 7th of 2023, as the climate of censorship, repression and state police violence grew and culminated with this unprecedented banning of a protest by the state. This ban comes as the neofascist Meloni government, a favorite ally of the Biden/Harris/Blinken administration, is working to implement a new security law that, among other things, makes peaceful protests like blocking roads and blocking public works projects a criminal offense punishable with harsh prison sentences. This law also threatens to revoke citizenship of people supporting what the state deems as terrorist organizations even with online posts.
Italy was not the only country in Europe that witnessed street skirmishes this past weekend. In Berlin, where the police have been reverting to their gestapo past in response to Palestinian solidarity activists since October 7th of 2023, demonstrators clashed with police as their frustrations with being brutalized and repressed over the last year boiled over. Street battles in the Berlin ensued for several hours in the streets as demonstrators launched fireworks and Molotov’s at the police with burning barricades across swaths of the city.
We have reached a very critical moment in what many have called a global or international Intifada. The zionist entity of Israel through its partnership with the United States seems to have most of NATO in its grip. And Palestinians know what it means to be in an uprising against the zionist state. Is this Intifada coming to the streets of Europe, now? There seem to be fissures growing in the western alliance, with Spain, Turkey, Ireland, Norway and even France recognizing Palestinian sovereignty and even Macron meekly calling for an arms embargo to be enforced on Israel. Will this be too little too late? Can Europe step back from the abyss of this zionist and US imperialist death cult, or are we already off the cliff?
The post Banned Protests, State Repression and Battles in the streets, is this what International Intifada is going to look like? From The River to the Sea in Rome, Italy… appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
