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Angelo Baracca Committee in International Bulletin November 2023
10,000 people demonstrated in Rome on Nov. 4 with clear watchwords for stopping the sending of arms for the war in Ukraine, our country’s exit from NATO and cutting military spending to finance social spending.
Italy’s disengagement from the war that the Atlantic Alliance is waging against Russia in Ukraine was one of the main nodes of the platform before the ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on Oct. 7 and the Zionist escalation in Gaza and the West Bank put solidarity with the Arab-Palestinian Resistance and an opposition to the ongoing massacre back at the center of the political agenda.
Recognition of the Palestinian state, the revocation of the military cooperation agreement between Italy and Israel, and the need for an immediate cease-fire enriched the initial platform as early as the assembly launching the Nov. 4 national mobilization – held at the Aquila Cinema on Oct. 8 – and gave its watchwords a more pronounced anti-imperialist and internationalist character.
The large Palestinian-Arab presence that opened the procession, the slogans, the speeches from the truck at the head of the procession and the final speeches at St. John’s Square by the mobilization’s promoters, who called for support for Palestine characterized the mobilization, alongside the many stances of sharp criticism of the Atlantic Alliance and the bellicose policy of the current executive to the detriment of the working classes.
An apt political gamble, born out of a mobilization hypothesis launched in the second half of July when the Senate – on July 12 – at the suggestion of former Missino Gasparri had proposed restoring November 4 as a national holiday on which to celebrate the Day of the Unity of the Nation and the Armed Forces.
It was a coup that had found the hypothetical opposition silent, considering that this proposal had been voted for by 102 senators and abstained by 28 deputies, with no one voting against it.
It was an ideological operation with a variety of objectives: to restore an old contraption of the patriot right wing by celebrating Italy’s participation in the First World War, to prepare the ground for the continuation of the financing of the sending of arms to Ukraine, to replace April 25 as the constituent date for our country (on which the liberation from Nazi-fascism is celebrated) with that of a carnage, passed off as the fulfillment of the Risorgimento and the realization of the irredentist dream of reactionary circles.
A project that, if not opposed by the so-called parliamentary opposition, was rejected by a popular mobilization in Rome on a day when the whole world took to the streets for Palestine.
The signal that came to us from Rome as well as that of all the squares that in recent weeks have seen hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in our country in support of the Palestinian Resistance, and the dramatic situation in Gaza and the West Bank call us to play a more incisive role, and to pose the urgency of a National Assembly to begin a campaign of active boycott against Israel and an initiative of mass opposition and civil disobedience against the complicity of our government in the war of extermination against the Palestinians.
This is an unavoidable and imperative necessity of which as the Angelo Baracca Committee we advocate.
Angelo Baracca Committee, 4/11/2023
