JEWS PROTEST FOR RIGHT TO SELL CRUCIFIXES AND ROSARIES AT VATICAN

Rome's Jewish vendors of souvenirs protest against their expulsion from Vatican (European Jewish Press)
ROME (EJP)---Eleven Jewish souvenir sellers staged a small demonstration on the border between Rome and the Vatican State last Saturday in protest against their expulsion from St Peter’s Square after many centuries.

Waving an Israeli flag and some small banners, the street vendors asked to be again allowed to sell their momentos within the territory of the Holy See.

After negotiations with the Italian and the Vatican police, three of the vendors decided to picket the entrance to St Peter’s Square for a few hours.

The Vatican prefect pledged to meet with his Rome colleague in order to tackle the vendors’ requests.

Of the existing 113 licenses that allow souvenir selling in Rome, 112 belong to Jewish vendors.

The profession dates back dates to the pontificate of Paul IV (1555-1559).

While confining the Jews to the Rome ghetto, the pontiff allowed them to exercise minor street trades.

When Italy unified in 1870 at the expenses of the Pope’s temporal power on Rome, Jews turned into souvenir sellers after obtaining ad hoc licenses from the Italian civil authorities, while some were granted such right directly from the Vatican authorities.

The "urtisti" – literally those who bump into the tourists -, deal in small plaster statues, crucifixes, rosaries and pictures of saints and Popes still nowadays.

Until December 2007, the Jewish sellers were allowed to work on the entire territory of Rome, and part of them directly on St Peter’s Square.

A week ago however, the Vatican City governor, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, banned all traders from the Baroque Bernini columnade, upsetting the Jewish sellers who claim to have been licensed by a Pope many hundreds of years before.

Lello Zarfatti, chairman of the ‘urtisti’ association told the the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera: "I have been selling my souvenirs in St. Peter’s Square in the last 50 years thanks to an oral permission then granted by a Vatican prefect. On December 8, 2007, they told us we can no longer sell within the square, but we are only asking to keep working honestly."

Riccardo Pacifici, Rome’s Jewish community spokesperson, took a public stand in favour of the souvenir sellers explaining that "of the 9,000 Jewish families living in Rome, at least 400 hundred engage in street selling activities.”

He added: “Therefore, any restrictive measure taken against this kind of trade may become a great tragedy for our community.” T

The city’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, is reportedly also backing the "urtisti".

Around 15,000 Jews live in Rome.

ITALIAN SOCCER TEAM ADOPTS HEZBOLLAH'S LOGO

VIDEO: Italian Soccer Team Adopts Hizbullah's Logo to "Boost Fighting Spirit" (MEMRI)

ISRAEL REJECTS EURO CALLS TO END ISOLATION OF HAMAS

Israel Rejects Calls to End Isolation of Hamas - Donald Macintyre and Anne Penketh
Tzipi Livni, Israel's Foreign Minister, denounced calls for talks with Hamas by warning that "any compromise with terror, any compromise with these extremists" could undermine the new government set up in the West Bank by Mahmoud Abbas. Livni said: "I know that it looks tempting and I know that the international community is eager to see a kind of understanding between Hamas and Fatah." But she warned at a news conference with her visiting Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso: "This is wrong. This is a mistake. Big mistake. Huge." (Independent-UK)

See also Italy Stresses Quartet Conditions for Hamas Dialogue
Italian Premier Romano Prodi telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday after his comments about having a dialogue with Hamas drew sharp criticism from Israel and praise from Hamas. In the phone call, Prodi stressed that Hamas must fulfill conditions set out by the Quartet of Mideast peace negotiators before negotiations can resume: recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and accept existing agreements. (AP/International Herald Tribune)

CANADA TO EXTRADITE NAZI TO ITALY

Canada to extradite Nazi (JTA)
A Canadian court upheld a request from the Italian government to extradite a former Nazi prison guard.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the request to extradite Michael Seifert, who was convicted in absentia of nine counts of murder committed when he was a guard at the Bolzano transit camp in northern Italy.

“We are heartened by Canada's role in bringing this man, known as the 'Beast of Bolzano,' to justice for the atrocities he was convicted of committing,” said Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress. “Holocaust survivors will sleep better knowing this murderous man will face appropriate justice for his crimes.”

SEE: NAZI WAR CRIMINAL HELD IN CANADIAN JAIL

NAZI WAR CRIMINAL HELD IN CANADIAN JAIL

Nazi war criminal held in Canadian jail (JPost)
A convicted Nazi war criminal living in Canada was in jail this weekend after an appeals court upheld an extradition order from Italy, where he was convicted in absentia. Michael Seifert, the so-called "Beast of Balzano," was sentenced to life after being found guilty in 2000 of nine counts of murder, committed during his term as an SS guard at the Bolzano prison transit camp in northern Italy.

The Italian government alleged the 83-year-old Seifert beat, tortured, starved and murdered inmates. People testified that Seifert starved a 15-year-old prisoner to death, gouged out a person's eyes, beat prisoners before shooting them and tortured a woman before killing her and her daughter. While admitting he was a guard at the camp, Seifert has denied being involved in atrocities.

The Canadian court said the crimes were of the worst order, but Seifert's lawyer, Doug Christie said he was appalled by the decision. Christie said he would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. "The government of Canada has promised in the past to try any war crimes in Canada," Christie said. The Candian court ordered that Seifert be surrendered to Italian officials on seven of the nine counts.

EGYPTIAN ITALIAN JOURNO IN TROUBLE OVER NEW BOOK PRAISING ISRAEL

New "Salman Rushdie" in Italy? (Al-Bawaba-Jordan)
Magdi Allam, 55, an Egyptian-born Italian writer and journalist and deputy chief editor of Italy's most influential newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, is again at the center of the storm following his seventh book, Viva Israele (Long Live Israel). The book is the tale of his life under the regime of Egyptian President Nasser. According to Allam, Nasser is responsible for having turned Egypt - and the rest of the Arab world - into the cradle of the "ideology of death." Allam claims Nasser brought about an aggressive pan-Arabic dream based on the denial of Israel's right to exist. The need for the destruction of Israel is the dominant theme that made death and destruction the core values of a once liberal Islamic culture.

The new book defends the existence of Israel and terms armed Palestinian groups as "dangerous terrorist threats." Allam added that the main cause for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute stems from Palestinian terror. His interest in the history of Zionism and a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat brought him to realize that "Arafat was responsible for Palestinian terrorism" and that "the predication of the ideology of death eventually hit and harmed the Palestinians themselves." Many Muslims in Italy denounce Allam as a new "Salman Rushdie," the British writer who was forced into hiding in the 1990s after Iran's religious leaders issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for his death.

LIFE SENTENCE FOR PALI WHO MURDERED ITALIAN PEACE ACTIVIST

Life Sentence for Palestinian Who Murdered Italian Peace Activist - Efrat Weiss (Ynet News)
The Judea Military Court on Thursday sentenced Ashraf Hanaisha of Islamic Jihad to life in prison after convicting him of the murder of Italian peace activist Angelo Frammartino, 24, in Jerusalem in August 2006. Frammartino, a law student, was working to establish a summer camp for Palestinian children.

See also Palestinian Who Murdered Italian Tourist: "I Intended to Kill a Jew" (AP/International Herald Tribune)
At the time of his arrest, Hanaisha told interrogators he had intended to kill a Jew, and the murder of the Italian tourist was a mistake.

"KILL A JEW." NOT AN "ISRAELI," NOT A "ZIONIST." AT LEAST GIVE THIS MAN CREDIT FOR BEING HONEST.

ITALY CALLS FOR DIALOGUE WITH HAMAS

D’Alema, Double-Tongued by Emanuele Ottolenghi (Contentions)
The day after President Bush delivered a speech on the Middle East calling for the total isolation of Hamas, Italy’s Foreign Minister, Massimo D’Alema, delivered a scathing reproach to this strategy. D’Alema called instead for dialogue with Hamas, “a real force,” in his words, “representing a large section of the Palestinian people.” D’Alema, a true democrat, is concerned that the West is shunning a legitimately elected organization.

This is the same D’Alema who, in 1999, while Prime Minister of Italy, ordered his country’s military to join the air campaign against the democratically elected leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic. Had Milosevic been Palestinian and a Hamas leader, would D’Alema have advocated dialogue instead?

NAZI MASS MURDERER WORKING FOR ITALIAN LAWYER

Italians picket ex-Nazi's office (BBC)

Priebke was given a life sentence in 1998

Members of Italy's Jewish community have been protesting outside a lawyer's office in Rome where a former Nazi officer has begun work.

Shouts of "Murderer!" greeted Erich Priebke, 93, as he arrived for his first day on the back of a scooter.

A court ruled last week that Priebke, who is serving a sentence for multiple murders, could work on day release.

Priebke was jailed for life in 1998 for his role in the massacre of 335 Italians in 1944.

He had been discovered working as a schoolteacher in Argentina, and was extradited to stand trial.

In 1999, he was given leave to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest in his lawyer's home, on the grounds of his ill health.

But a military court ruled last week that he could go to work at his lawyer's office "every day, freely" and also to "go out to satisfy, at nearby places and for the time strictly necessary, the indispensable necessities of life" - interpreted as going out for lunch.

ITALIAN UNIVERSITY STOPS LECTURE BY HOLOCAUST DENIER

Italian campus denies denier (JTA)
An Italian university shut down to prevent a lecture by a Holocaust denier. The head of the University of Teramo, in central Italy, ordered the shutdown Friday after it failed to dissuade Robert Faurisson from appearing. Faurisson, who has been prosecuted in his native France for arguing that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth, had been invited by a history professor at the university. Jewish groups said the invitation was unbecoming of a serious academic institution.

POLL: EUROPEAN ANTI-SEMITISM ALIVE AND WELL

'Jews have too much sway in US policy' (JPost)
Many Europeans believe the Jews dictate US policy in the Mideast, wield disproportionate global economic influence and talk too much about the Holocaust, according to a report released Monday by the Anti-Defamation League.
The report's findings found that significant numbers of people in five European countries continue to hold anti-Jewish stereotypes, said Abraham Foxman, national director of the US group. "A large number of Europeans continue to be infected with anti-Jewish attitudes, holding on to classical anti-Jewish canards and conspiracy theories," Foxman said at a news conference where he presented the report.

The survey of 2,714 people in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland found that 51 percent of respondents believed that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the countries in which they live. In the Spanish sample, the figure was 60%. In France, only 39% agreed.

Foxman said the widely-held belief in dual allegiances was particularly troubling. "Disloyalty is a classical canard of anti-Semitism," Foxman said. "Hitler did not begin with Aryan supremacy. Hitler began with charging the Jews of not being good Germans, of selling out Germany for their own interest."

The statement that "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust" was seen as "probably true" by 58% of poll respondents in Poland, where many of the World War II Nazi death camps were located. The average for the five countries polled was 47% in agreement.

Poles were also most likely to subscribe to another long-standing belief, with 39% of respondents there saying they somewhat agree or strongly agree that the Jews "are responsible for the death of Christ." Overall agreement with that statement was 20%.

An average of 44% across the countries surveyed said Jews "probably" have too much influence on international financial markets, while close to half believe that "American Jews control US policy in the Middle East," the report said.

Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed said they believed that Jews had too much power in the business world.

In each country surveyed, anti-Jewish stereotypes were more widely believed by those over 65 and those without a college education, the report said, adding that negative attitudes toward Jews had worsened in some areas and remained unchanged in others, compared to a similar survey in 2005.

Foxman said the results showed a "significant relationship" exists between attitudes to Jews and events in the Middle East.

On the Israeli-Arab conflict, a majority of respondents believed Israel had no right to use military force against Lebanon last summer after Hizbullah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, the report said.

Overall, a majority of respondents considered the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas a terrorist organization and supported withholding foreign aid to the coalition Palestinian government in which Hamas is a partner, until its leaders renounce violence against Israel and recognize its right to exist.

The survey was conducted by London-based Taylor Nelson Sofres from March 21 through April 16. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.