Would Italy approve of a park in Jerusalem named for a mafia boss?
Would Italy approve of a park in Jerusalem named for a mafia boss?

A park named after Yasser Arafat and a square named for Elio Toaff. It was decided by the Virginia Raggi administration of Rome. The mayor wants to celebrate the Palestinian leader and the late chief rabbi, with a park at Centocelle for the first and a slider at Colle Oppio for the second.

The decision to venerate the former spiritual leader of Italian Judaism is a blessing.  But it is a pity to name a park in Rome after the Fatah's leader, the head of the Palestinian Autonomy, the man who wished “one million shahid”  would conquer Jerusalem and then sat at the UN to deal with all world leaders.

In the early '80s, Rabbi Toaff attacked then President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini, for having received Arafat on his first visit to Italy, while the Senate's President Giovanni Spadolini refused to meet with the PLO leader. The secretaries of the three main political parties welcomed the Palestinian leader with the honors of a head of government. At the time, the Palestinian leader and his followers had shed the blood of many Jews in Europe as in the Middle East. His actions had horrified the world and Arafat came to Italy in search of advertising at a time when the PLO was openly pursuing the destruction of all Israel (now they do it a bit more covertly).

In 1982 Arafat was neither a Nobel Peace Prize nor a “president”. He was just a terrorist and Toaff knew it. Those who govern Rome must remind themselves of that before naming a park after a murderous, violent, corrupt, destructive Palestinian leader who created the political chaos in which Palestinian Arabs still live today and who caused so many deaths to Israel. The Palestinian anti-Semitic autocrat, responsible for two murderous Intifadas, does not deserve to see his name in an Italian park.

How would the Italians react if Israel would name a park in Jerusalem after some mafia killer? Shame.