It is a quiet force, mostly composed and peaceful, moved and participated, that of the Italian events of these weeks, which have filled the roads to ask for the end of the Gaza massacre. For pure coincidence, for undeniable assonance, the masses of Rome, Milan, Naples, Bologna, and also gods minor centers Italians, have striked and expressed a few hours before Hamas gave one partial but symbolically fundamental Opening on the Trump plan, designed as a surrender without a condition for those who have definitively lost its impossible and metaphysical war against an infinitely stronger, and no less ruthless enemy, albeit protected by what remains – in Israel above all, but perhaps not only – of the definition of “democracy”. We will return, because the story, in the form of the tragedy, which redesigns the boundaries of what we can call peace, is obviously done over there: between the bloody beaches of Gaza and a national narration of Israel still founded from 7 October two years ago.

Indignation and protest

Meanwhile, a country that seems indifferent to everything, which does not mobilize for his eroded rights, which does not mobilize when in the name of his own security, he himself killed women and children transported by the “death traffickers”, who does not mobilize for the erosion of wages, rights to a health and a dignified public school, the massacre of Gaza was a huge catalyst for indignation and protest. It was before and more than from us, in American colleges and on the streets of European capitals, following a trajectory not new to the protest movements. The Italian fire of protests for Gaza has perhaps broken down later, but it seems to arrive deeper: or perhaps it is only more lasting. The horror for what was done in Gaza by Israel, in fact, also penetrated the electorate who allowed Giorgia Meloni to arrive at Palazzo Chigi. It is perceived in the voices of the suburban bars, the polls confirm it, and the two things together also explain why the premier said, a few days ago, that Israel “passed the mark”. If they seem logical from the asphyxiated step, which bring the tragedy of the world to the table of the small national politics, well, perhaps they are, but they do not concern only those who govern: among the majority contractors of the wide field, in fact, the refusal of the horror of Gaza is among the few things that unite even everything, but at least an important part of the coalition that keeps all the anti-melons together. That our government is the most Trumpian in Europe is undoubted, that some non -competent minister for matter (foreign policy) even make selfies with Netanyahu is certain, as pathetic. That an Italian recognition of Palestine, or a government intervention to stop the residual war exports to Israel, would change the story by an centimeter, this is not exactly credible. That another government, of another color, would have used other tones – among a thousand distinctions – is sure: that a single innocent life would have been saved, it is difficult to believe. And in order not to do wrong to anyone, even from the parts of the unions do not seem to be missing the contradictions, with the CGIL, the first Italian union, which seemed to pursue the basic unionism of the USB, as the newspapers do when they take the “hole”, and the next day the news is the news given yesterday by someone else.

A sincere feeling

These dynamics of political and media power, of course, do not remove anything from the trueness of the feeling of sincere and popular protest expressed by the squares. Indeed, to be confirmed, they confirm it, because they show beyond any doubt that the institutionalized representatives are actually put in tail of what has moved the big body of society. Once, when Landini was young and Elly Schlein was not yet born, they would have been in the head, geographical and political, of these processions, today not, and it is a significant figure in various ways, on various fronts.

The first, the main one, is that the popular mobilization took place in a widely spontaneous, sincere, not affiliated way. The images of the massacre, the sense of helplessness and infinite weakness of the people of Gaza, the absence of every possible hope for the end of this horror have moved the consciences of hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, who took to the streets, and is an extraordinary fact. It was understood by looking at the heterogeneity of that square: the social centers that wanted a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” – the same and contrary to that of the Israeli -right far right who dreams of a large Israel without any Palestine – and many families and ordinary people who had no maximalism, under thebrain, if not that of indignation for violated humanity.

By Morocco and Egypt

The second was born on the margins of the procession of Milan, where we have seen and noticed, in many, a great participation of people of Arabic origin. Some were certainly first generations, immigrants no longer young probably arrived with the first waves of the late twentieth century. Others were visibly young, who knows if they were born here, who knows if already Italian citizens. It is difficult to understand where these people come from, the statistics help us: the Arabs of Milan come from Egypt, close to Palestine when enough to have a fundamental role in the future of the Trump plan, and many from Morocco, far away for geography and history to be always on the edge of the balances that count, in the Middle East. In the Italian city with the highest percentage of resident foreigners, but certainly not only here, this popular movement of solidarity in Gaza was perhaps the first opportunity for political participation and numerically relevant direct opinion of the citizenship daughter of immigration.

The future of Gaza

The two issues outlined now lead us to a third, crucial, which emerges looking forward. These squares do not only remind us, dutifully, the duty to continue looking carefully, apprehension, hope (for those who manage to cultivate it) for the future of Gaza. They do not only remind us that when the “peace” arrives it will also be at the intolerable cost – yet certainly not new, for humanity – to remove many of the faults and crimes from a public speech of justice, and the names of those who committed them. These squares remind us of something that is even greater in the contingent and desperate history of these two years, because they tell us that at certain conditions, for certain reasons, counting on the sense of justice, the naivety, crossing the opposite propaganda, not without contaminating itself with conformism that has always enlarged the ranks of the protests, even the most difficult and minority, there is a moment in which the society wants to participate and say its own. He wants to affect history. The Italian squares try to do it on an apparently distant yet vital question, and on a table – that of international politics, and the Middle Eastern dial – in which the space to act and affect is reasonably to historical lows. In this paradox there is not only the duty to look responsibly, critically, to Europe – that is, to the only political perspective that could, if anything, in the future, make the protest capable of producing politics – but also a profound question of meaning on what value the ability to govern the democratic countries has, and what it means, ultimately, to live in a democracy. It is the question that should persecute the Israel of Netanyahu, but a certain torment should also give it to us.