"Not only Gianfranco Fini, but the entire world, including the Vatican and the pope, should beg forgiveness of Israel," Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy's World War II dictator and a member of parliament for the National Alliance party, told the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz daily in an interview.
The interview coincided with the arrival of Fini, her party's leader and Italy's deputy prime minister, for his first official visit to Israel, during which he plans to apologize to the Jewish people for Italy's Holocaust-era
crimes.
When asked what she thought of Fini's plan to apologize to the Jewish people, she said that, in her mind, he had already done so, at the 1995 party conference in which Fini denounced anti-Semitism. "What is important to me is that Fini listen to the people, as I did during my visits to Israel," she conveyed.
"We need to develop mutual understanding, not disputes, since we are on the same side," she said.
Mussolini said the visit of Fini to Israel is important mainly because of "the [terrorist] assault on Italy and Europe." The deaths of 19 Italian soldiers in a suicide bombing in Iraq and the recent terror attacks in Istanbul "make Italy Israel's ally," she explained.
Mussolini, a niece of movie star Sophia Loren, burst onto the political scene in 1992, when she was elected to parliament as a member of the neo-fascist party in her home district of Naples. Over the ensuing years, she made it clear that she was proud to be descended from Italy's dictator.
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
