Why did Hamas think it could commit horrifying atrocities and get rewarded for it politically? It worked for the PLO, didn’t it.
On Shemini Atzeret, 1982, parents brought their children to the Great Synagogue for the local tradition of Birkat HaYeladim, when the rabbi blesses the children on that day. As they were preparing to leave after the service, PLO terrorists attacked with hand grenades and a machine gun, killing 2-year-old Stefano Tache and wounding 34 people, including his 4-year-old brother and parents.
According to the documents revealed Friday, Italian internal intelligence, then-known as Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica (SISDE), sent several warnings to the government that groups of Palestinian students “intended” to attack Jewish targets in Rome. At the top of the list of possible targets was the synagogue.
A follow-up warning sent to the Italian interior ministry cited a “usually reliable source” as saying the Abu Nidal group planned to carry out an attack during the Jewish holiday period and was likely to hit Jewish sites as the Israeli embassy was too well guarded.
But despite the warnings, not only was security not increased, but on the day of the attack, the police vehicle that usually stood outside the synagogue on holidays was absent, the documents showed.
There have been recent allegations of a secret deal between the Islamic terrorists and the Italian government.
“The Italian media”, recalls Lisa Palmieri-Billig, “bombarded public opinion with headlines and hateful drawings reminiscent of the Nazi era, describing the bombing of ‘Jewish planes’ with the Star of David and disgusting ‘Israelis’ about to happily torture innocent Palestinians or crucify a Palestinian Christ”.
At the end of June, a large anti-war rally called by the trade unions had a macabre outcome, when some demonstrators went as far as the old ghetto in Rome to lay a coffin in front of the synagogue.
Until 2008, when, on the eve of the 26th anniversary of the attack, the former Prime Minister and President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga, then in his eighties, decided to reveal some shocking new information. First, in an interview with Corriere della Sera, he revealed the existence of a secret agreement between the Italian state apparatus and the main Palestinian forces – referred to as the “Moro Pact”, named after the former Prime Minister and leader of the Christian Democracy, Aldo Moro – aimed at allowing the latter the free movement of men and weapons on Italian territory in return for the protection of the country and its citizens against terrorist actions. Then, under the pressure of questions from the Italian correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, he clarified that in fact Zionist objectives would be excluded from the scope of this agreement. Italian Jews, in other words, could have been hit with impunity. “We sold you out”, he summarised to the Israeli journalist.
All of this serves as the background to the vandalism of the plaque memorializing the murdered 2-year-old boy.
The memorial plaque commemorating Michael Stefano Gaj Taché, on the wall of the Beth Michael Synagogue, was defaced with black spray paint, according to photographs shared by the Jewish Community of Rome, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, and the Union of Young Jews of Italy.
“Free Palestine” was spray-painted nearby, on the wall of the Monteverde Vecchio neighborhood’s synagogue.
That toddler’s murder is a reminder of what ‘Free Palestine’ really means. And when we forget, the Muslim terrorists and their apologists remind us.
