India’s ratcheting Up Curbs On Christians, Muslims – OpEd

By UCA News 

By John Dayal

 November 22, 2022 

(UCA News) — The fate of the 70-year-old struggle of India’s converts from its erstwhile “untouchable” castes in the Hindu hierarchy may well be in the hands of a former chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan while in office had asked Church leaders if they were willing to say on oath that they exercised caste discrimination in their congregations. There was silence in the courtroom.

He was at that time hearing appeals against Article 341 Part 3 which assures affirmative action including scholarships, jobs and political representation to this group of citizens as long as they remain Hindu. If they convert to Christianity or Islam, they lose the benefits.

The converts may also be jailed if the government discovers that they had studied in Church schools on scholarships given to Christian students.

Justice Balakrishnan was the first Dalit, as the former untouchable castes now call themselves, to become the chief justice of India. His elevation was the direct result of a question raised by former President K R Narayanan, the first Dalit to hold such a high office, on why people oppressed for 3,000 years in India’s ancient religious social governance system, could not occupy high statutory offices.

Dalits who embraced other religions were denied the benefits of affirmative action by presidential order in 1950, which later became Article 341(3), due to pressure from Hindu upper castes that feared a large-scale exodus of Dalits to Islam or Christianity.

Ironically, six years after helping create India’s secular Constitution, Dalit icon Dr. B. R. Ambedkar led half a million Dalits into renouncing Hinduism and joining a reformed Buddhism in the city of Nagpur in 1956.

Nagpur is the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the militant Hindu majoritarian organization, seeking to create a Hindu nation, which will disenfranchise Christians and Muslims.

The constitution was later changed to ensure that Buddhists and Sikhs, defined as Indic religions because they were founded in this land, get the scheduled benefits given to Hindu Dalits.

Justice Balakrishnan was recently named by the Narendra Modi government to head a committee set up to examine the issue of caste transcending religion once again.

An earlier commission, headed by another former Chief Justice Ranganath Misra had found that caste and caste discrimination indeed transcended religion and that Dalit Christians and Muslims must get the same benefits as given to their Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist brethren.

The Congress government of the time did not respond to the Supreme Court notices. The RSS-affiliated ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is more categorical in rejecting any privilege for Dalit Christians and Muslims.

In fact, they want such privileges to be taken away from indigenous people, known as Adivasis, hoping this will stop all conversions.

The move to stop conversions is top of the BJP’s political agenda.

Religious minorities are aghast that barring regional parties like Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in southern Tamil Nadu, no major political group is supporting their cause. No one, it seems, is willing to antagonize the Hindu vote.

The bogey of conversion has led to much persecution of the Christian community. While the Catholic Church has seen its institutions and parishes under attack, the Protestant and evangelical churches find their pastors arrested, house churches attacked, and small isolated communities ostracized. In some cases, they have been denied drinking water, grain, employment and even burial for their dead. 

Incidents of violence alone routinely number more than 500 every year with police blatantly partisan, and often complicit.

The cue has been picked up by the Supreme Court itself with several writ petitions filed by minority groups challenging Article 341 (3), or seeking other directives to ensure that India and its constitution do not lose their “secular” character.

“Secular” in India means the state does not show preference toward any religion. Although much diluted by anti-conversion laws in a dozen states and rules feeding into rampant Islamophobia, the states still remain largely untainted by religious bias. But for how long is the critical question before Church leaders and civil society.

Last week, a bench of the Supreme Court set Nov. 28 for a hearing on why exactly conversions out of Hinduism pose a threat to national security after being petitioned by the redoubtable Advocate Ashwini Kumar urging stringent steps to control fraudulent religious conversions through “intimidation, threatening, deceivingly luring through gifts and monetary benefits.”

Kumar has in the past filed similar petitions calling to protect the majority community’s interests in a variety of ways.

The apex court seems to agree with the petitioner, and in an initial order, described incidents of “forced religious conversions” as “posing a serious threat to national security” while seeking sincere efforts to check the practice.

The bench warned that a “very difficult situation” will arise if forced religious conversions are not stopped.

The Christian community has not responded so far to Kumar’s petition, though they certainly should be aware of it.

Civil society holds the hope that DMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin may respond in court with data to prove that conversions are voluntary and pose no threat to national security.

India’s federal government knows there is almost no data on forcible and fraudulent conversions. There is hardly any data even on voluntary conversion as citizens are not asked questions about their religion at birth and at the time of the census.

There are no recorded court convictions of Christians for forcibly or fraudulently converting anyone. In fact, almost every pastor jailed on complaints of the RSS affiliates or others has been found not guilty. 

A few Muslim youths are facing the wrath of the police in states such as Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh because they married or eloped with Hindu girls, an act termed “Love Jihad” by political groups and governments.

There is no officially declared definition of “force,” “allurement” and “fraud,” other than what can be derived from the criminal codes or the local laws.

For the RSS and some governments, the statement attributed in the Bible to Jesus that “no one goes to the Father other than through me” is both intimidation and fraud.

Others hold education and medical care extended to the poor as allurement. 

Violence is well defined in the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code along with state responses. But the National Crime Records Bureau hesitates to record sectarian violence, or in fact any violence in terms of the religions of the victim and aggressor.

BJP leaders and Hindu spokespersons cite census data to say the Hindu population has dipped below 80 percent while the population of Muslims is growing. The Christian population, officially, is static at about 2.3 percent.

The BJP says Hindus are in danger of becoming a minority in the land of their birth.

There are occasional rays of hope amid the gloom.

In Madhya Pradesh recently, the high court found the provision requiring interfaith couples to declare a change of religion before a government official as “prima facie unconstitutional” and said the ability to choose one’s faith and the choice whether to express it or not is implicit under Article 25 (Freedom of Religion).

Last year, the Gujarat High Court stayed certain operative sections of the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act, 2021, observing that they infringed upon Section 21 (Right to Life and Personal Liberty).

But at the moment, there is reason to be pessimistic.

Muslims praying at Jama Masjid, Delhi, India. Photo by Mohd Danish Hussain at Unsplash.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

UCA News

The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News, UCAN) is the leading independent Catholic news source in Asia. A network of journalists and editors that spans East, South and Southeast Asia, UCA News has for four decades aimed to provide the most accurate and up-to-date news, feature, commentary and analysis, and multimedia content on social, political and religious developments that relate or are of interest to the Catholic Church in Asia.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

INDIA
Comrade RB More: Bridge Linking Dalit and Communist Movements

The struggle for liberation from untouchability and the class struggle can learn to come together through lessons from his life.

Subhashini Ali 15 May 2020


The month of April is filled with memories of Phule and Babasaheb and narratives of their birth, life, writings and struggles. Then comes May, which brings reminisces of comrade Ramchandra More, who fought for the Dalits in the tradition of Phule and participated in the great revolutionary movements of Babasaheb. He died on 11 May 1970.

Comrade More was born in 1903 in a part of the Konkan which was the birthplace of all the Mahar caste members who, like Babasaheb Ambedkar’s father, were soldiers and freedom fighters. This section of Dalit society, having joined the army in large numbers, had been able to access some education. Permanent jobs, followed by assured post-retirement pensions provided the members of this section considerable strength, and social respect too. Many of them were associated with the social reform movements of their time: they met Jyotiba Phule, they visited Shahuji Maharaj, and they worked to spread both egalitarian literature and ideas.

It was in this society and in this environment that Comrade More was born, with an instinctive desire to struggle for self-respect. This desire, once it arose, very soon became an indelible part of his attitude and demeanour. He was uniquely talented. At a young age, took a three-day walk to Alibaug. It is during this journey that he experienced for the first time the implications of being an “untouchable”. Because he was not allowed to enter the dharamshalas that fell along the way, he had to spend the nights with animals.

In Alibaug, he took the entrance test of the English school at Mahad. He was the only Dalit to appear in that examination, but he scored the highest marks and also earned a stipend. The difficult circumstances in which he took the test included not only the fatigue and humiliation of the journey, but also the misery of having lost his father just a few days ago. Yet he was denied admission in the school, because its landlord said that if an “untouchable” was allowed to enter, he would vacate the entire school altogether. Incidentally, several decades later, during the Mahad Satyagraha, members of the very same landlord’s family also opposed the attempt of the Dalits to drink water from the Mahad Tal under Babasaheb’s leadership.

Comrade More sent a postcard to a newspaper against this injustice. As a result, the school had to admit him, but he had to get his education from outside the class, sitting near the window.

Mahad was also a market hub for all the nearby villages. Comrade More used to interact with the Mahars, the other Dalits and poor agricultural labourers and farmers who came there from far-flung areas. He became well-acquainted with every aspect of their lives. With his efforts, a tea shop operated by a Mahar was opened, where all untouchables got drinking water, which they were earlier denied. This shop became their base. Here he would meet people, write down their requests and get all the information about their problems. After some years, this tea shop took the shape of a small hotel, where people could spend the night.

In 1923, a very important decision was taken at this base. A resolution had been passed in the Bombay Legislative Assembly to make all public places accessible to the “untouchables”. To implement this, on the very next day, Comrade More decided, along with all the people gathered at this base, that a big convention for the rights of untouchables would be organised at Mahad, which would be presided over by Babasaheb. After this, Comrade More went to Bombay and invited Babasaheb, but it took a long time to persuade him. During this time, he became very close to Babasaheb and began assist him with his publication-related work, and got a good hold over the craft of journalism.

Meanwhile, in his own village Dasgaon, Comrade More successfully got hundreds of untouchables together to drink water from the village lake which was always forbidden to them.

In the end, Babasaheb’s program for Mahad was set for March 1927 and Comrade More was its chief organiser. He visited all the villages in the Konkan belt and mobilised thousands to join Babasaheb’s program. On that day, when thousands of Dalits reached Mahad’s Chavdar Tank under Babasaheb’s leadership and people lined up to touch its water, they were fiercely attacked—but they had already touched its water. The Savarnas proved this when they carried out a “purification” ritual of this water.

Nine months later, on 25 December 1927, Comrade More and his comrades announced another Satyagraha. As Babasaheb left for Mahad from Bombay taking the water route, workers of the Samata Sainik Dal saluted him in farewell. It is Comrade More who had founded this historical party. This gives an indication of his position in the Dalit movement of the time. It is this party’s members who confronted the tyranny of the Savarnas in the Dalit colonies. It is believed that the irritation this party caused was one reason why the RSS was established in Nagpur.

After the 25th December session, the crowd marched towards the Mahad Tal again. It was attacked once more. But that day Babasaheb gave the most compelling evidence of his resistance by publicly setting the Manusmriti afire. By holding a religious scripture responsible for a grossly inhumane crime such as untouchability, Babasaheb posed a major challenge to the populist movements of the day. It was now an imperative for the liberation movement in India to accept and acknowledge his movement.

Comrade More spent most of his time in Bombay with Babasaheb, helping him with his work. He used to stay in the workers’ chawls and had many conversations and discussions with those who lived with him—especially the workers in the cotton factories. He had a keen interest in cultural activities and actively participated in them. This strengthened his relations with all the workers’ communities.

At the same time, through members of the left unions, he became acquainted with the leaders of workers as well. He started participating in union activities; distributing pamphlets, writing on the walls, preparing for strikes, and so on. His experiences of class struggle came not from a book but from the lives of people just like him. To transform these experiences into practice and thought, he held long debates and discussions with Marxists such as SV Deshpande, BT Ranadive and RM Jambhekar. The caste oppression which he had knowledge about from the moment he was born now took the form of the flame that emanates from the furnace of class struggle.

Working with Babasaheb, he acquired this new knowledge with full force and, after a deep study of the Communist Manifesto, in 1930, decided to join the Communist Party. He informed Babasaheb about it. Instead of being angry, he encouraged Comrade More to pursue this path, but also told him that he was worried whether the organisation he is joining will give him the respect he deserves. Until the end, Comrade More remained a communist. In 1964, he decided to join the CPI(M). The same year, he sent a letter to the party leadership, in which he mentioned a few things: that Dalit society is the largest, most oppressed and exploited part of the working class. That only by fighting the social exploitation of this section, which is a moral and ethical duty, can the Communist Party attract them to its movements in large numbers.

These words of Comrade More in his letter have become very relevant in a new way today. Now at the Center and in many states there are governments inspired by the RSS, which had announced in 1950 itself that it upholds the Manusmriti as justice and law and not the Constitution written by Babasaheb. In the wake of this misguided thought process, governments, under direction from the RSS, are making all-out attacks on Dalits, labourers, women and the minorities. Bringing those sections and communities that are victimised by these attacks together is the duty of the communist movement, which has always brought about radical changes in society.

To achieve this, the communist movement will have to participate in the social and cultural campaigns striving for Dalit rights and support the organisations that run them. It will have to demonstrate its full vigour, so as to instil the confidence and desire in these movements to join hands with the communist movements. A movement to overcome untouchability and social oppression will require continuous proof of being prepared to suffer and face martyrdom.

That the government is carrying out attacks on the workers and working classes is clearly evident. The concerted attacks against Dalit rights and Dalit self-respect are no less obvious. Behind these attacks stands Manu-wad, the justification of inequality which prescribes terrible punishments for the Dalits and opposes their equal status. Financially too, there are constant attempts to weaken Dalit communities. Manu-wad desires to remove the Dalits from the field of education and deny them employment opportunities. That is why Dalits are being deprived of many rights and entitlements, their judicial protection against atrocities is being neutralised.

To push any segment of society back, it is necessary that its talented heroes are forcefully riven from it. This has also been happening. Rohith Vemula, who had sought to fashion a new path for the liberation of Dalits was institutionally murdered; Anand Teltumbde has vanished from sight, pushed behind bars. Both of them had sought to bring the struggle for liberation from oppression, including untouchability, and the class struggle closer. Both these streams of thought flow at a considerable distance from each other. Yet, somewhere, their goals also cleave to each other today. What is needed is a strong bridge between these two movements. Surely Comrade More’s life struggle and his guidance can become that bridge.

After becoming the closest warrior to Babasaheb, he became a Communist and remained one all his life. He never parted from his struggle against caste oppression, and decided to become a Communist only to fight it effectively. No one can deny the truths of his life. There is a need to learn from them and use them.

Recently, LeftWord Books published the English translation of More’s biography, Memoirs of a Dalit Communist: The Many Worlds of RB More, written by Comrade Satyendra More. It will soon be available in other languages, including Hindi.

The author is a former Member of Parliament and vice president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA).

How I Shed My Shame Around Caste

Meera Estrada - Yesterday 

Refinery29

Five years ago, at a playdate with one of my oldest girlfriends and our babies, I asked her about her experience with using a surrogate in India. We’re both Indian-Canadian living in Toronto, and I had read that lower-caste surrogates were being paid nearly $2,000 less than higher-caste women at the clinic she used in Gujarat. She confirmed it was true and then said something that hit me like a punch in the gut: “I wouldn’t use a lower-caste surrogate. I wouldn’t want my kid to be stupid.”

What she didn’t know about me — her friend of over 20 years — was that I was from a lower caste. And even at 38 years old, I carried so much shame and fear about it, I hadn’t shared it with my closest friends.

The Hindu caste system is one of the oldest forms of social classification. It divides Hindus into four main groups: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. And then there is a fifth group, one that is considered so unworthy it doesn’t fall within the caste system but below it — the Dalits (the broken ones) or the Untouchables. While the term “Untouchable” is used less frequently and deemed derogatory, I still refer to it in instances of explanation because it’s an explicit reminder of its ugliness: “Untouchable” people are considered tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure and less than human.

In India, to be born Dalit is to be trapped in a cycle of extreme poverty and oppression, as caste determines whether you can go to school, what kind of job you have, and even who you marry. While legally abolished in 1950, caste remains deeply embedded in the country’s psyche. India is home to over 200 million Dalits.

The pandemic has worsened circumstances for people like me in India — 90% of the 5 million people who work in sanitation and cleaning are Dalits. While deemed essential work, most of these workers are not provided with proper personal protective equipment (PPE), regularly ostracized for their work, denied basic rights like water breaks, and some were even sprayed with bleach in the name of public health in the early months of the pandemic. To this day, it is not uncommon to hear about police violence and inter-caste violence.

Growing up in Canada, I’d heard about this system but I actually didn’t know what caste I was part of until I was 15. I remember as a child telling people “I don’t believe in that” when asked what caste I belonged to, echoing a phrase my mother often said in awkward social encounters. It wasn’t until my parents revealed we were Dalits, and what that meant, that I understood what lay behind my mother’s response. Despite knowing, we kept it to ourselves. My parents heard the casual jokes and denigrating remarks about lower caste people, even in the diaspora. Already labelled outsiders as immigrants, they didn’t want to be stigmatized by their own community too. It then became a secret I also guarded closely.

Despite living in Canada, I started to notice caste all around me. I realized that the only ones I ever heard about were upper castes. There was never mention of lower castes, besides off-color jokes. By default, people assumed I was part of an acceptable group — and I would let them. When I was a teen, my Gujarati language teacher referred to her neighbor’s caste, one I hadn’t heard of, saying her neighbor was just like me. My face flushed, thinking I was found out, and then there was shameful relief when she followed up with a reference to the warriors or Rajput caste, which she assumed I belonged to.

Unlike racism, casteism is intra-racial and is practised among people of the same nationality, ethnicity, or cultural background. As an immigrant who is Dalit, it means not only do you face discrimination from outside your community, but also within it. Studies in Britain and the United States reveal caste discrimination in places of work, places of worship, and schools.

Caste also has implications for who you can marry even in the diaspora. Watching Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking — where clients in the U.S. and India are guided by matchmaker Sima Taparia through the arranged marriage process — caste was mentioned in nearly every episode of season one. It was listed on each client’s profile card or “bio-data.” Every time Taparia sang praise about a “good girl” from a “good family,” my stomach would twist in knots. It’s a euphemism for high caste, wealthy, and fair-skinned — one I heard repeatedly when I was single. One that made me question if I was a “good girl” since I wasn’t any of those things.

Feeling inadequate and oftentimes unworthy, I gravitated towards non-Indians in my twenties because I feared being judged for my caste by other Indians. I fell in love with an incredible man, who happens to be of Spanish and South American descent. Even though he isn’t Indian, my family felt obliged to tell his family about our caste ahead of our wedding. They didn’t know anything about caste, and thankfully, they didn’t care. The moment they shared their indifference, I thought I can just be me and that’s good enough.

But something changed when my girlfriend made that comment to me at her house that day. Two years ago, I openly spoke up about caste for the first time at a Women’s Day event in Toronto, for the Southern Africa Embrace Foundation. I shared how caste played a role in shaping my identity, and how it’s archaic categorization of people like me has systematically made us feel like less-worthy humans. My father came to the event with me, the only man in a crowded room of women. He wept as I spoke, and when I finished, everyone rose to their feet to give my father a standing ovation.

I now feel profound pride in my family’s courage, grace, and resilience. I hope people will stop turning a blind eye to casteism, or buy into the false narrative that it no longer exists. Most importantly, I hope for the many Dalit people who feel alone, like I did for so many years, they feel seen, understood, and worthy.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism 

Kagame Remains Untouchable in Rwanda’s Presidential Election

The EditorsJul 12, 2024July 12, 2024

Rwandan President Paul Kagame speaks in Nairobi, Kenya, Feb. 11, 2020 (AP photo by John Muchucha).

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is set to be reelected for a fourth term Monday as Rwandans vote in presidential and legislative elections. Kagame has held power for three decades since leading the rebel group that took control of Rwanda and ended the genocide in 1994. (AP)

Our Take

Rwanda’s elections Monday are far from a free and fair vote, especially the presidential election. During his time in power, Kagame and his regime have routinely targeted any meaningful opposition, using tactics ranging from a weaponized judicial system to enforced disappearances and killings—including transnational repression—to silence critics and opponents. Seven years ago, in the last presidential election, Kagame received 99 percent of the vote. A similar result is expected next week.

The legacy of the genocide—in which 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were killed by extremist Hutus—also continues to play a huge role in Rwanda. For understandable reasons, Kagame’s image as the leader who not only ended the genocide but guided the nation’s reconstruction in its aftermath has given him an almost untouchable status domestically. At the same time, however, his regime has politicized that legacy, with Kagame’s critics at home and abroad routinely portrayed as genocide-deniers.

Under Kagame, Rwanda has also been consistently accused of supporting rebel groups in neighboring countries, most notably the Democratic Republic of Congo. A report circulated earlier this week by U.N. experts says that an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan government forces are operating alongside the M23 rebel group, which is composed mainly of Tutsis, in eastern Congo. As we’ve reported previously, the Rwandan-backed M23’s reemergence in 2022 has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Rwanda’s backing of M23, alongside other rebel groups, has frayed bilateral relations with Congo and Burundi to such an extent that there were concerns the tensions could lead to open hostilities, further destabilizing an East African region seeking to prioritize economic development and integration. And yet, Western powers associate Kagame’s time in power with domestic stability, economic growth and an “effective” security partnership in Mozambique. As a result, the West has been eager to overlook the Kagame regime’s domestic human rights abuses and regionally destabilizing behavior.

Rwanda’s civil society and regional neighbors are the ones left to deal with the consequences of that disregard. And with Kagame running virtually unopposed, the election Monday will ensure that they continue to face the same challenges for the foreseeable future.

 

Rwandans will decide on July 15 whether to grant a fourth term to President Paul Kagame, the country’s ruler since 2000. The National Electoral Commission received nine applications but cleared only three, excluding one of Kagame’s fiercest critics. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo has this report from the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

Italy’s Deadly Complicity: Meloni Backs Israel’s Expansionist Wars While Italian Troops Are Humiliated in Lebanon

Michael Leonardi

 April 10, 2026

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Photograph by Matteo Nardone

On April 8, 2026, as Israel dropped over 160 bombs on Beirut in just 10 minutes — turning entire neighborhoods into rubble and killing dozens more civilians — Israeli forces simultaneously fired warning shots at a clearly marked Italian UNIFIL convoy in southern Lebanon, damaging a vehicle. Nobody was killed in the attack on the Italian soldiers, but the message was unmistakable: even UN peacekeepers are fair game when they inconvenience Israel’s war machine.

This was not an isolated incident. Over the past months, Israeli forces have repeatedly humiliated Italian and other UNIFIL troops — blocking their movements, firing near their positions, destroying observation posts, and treating the blue-helmeted soldiers with open contempt. Italian troops have been forced to stand by helplessly as Israel bombs Lebanese villages, with UNIFIL reduced to little more than spectators in a war zone.

Italy’s response remains pure theater. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni issued a stern condemnation. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani summoned the Israeli ambassador and declared Italian troops “untouchable.” Defense Minister Guido Crosetto echoed the outrage. Yet these words are hollow. Italy remains one of the largest contributors to UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a mission whose mandate is to monitor the border but whose real function has become shielding Israel’s aggression while providing political cover for European complicity in the broader regional slaughter.

UNIFIL was never designed to stop Israel. Created after Israel’s 1978 invasion of Lebanon, the force has long served as a buffer that protects Israeli security interests far more than Lebanese sovereignty. Italian troops, numbering around 1,000, are effectively stationed as human shields on the front line of Israel’s expansionist campaign. When Israel bombs Lebanon — as it did yesterday in Beirut with 160 bombs in 10 minutes, and as it has done relentlessly since October 2023 — UNIFIL is left to pick up the pieces while pretending neutrality.

The scale of Israel’s assault on Lebanon has been catastrophic. Since October 2023, Israel has carried out massive bombing campaigns across southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing over 4,000 people — the majority civilians — and displacing more than 1.5 million. Entire villages have been flattened, hospitals and schools targeted, and civilian infrastructure systematically destroyed. This is not collateral damage. It is part of a deliberate campaign of collective punishment and territorial expansion driven by the zealotry of the Greater Israel project, linking directly to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the illegal joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Israel, like a rabid dog off its chain, is unleashed by Washington to terrorize the entire region with impunity.

Image by Farah Hamade

Italy’s government is deeply complicit. Under Meloni, Rome has continued arms exports to Israel, expanded intelligence cooperation, and aligned itself unconditionally with the United States and the Zionist project. The same government that lectures about “international law” when it suits NATO interests has helped create the conditions in which Israeli forces feel entitled to fire on UN peacekeepers — including Italian ones.

Tajani’s summoning of the ambassador changes nothing. Meloni’s “firm condemnation” is performative. The real policy remains: support Israel, arm the war machine, and hope the bodies stay out of Italian headlines. This is the same government that has cracked down on pro-Palestine protests at home while sending troops to stand guard over Israel’s southern flank — all while remaining in complete subservience to Trump and the United States.

The Italian public is increasingly aware of this contradiction. They are not only connecting the dots of the targeting of Italian soldiers, but are sick and tired of the relentless targeting and killing of civilians across Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. The Gaza Generation sees the direct line between Meloni’s support for Israel and the risks now faced by Italian troops in Lebanon. They understand that “peacekeeping” in southern Lebanon is not neutral — it is part of the architecture that enables endless war.

The recent resignation of key figures in the Meloni cabinet amid corruption scandals only underscores the rot at the heart of this government. A regime that cannot manage its own affairs without scandal and blackmail is hardly in a position to lecture anyone about anything.

The time for performative indignation is over. Italian soldiers are not “untouchable” because Rome says so. They are endangered precisely because of Rome’s policies of continued complicity with Israel and Netanyahu despite the mounting death toll and the zealotry of the Greater Israel project. If Meloni and Tajani truly cared about the safety of Italian troops and the lives of civilians, they would end the complicity: halt arms exports and end any economic cooperation with Israel, withdraw from missions that serve Israeli interests, and break with the U.S.-Israeli axis driving the region toward wider war.

The Gaza Generation understands this. Millions in the streets over the past year understand this. The Italian people on the whole are beginning to understand this. The question is whether Meloni’s government will continue sacrificing Italian sovereignty and a constitution that repudiates war on the altar of empire and genocidal conquest — or whether the growing domestic resistance will finally force a reckoning.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com