SUMMARY: In an intervention in the course of the 32nd Congress of the Radical Party in Rome, the green deputy of South-Tirol Alex Langer states that the Radical Party more and more wants to follow a parabola similar to that of the State of Israel: from the party of hope and of so many causes, be they socialist, anarchical, red, green, ecologist, conservative, liberal, to a closed and isolated party defending its very existence.

(Radical News n. 62 of the 18th of March 1987)

"...But there is a deeper aspect of the Radical Party that perhaps only in this Congress I think I fully understand, and that induces me to reconsider, in an almost painful way, my relations with this party, and I will know try to express it, hoping I shall successfully express myself and hoping i won't be misunderstood, as I am well aware that this is a tricky field and one particularly apt for misunderstandings and summary injustices.

In the last months and particularly in these last days you have been, this congress has been, putting a strong accent on the State of Israel, openly referring to Hebraism and the Jews, almost as if you saw in it a similar metaphor, so to say, of the radical adventure.

I will then try to enter that metaphor: for deep and personal reasons relating to the origins of my family, I have and I feel a deep link with Hebraism, in spite of the fact that I am not completely Jewish and I am certainly not an orthodox Jew.

As you will easily understand, this is the reason for the very special and strongly involving attention I feel toward the State of Israel, a country which I have never visited, and today I feel I could hardly visit with serenity and joy, even though I have friends, relatives and companions there.

In 1967, I'm sure it must be the same for many of you as well, I distinctly remember that when the six-day war broke out I was in the synagogue in Florence, where I was a student at the time, together with hundreds and hundreds of democratic friends of Israel and of the Jews; at that time I would have given anything to be able to contribute to the survival of a country that I considered threatened in its very existence, for I well knew what unspeakable sufferings and persecutions had given birth to this country and this State of Israel.

However, I was also aware of the persecutions and the sufferings that the birth of this state had, on the other hand, inflicted to other innocents, and I'm obviously referring to the palestinians, and in spite of this, and being aware of this, at the time I trembled at the idea the Jews in Israel could in actual fact be thrown into the sea - you might perhaps remember this threat - and I will add that I would shake, I shake right now in the same way, at the idea of a terrible diaspora and of a terrible genocide which is already being enacted and that involves the palestinian people...and this not to put one suffering against another.

But for the moment let's go back to 1967: there has been a war, with the consequences that we all know, and a transformation, an ever more tragical and preoccupying violation of the State of Israel has ensued, being the latter built, in its inner and outer aspect, in its foreign policies, more and more clearly as a State against the palestinians, against the Arabs, as if it were this, instead of a home for the Jews and for Hebraism.

In this sense I think it has contributed in giving birth and in maintaining a tension that has blocked or has contributed to block so many possible processes of democratic distension in so many countries, Israel included, its neighbours included, in the whole of the area.

The discriminations and the ethnical barriers against non-jewish israeli citizens and particularly against palestinians, and the repressive role that the State has played against the palestinians in the occupied territories, the armed opposition against all its neighbours, the tragical isolation which seeks solidarity and similarity across the ocean, from other countries, rather than from its neighbours; the growing militarization of civil cohabitation, the fact of always being at war and also, allow me to say the truth, to have in a certain sense made Hebraism into a State, making the State of Israel become first father-land, state father-land, a father-land that had until then been an ideal father-land, a second father-land, but a deep father-land for all Jews, excluding others that considered it a father-land, all this, though it can be understood in the context of force more than of right, and although thousands of times all this has been counter-acted and often anticipated by means of similar threats an

d aggressions, it seems to me that this can no longer be the Israel of hope and of reason that Baruch Spinoza, Hannnah Arendt, Martin Buber, Walter benjamin, and so many scholars of biblical science, of science and of life have taught us to love and to hope in.

Now, it seems to me that the Radical Party, from an ideal, fertile party of hope and of so many causes, whether socialist, anarchic, red, green, ecological, conservative, liberal, of order even (at the Congress we subscriptions from the right wing were mentioned), it seems to me that this Radical Party in some ways - and this is the impression I receive from the current phase of this congress - ever more wants to experience a parabola similar to that of the State of Israel, and I'm not sure wether this is a good thing to do or not.

For anyone who loves Israel, as far as one can love a State or a party, etc., all these being abstract entities, but anyway, for anyone who loves Israel and the Radical Party in a very special way, I think it is particularly painful, and it is particularly necessary to express one's bitterness and one's disagreement when one fears distortion of the things one believes in, of the things that you love and that, in a certain way, you feel belong to you.

This is why today, having the choice, - or rather being in a situation of much greater freedom as compared to those soviet dissidents, Jewish or nor, of those oppressed people, in the east and in the west, in the prisons or out of the prisons, who cannot choose - I would not choose to become an israeli citizen, in spite of the fact that I feel very close to Hebraism, and this is the reason why, at least for the time being, I won't choose to become subscriber number ten thousand and fife, even though, faced to an extreme threat, I think I think I would in both cases examined continue to cling to them, and I thank you".