From the Feuilletons: Pogroms, ghettos, etc

07Jan08

From the Sign&Sight English round-up of the European press

Die Tageszeitung 31.12.2007

Gabriele Goettle describes the discrimination against Gypsies that has gone on for centuries in Europe. Following the killing of a Italian woman in Rome by a Roma, the situation is particularly virulent. “In the wake of the murder authorities and politicians have given free reign to their resentments. It is truly astounding how quickly all forms of political correctness are dropped and labelled as empty talk. Now people are talking openly and it is the start of a pogrom mood against Gypsies of any description, whether they are Italian citizens or Eastern European. In an extraordinary parliamentary session, the cabinet in Rome passed an immediately effective law allowing the unproblematic expulsion not only of criminal EU citizens but also of EU citizens who have been labelled a ‘danger to public security’ by the authorities. Irrespective of whether they have done anything wrong.”

Frankfurter Rundschau 31.12.2007

The Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld talks to Nicole Henneberg about his father’s love of Berlin, contemporary Israel as ghetto and the duties of a writer there. “I do not believe there are many writers among us who have a utopia. There were many anarchists and communists in my family who had a utopia and we know what came of them. I do not believe in utopian writers, and certainly not in political writing. The writer’s only moral is a good sentence, a precise observation.”

Also:

The Gypsies – a Romanian problem

Romanians kicked up a mighty fuss about being discriminated against by the Italians but it’s the pot calling the kettle black, writes Mircea Cartarescu

Don Camillo and the Imam

In Italy since September 11, the dangers of radical Islam were addressed soley by right-wing rabble-rousers. Finally Reset magazine has kicked off a proper debate. By Franz Haas

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