Celebration 76th anniversary of the Independence of the State of Israel.

This year, 8 months after the brutal attack on October 7, their closeness and friendship has been ever more meaningful. We chose to mark our national holiday (Yom HaAtzmaut) with a choir of Jewish liturgical music at the Jewish Museum, a venue that symbolizes the ties between Israel and the world Jewry. The music also wanted to reflect the current reality in which feelings of grief, sorrow but also hope and optimism are all intertwined.

Ambassador Schutz addressed his speech for the authorities, diplomats and guests with the follow speech. 

Your Excellency Archbishop Monsignor Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States,

Mrs. Noemi Di Segni, President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities,

Mr. Victor Fadlun, President of the Jewish Community of Rome,

colleagues and guests.

Thank you all for being with us today in this event, marking Israel’s 76th Independence Day. In normal circumstances I would have said that our gathering comes to celebrate the day and the date, but unfortunately times are everything but normal.

We Israelis, at least those of us with some historical perspective, have never taken our independence, sovereignty and physical survival for granted. We were always aware of our complex geo-strategic position. Yet, with the passing of the years we felt we were moving in the right direction. From the difficult starting point in 1948 we managed to build a country and society that, though imperfect, had nevertheless, plenty to offer and much to be proud of: a vibrant democracy, a strong and advanced economy pioneering in cutting edge technologies, a unique multi-cultural environment that manifested itself in music, food, and many other spheres of life. From a population of 600 thousand in 1948 we became almost 10 million today. In addition, this process of nation building was accompanied by widening legitimization and acceptance of our existence by our regional neighbors – official peace and normalization agreements with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, UAE, Bahrain and informal relations with other important players in the Muslim world.

Yes, we knew not everything was a rose garden: Iran and Syria are only two constant reminders among others. We were aware of the regional challenges but the fact things went generally well for us made us complacent, thinking we knew how to the defend ourselves, that the other side was deterred, that we were immune.

October 7th 2023 showed in the most terrible way how wrong we were.

October 7 has been the worst day in these 76 years. The 1400 Israelis that were massacred that day, not only were the highest number of Jews killed in one day since the Holocaust, but the brutality of the crime, its horrendous nature and all details that were related to it made the Israeli collective mind inevitably jump back to a past of pogroms and persecutions.

The 76th Independence Day finds us in a stage in which beyond our hurt national pride and the awakening of our most basic existential fears, it is still not the time for bottom lines. As we meet here today, Israeli hostages are still in Gaza and tens of thousands of Israelis continue to live as displaced people, domestic refugees unable to assume their daily routine and go back to their homes near the Gaza strip in the south and by the border with Lebanon in the north, constantly under Hezbollah fire. In other words, we feel ourselves still in the midst of the struggle, of the trauma, and not yet in front of a clearer horizon of rehabilitation.

Since October 7th, many of you have continuously expressed your solidarity with us and with me personally to which I’ll always be grateful. Yet I cannot and do not want to turn a blind eye to some developments that must be viewed at least as a source of concern. First and foremost, the rising tide of hatred in the west, not only towards Israel, denying explicitly its right to exist, but also towards Jews everywhere. We see that in university campuses, among both professors and students, we see that in violent protests and we see it in the sharp growth in number of physical attacks against Jews.

Rhetoric against antisemitism is to be commended but it is ineffective as so far it lacks concrete measures. Such rhetoric may even lose credibility if it is accompanied by a discourse that puts Israel’s security and its right for self-defense as a secondary consideration at best, and when wrong judgements about the way Israel exercises this right are being rushed into, based upon public mood rather than facts. 

This combination of overt hate and frequent moral ambiguity, unfortunately created present reality in which the western world, since October 7th, became a less secure place for Jews.

As my country’s representative to the Holy See I believed since the beginning of my mission in 2021 that there was a vast potential to deepen and diversify our relations based upon Pope Francis vision as expressed especially in his two encyclicals “Laudato si” and “Fratelli Tutti” which are a perfect conceptual match to the Jewish concept of “tikun olam” (repairing the world). Yet, it is no secret that after October 7th, at some junctions, Israel and The Holy See have not seen eye to eye the same reality in the Middle East. In such moments, as well as during my 41 years as a diplomat, I’ve believed that being frank and speaking clearly was no opposite to being diplomatic.

This is why, even though my belief in promoting the cooperation on the basis of the “Laudato-si-Fratelli-Tutti- tikun olam” vision is still intact now, less than 3 months before concluding my mission and retiring, it seems to me that in the short run, some healing process is needed and before we move forward, we may need to discuss some basics. Maybe the 60th anniversary of “nostra aetate”, next year, can serve us as a conceptual framework for this process.

On this background we have chosen this place - the museum for the history of Roman Jews - as venue in order to symbolize the ties between Israel and world Jewry, today maybe more important than ever. And regarding the program – these pieces, some Jewish and others Israeli, will reflect the current reality in which sentiments of grief, sorrow but also hope and optimism are all intertwined.

I would like to conclude by thanking Mrs. Olga Melasecchi, Director of the Jewish Museum of Rome, and Maestro Claudio Di Segni, his choir and the musicians.