Italy-Israel, the Friuli Region grants the patronage denied by the municipality of Udine –

John Of Capua

July 26, 2024

The lesson of Friuli Venezia Giulia to the Municipality of Udine. If the mayor Alberto Felice De Toni had decided not to accept the request for patronage arrived from the president of the FIGC, Gabriele Gravina, for the football match Italy-Israel, scheduled for October 14 at the Bluenergy Stadium and valid for the fourth day of Group B of the Nations League, the regional executive led by the governor Massimiliano Fedriga does not behave in the same way. According to rumors, in the next few hours, in fact, the green light should arrive from Piazza dell’Unità to what should be a due act by any institution and that has nothing to do with the conflict, which for some months, has been taking place in the Middle East.

It is no coincidence that the choice of the mayor De Toni, who through an Ansa note, had spoken of a “divisive decision”, Israel being a state at war, had generated quite a bit of controversy, especially on the web. More than a few people on social media had accused the Udine administration of “anti-Semitism”. A choice, moreover, not very logical that of the tricolor sash, considering that the same executive, a few days earlier, had given its patronage to a pasta defined as anti-fascist. A difference of views that had rightly unleashed, in the space of a few hours, more than a simple tam tam of posts, of comments with a twist. More than a few Internet users, in fact, had accused the mayor of having a different behavior depending on the interlocutor he was facing. Apart from a few pro-Palestinian students who had congratulated him for the choice to deny the patronage, many were outraged by a denial that fueled hatred and not unity between peoples.

Despite this, the Municipality, still today, does not intend to take a step back and change a position, which should be obvious when talking about sport that unites. Fortunately, the Region was not caught unprepared. Not only did Massimiliano Fedriga respond promptly to the request of the FIGC, but more than a few, in his majority, promptly condemn a “discriminatory” action, which is so reminiscent of that denial of civil rights applied during the racial persecution against the Jews.