Italy’s leading investigative TV program recently featured a long report on Gaza and interviewed me about my book, The Palestine Laboratory.
As a result of this program, the program and host are being threatened in very direct and worrying ways:
“You should be ashamed of last week’s ignoble anti-Israel service. Ethnic cleansing by the Israeli army in Gaza!? You deserve it, Charlie Hebdo’s editorial room style”. The message of threats was delivered to the editorial staff of the investigation program Report by Rai3, the host Sigfrido Ranucci denounced on Tuesday, in a post on Facebook.
The message alludes to Giorgio Mottola’s service on the situation of the war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Scary” intimidation, writes Ranucci, who explains that the text “evokes the attack of January 7, 2015, when a commando of two men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles broke into the premises of the newspaper’s headquarters during the weekly editorial meeting, shooting at those present. Twelve people were killed, including the director Stéphane Charbonnier called Charb, several historical collaborators of the periodical (Cabu, Tignous, Georges Wolinski, Honoré) and two policemen”, adding that the episode was reported to the policemen of his escort.
The broadcast and the host were the solidarity of the president of the Rai supervisory committee Barbara Floridia: “I express full and total solidarity and personal closeness towards Sigfrido Ranucci and the entire editorial staff of Report for the unacceptable and shameful threats suffered following the broadcast of a report on Israel. I hope that the competent authorities will be able to identify as soon as possible the person responsible for this act that marks yet another unworthy attack on freedom of information in our country,” wrote the policy of the 5 Star Movement.
The same Movement published a note in support of Report: “The threats suffered by the editorial staff of Report related to the service on the situation in Israel and Palestine are very serious and deserve the utmost attention. Sigfrido Ranucci is already forced to live under escort and receiving similar threats represents yet another vile attack on the independent press in our country. We are sure that all the political forces share our indignation and will be able to express closeness to you and your editorial staff,” write the 5S exponents in the Rai supervisory committee Dario Carotenuto, Dolores Bevilacqua and Anna Laura Orrico.