Liberation Day Hijacked

Excuses! Apologies! Condemnation!

It's what we are getting this morning from the centre-left coalition of Mr Prodi!

In one word: Hypocrisy!

Nothing more than shallow verbal retreat from the sheer madness which marked Liberation Day in Italy.

Israel’s ambassador in Rome said on Wednesday he was filled with “shame and rage” after two Israeli flags were burned during a demonstration commemorating the liberation of Italy at the end of World War Two.

The flags were set ablaze by a small group of left-wing demonstrators, who also shouted “Zionists, assassins” and “free Palestine” at a Jewish delegation which took part in the largely peaceful march in Milan on Tuesday.

The Vatican newspaper called the trampling and burning of Israeli flags a "disgusting" offense to all Jews".

"To offend a flag means to offend the people for whom it is a symbol, and therefore in this case it was an offense to the entire Jewish people, precisely on the day in which we celebrate liberation from their infamous oppressors,"

the L'Osservatore Romano newspaper wrote.

Condemnation also for booing at the same march of Education Minister Letizia Moratti, a prominent Berlusconi ally who is seeking election as Milan’s mayor in a forthcoming vote.

She attended the march with her wheel-chair bound father, a former partisan who survived deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, but decided to abandon the event after the protests.

Many members of Prodi’s coalition, which spans from Roman Catholic moderates to hardline Communists, criticized the jeering, but not everyone.