Edited by Stefano Vernole * Israel is a big issue even in Italy (where stereotype on Zionism is very common), often out of proportion, so one must be very objective but not necessarily ending as “politically correct”. Recently, however, the outstanding Giacomo Gabellini’s book, “Israel. Geopolitics of a small, great power”, has hit the mark. There is, of course, no lack of literature on the subject, given that the settlement of the Jews in the “Promised Land” coincided with the deportation (Nakba) and the persecution of the Palestinian Arab people, from the land they had always inhabited. In order to understand, one must therefore analyze the various aspects and effects of the Zionist issues, identifying its engine in the religious-messianic factor, but without forgetting its economic aspects which, on the contrary, take on a certain importance. Israel has been always into a historical and geopolitical context in which the ruthlessness and changes of alliances are on the agenda, always depending on the interests of the Zionist minority that held the power in Tel Aviv. The “genesis and realization of the Zionist project” goes back to the seventeenth century, when the British lawyer and parliamentarian Sir Henry Finch asked the government of His Majesty to favor the “return” of the Jews to Palestine to realize the biblical prophecies. London soon realize the advantage of the proposal: the decline of the Ottoman Empire allowed it to establish itself in a strategic geographical area to protect the communication routes to the Indies and ensure a real skill to influence the future structure of the Middle East. It was immediately clear how the “game” became dangerous for the English themselves; Napoleone Bonaparte thought to exploit in turn the Zionist suggestion as a picklock to undermine the British positions in the Mediterranean area. However, the French could not compete with the British banks in the long run: Lionel Rotschild granted in 1876 to the British Prime Minister Disraeli the funds needed to acquire from Egypt the company’s shares that ran the Suez Canal, while his cousin Edmond, who had shouldered most of the building’s costs, financed a remarkable Jewish migratory wave towards Palestine. Much more, the money of the “cursed barons” was more powerful than the ideological efforts of Hechler and Herzl, that in 1917 the proportion of the Jewish population compared to the Arabs was 9.7% in 1946, and was already 35.1%, with a Zionist community that in the same years had gone from 56,000 to 700,000 people. After the foundation of Israel, the Rome-Tel Aviv relationship gained importance, often misunderstood by a national public opinion able to remember only the “Lodo Moro” with the Palestinian armed groups. In the spring of 1948 an agreement was reached between Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi and Ada Sereni, an Italian-Israeli Jew who had been hired by his mentors Harari and Azadi (future Mossad leaders) had asked the Government of Rome to turn a blind eye to Zionist activities in Italy1. 1 Regarding the topic, I...