Brothers of Italy party chief Georgia Meloni, who is poised to become the first far-right Italian leader since World War II, previously praised Iran, the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and other allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Speaking to reporters in December 2018, Meloni said that if not for Hezbollah and the rest of the pro-Assad front — which includes Iran and Russia — Christians in Syria would no longer be able to display the nativity scene depicting Jesus Christ’s birth during Christmas.
Assad has championed himself as a defender of Christians and other religious minorities against the predominantly Sunni rebels fighting to topple him since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011. Among the rebel ranks were jihadist groups such as Islamic State and an al-Qaeda-linked faction.
Her comments came after then-Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, who is now part of the Meloni-led right-wing coalition on pace to secure majorities in both Italian houses of parliament, denounced Hezbollah as a terrorist organization while visiting Israel, prompting criticism in Italy.
Meloni’s remarks did not address Israel, whose destruction Iran and its proxies such as Hezbollah regularly call for.
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In an unrelated tweet from 2014, Meloni decried “another massacre of children in Gaza” amid the war between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in the Hamas-run enclave. The Twitter post appeared to be in response to deadly strikes on a hospital and playground in a Gaza City refugee camp that Israel attributed to misfired rockets by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Italy’s Matteo Salvini, left, and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, December 12, 2018. (Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)
Israel, which has previously boycotted far-right European parties that have come to power, has yet to officially respond to the Italian election results which were announced as the country marked the Jewish new year.
