Memory Must Never Become a Permanent Moral Entitlement

The West is one thing. Israel is another. Zionism is something else again. Perhaps one of the problems of our time begins precisely with our inability to distinguish between realities that are constantly conflated in public debate.

Europe bears an enormous historical responsibility. The Holocaust was one of the most terrible expressions of European barbarism in the twentieth century, and its memory cannot be erased, relativized, or turned into a matter of political convenience. The dead do not need to be used to continue fighting the wars of the living.

And this is where my question begins.

What happens when the memory of a crime becomes, generation after generation, a kind of permanent moral capital? What happens when the guilt of children and grandchildren is used to shape the political choices of people who were born decades after the events? What happens when historical responsibility toward the victims becomes a permanent obligation toward a state, a government, or a particular political agenda?

Memory should prevent Auschwitz from ever happening again.

It should not become a blank check for anyone invoking Auschwitz.

This does not mean denying the Holocaust. On the contrary, it means taking its tragedy seriously enough to reject any political exploitation of its memory.

A European can say: what happened to Europe's Jews was a monstrous and unforgivable crime.

And that same European can also say: this does not mean that every decision made by an Israeli government must be regarded as morally beyond criticism.

The two statements are perfectly compatible.

Germany can have a profound historical responsibility toward the Jewish people without that responsibility becoming an eternal obligation dictating its foreign policy. Italy can acknowledge its own historical guilt without turning that memory into a perpetual political promissory note.

Otherwise, something deeply paradoxical happens: the dead become prisoners of the politics of the living.

And this is where the Middle East enters the picture.

Perhaps what we need is a genuine reset.

Not necessarily the disappearance of Israel. Not necessarily the creation of another state. Not necessarily a solution that can already be drawn on a map.

A reset in the deepest sense of the word: the end of a political and psychological system in which every generation inherits the wars, fears, grievances, and guilt of the generation before it.

I do not know what political form should emerge from such a reset.

A Jewish state? Two states? One binational state? A federation? Some other structure that we cannot even imagine today?

I don't know.

And perhaps the problem is precisely that we keep believing we must already know the answer before having the courage to question the system that brought us here.

A reset does not necessarily mean erasing a people.

It means rejecting the idea that history must condemn the people of the present to live forever inside the categories of their ancestors.

Israelis are not Nazis.

Today's Palestinians are not responsible for crimes committed by Arabs of previous generations.

Germans born decades after Auschwitz are not personally guilty of the Holocaust.

Italians of younger generations are not the Fascists of the twentieth century.

History must be remembered, but it cannot become a hereditary prison.

And perhaps this is the hardest thing to accept:

memory can be eternal, but guilt cannot.

Memory belongs to the dead.

Political responsibility belongs to the living.

Confusing the two means turning the past into an instrument for governing the present.

And so the real reset I imagine is not necessarily geographical.

It is first and foremost moral and political.

It is the possibility of reaching a Middle East in which nobody can say:

We are entitled to this because you did that to our ancestors.

A world in which Israelis can live without the fear of annihilation, and Palestinians can live without being condemned to exile, occupation, or permanent war.

A world in which the Holocaust continues to be remembered, studied, and mourned, but can no longer be transformed into a permanent moral entitlement.

Because remembering the dead should help free the living from repeating history.

It should not condemn them to repeat it.

Perhaps the real act of courage is not choosing which people should finally win.

It is imagining an order in which no people needs to achieve a final victory over another.

And if reaching that point requires a radical reset of the present political order in the Middle East, then the question should not be which state must survive or disappear.

The question should be much simpler—and much harder:

How do we finally build something that does not need the guilt of the past to justify the wars of the future?

Europe’s Limited Sovereignty After 1945

When, on a cold morning on 24 October 1945, Vidkun Quisling was executed at Oslo’s Akershus Fortress, many Europeans believed that the end of the Second World War had also marked the end of an era of collaborationist governments and regimes imposed by foreign powers. Liberation from Nazi-Fascist rule appeared to open the way towards a new political age based on representative democracy, popular sovereignty, and the self-determination of nations.

The reality of post-war Europe, however, was far more complex. The continent emerging from the conflict was not a Europe completely free to determine its own strategic choices: it was a divided continent, shaped by opposing spheres of influence, as became evident with the beginning of the Cold War.

In Eastern Europe, the presence of the Red Army led to the establishment of communist regimes closely linked to the Soviet Union. From Poland to Romania and Bulgaria, and in the newly created German Democratic Republic, governments existed that were formally national but politically integrated into Moscow’s sphere of influence. State sovereignty was therefore conditioned by the geopolitical balance created after the Allied victory.

Breznev and Honecker Kiss

Yet Western Europe was not entirely free from external constraints either. Countries that had emerged defeated from the war, especially Germany and Italy, found themselves in a unique position: on one side, they built democratic institutions based on free elections and constitutional systems; on the other, they operated within an international order in which the major strategic decisions were inevitably influenced by the victorious powers.

West Germany was created under the strong supervision and influence of the United States, Great Britain, and France, and its membership in NATO defined its strategic role until reunification in 1990. The Federal Republic of Germany was undoubtedly a democracy, but a democracy integrated into a specific international order, one largely shaped by Washington.

Italy’s post-war republic was born in a similar context. The Armistice of Cassibile in 1943 represented the decisive break with the Axis powers and the beginning of Italy’s alignment with the Allies, but it also left the country in a position of extreme political and military weakness. Post-war Italy had to rebuild its institutions while operating under the influence of the victorious powers.

The Atlantic choice, formalized by Italy’s accession to NATO in 1949, guaranteed security and stability during a period marked by the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the same time, however, it inevitably limited Italy’s room for strategic autonomy. The presence of American military bases, even though integrated into the NATO framework, became one of the most visible aspects of this reality.

The  Three Masters

Nevertheless, the deepest issue does not concern only military matters, but also a political and cultural dimension: the gradual acceptance of a subordinate role within the international order. For decades, part of the Italian political class operated with the awareness that the major decisions regarding foreign policy, security, and economics were strongly influenced by forces beyond the national debate.

This does not mean denying the existence of Italian democracy, free elections, or political pluralism. It means recognizing that the democracies of post-war Europe developed within a precise geopolitical framework, in which national autonomy was inevitably connected to the requirements of international alliances.

The Italian political history of the second half of the twentieth century must therefore also be understood within this broader context. The confrontation between different political forces — from Christian Democracy to Socialists and Communists — took place within a world divided into opposing blocs. The events concerning relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia, the eastern border question, and the Treaty of Osimo demonstrate how national issues were often intertwined with much larger international dynamics.

The history of post-war Italy is therefore also the history of a constant search for balance between national sovereignty and membership in wider international systems. A challenge that does not concern Italy alone, but Europe as a whole.

The European turning point 

Today, Europe remains a major economic and political area, but it still does not represent an autonomous centre of power comparable to the United States or other global powers. The European Union possesses significant economic and regulatory influence, yet in many strategic fields — from security to energy, from technology to finance — it remains affected by external dynamics.

Within this framework, the United Kingdom, often considered less central after Brexit, continues to maintain a significant role thanks to the global importance of the City of London and its historical, diplomatic, and strategic connections with the Anglo-Saxon world.

The fundamental question of our time is therefore not only who formally governs states, but how much real freedom democracies still possess in determining their own destiny.

The history of Europe since 1945 can also be interpreted as the history of this permanent tension: between independence and interdependence, between declared sovereignty and exercised sovereignty.