Canaries

Last week, all that stood between our taxi and our hotel in Romewere 1 million anti-war protesters.

My wife and I had gone to Italy for a brief vacation — theeditor fiddling while the world burns — but found a Europe seething withemotion over America’s actions in the Middle East and the world. You can escapefrom current events by spending a few hours inside the Vatican Museum or acouple hours at a trattoria, but eventually, back on the streets, the talk isof war, Bush and war.

When we finally made it to the hotel, Nicola, the deskclerk, tried to make light of the marchers, to put us Yanks at ease.

“Oh, what is it they’re saying? No to war, yes to peace? NoGeorge Bush, yes Barbra Streisand?” Nicola believed “Stony End” was Barbra’sbest album, and launched into a full-throated Babs imitation. He was the onlyEuropean we met not eager to offer us criticism of the war.

Rainbow-colored flags with the word PACE (peace) lined thestreets of Florence and Rome, as prevalent, if not more so, as American flagshere after Sept. 11. The French magazine Le Match ran a huge photo of PresidentJacque Chirac under the headline, “A Warrior for Peace.” Bookstores featuredthe latest popular nonfiction work, “La Nuova Intifada” (“The New Intifada”). Ithumbed through it — it largely blames Israel and its supporter, the United States, for “the failure of Mideast peace process and the lack of concessionsof the Israeli government.”

Nobody I spoke with supported the war. To them, it was aboutoil, Israel or power. It was Bully America against Third World Iraq. At a cafein Siena, the diners at the table beside us were international: Italian,Eastern European, French.

“The war,” said one young man, “is for Bush and Sharon.Sharon is a butcher.” The others nodded, “Tell us something we don’t know.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made it clear thathe supports George Bush, but evidently his sentiments are not unanimouslyshared. Even so, at least in Italy, people weren’t anti-American. They werewaving the PACE flag, not burning the American one. People wondered what wethought of the war — their belief that this is “Bush’s war” prevented them fromunderstanding that other Americans themselves also supported it.

 

Watching all this, warily, are Europe’s Jews. “We are zeropercent of the Italian population,” a Roman Jewish woman told me.Statistically, she’s close to correct — there’s about 35,000 Jews among apopulation of 60 million. They are torn about the war, and at the same timefeeling especially vulnerable.

In Florence, one member of that city’s 1,000-membercommunity said things haven’t been quite the same since Sept. 11. There is agreat deal of acceptance of Jews among all but a fringe group, she told me, butthe Muslim population is growing, and the looming war is making everyoneuneasy.

“I don’t like it,” a Roman shopkeeper said in refrence tothe war. Only late in our conversation did he reveal — as I ingeniouslysuspected from the Hebrew birkat ha’esek (business blessing) by his cashregister — that he was Jewish. The war is keeping tourists away, and making himfeel insecure.

The concerns of the relatively few Jews in Italy palesagainst those of the much more visible Jewish populations of France, whichnumbers some 650,000, and Germany.

“This war is going to be seen by all Muslims in France as awar against Arabs, and by others as a war for Israel,” a French Jewish anti-warprotester told one of our reporters there: “That makes me very scared of whatmight happen here if there’s a war.”

While the number of anti-Semitic incidents in thosecountries has dropped recently — after increasing greatly in 2002 — officialsfear that attacks will surge if the United States invades Iraq.

On the plane home, I read a story in the InternationalHerald Tribune about how Marine sergeants must pick one soldier from theirplatoon to be the first to take off his protective gear to determine if thedanger from a chemical or a biological attack is really past. If he surviveswithout symptoms for five minutes, the rest of his platoon can take off theirmasks.

The image of that first Marine sticks with me as I think ofthe Jews of Europe now. If the war drags on, becoming even more despised, verylikely the first population to feel the sting of retribution will be Europe’sJews. While we here are ensconced in our duct-taped rooms, they will bestanding outside, with all of their masks off.