We have an outstanding request out to interview the Israeli Prime Minister, for example, Benjamin Netanyahu. So listen, I think it's a passionate, deeply felt interview that will inspire many listeners and appall

others.

Here it goes.

So why don't we start with the childhood, where you came from, your family, your Italian roots and how they led you to where you now are. I grew

up in a relatively small town in south of Italy where nothing special happens. No one really leaves, no one moves in. And I've always had this curiosity for the world. This is one. The second I grew up in a country where certain issues in the 80s were discussed as domestic issues, where international law did matter. It was in the background, but it was the framework to refer and analyze facts happening internationally, like the question of Palestine or the relationship between Europe and Africa. So this is a little bit what has shaped my childhood, I would say. I grew up in a family where my mom was staying at home, and she was a fantastic, formidable woman. And my dad was a lawyer, passed away when I was adolescent. And then I studied law and I was very passionate about justice. This is the thing. I've always had this feeling of standing up for, not just for myself, but for others. This has been a trait of who I am. And then human rights came really as a call rather than as a training. Everything changed, I believe. While I had an understanding of the question of Palestine, it's never been an issue I've engaged with as an activist. As I went to university, though, what I knew about Palestine, which was, as I said, something that comes from growing up in Italy, where Palestine and the rights of the Palestinians to exist as a people was a domestic issue. It was. Yeah, very much so. And it was understood as something that would never be at the detriment of the state of Israel or the Israeli people. There was never the terms of the debate, the sort of the overton window back then was not the Palestinians were not an existential threat to Israel. This is the background as I was growing up. And then I went to SOAS. Francesca, can I come in?

So let's stick on your background before you get on to the Palestinians, because this is so much your life now, but presumably it was not always your life. Setting aside your current role, tell us about you as a young person. Tell us about the Italy in which you were growing up. Tell us about the university you went to. Tell us about when did you first go abroad? Which countries did you first travel to? Which countries were you first interested in? I

don't know if it's my generation or people from the part of the world, southern Italy where I come from. We're not quite like the millennials right now who are open to the world naturally. There was no internet back then. And what we knew about the world came through TV, radio programs and books. Learning knowledge was being shared at a much slower pace, if you want. So I grew up like any child, I would say, and any adolescent in south of Italy, nothing special. I was not expecting to do anything spectacular in my life, but I had this strong sense of, again, as I said, it might seem like an ideological statement, but it's not. I've always been deeply intolerant to injustice. And let me frame it with something that you might relate to. I grew up in South Italy that it's been plagued by criminality, mafia. I think that when I was adolescent, two important judges who had been really at the forefront of the fight against the mafia, like Giovanni Falcone and Borsellino, are killed. And this has marked so deeply my sense of justice as something that eventually becomes a fight and a struggle that is taken up by the people. Because eventually, after Falcone and Brusselino, who had denounced for a long time that the mafia was not just a criminal endeavor committed by street thugs or ordinary criminals, it was a state within the state could only thrive because of a commonality and intersectionality of interest between the power, the politics and the financial economic system. And they had exposed this and they had been isolated, silenced, smeared. Eventually they were killed. This is when the message of people like Falcone and Borsellino, trust me, so many people, journalists, police officers, ordinary individuals, ordinary citizens have been killed by the mafia. The message that Falcone and Borsellino left is that the mafia thrives with our silence, was picked up by the people. And in Sicily in particular, there was a movement against this omerta this they are silencing us all and it has been very successful so I think that this is very much part of my upbringing and there is another thing another thing as I grew up it was not necessarily intentional I believe but I'm the generation was first exposed to what had happened during the Holocaust. And my upbringing is marked, for example, by Jewish Italian authors like Primo Levi. Primo Levi is part of the first authorship I had the privilege to delve into. And so it has very much shaped the way I look at the world. This view that the extermination of a people can happen in the heart of civilized Europe, of civilized Italy, simply because you are no longer seen as human. And you can be taken away from your professions, from your home, from your life, and put in ghettos and starved and be killed with diseases before being put in concentration camps this is something that has been there in the background and frankly i can tell you i've rediscovered it over the past over the past years because it's really about what humanity is so you are i have to say or you're pushing me into something that i've never really thought about or spoken about. But it's real. Probably it's important also to remind who we are, where we come from, right? What

would you say about Italy today in relation to that image of Italy that you've just given, the organized crime connections and so forth? And also, what sort of lasting influence do you think the Italian politician with whom I had most to do with, Silvio Berlusconi, what lasting impact does he have on Italian politics and culture?

This is a very good point because, you know, we have had a transition. I don't know how much your audience is familiar with Italian political landscape. But during the 90s, and again, this was when I was a fresh adolescent, a young adolescent, this is the time where we have had a political transition that we call the end of the First Republic and the beginning of the Second Republic, which is marked by 20 years of Berlusconi's and the influence he has had. And I understand who you are pointing to this because in a way there has been a political transition but not necessarily for the betterment. So in this, what has happened in Italy at that point where the transition was prompted by the need to deal with corruption, the politicians, which were, I mean, frankly, they were intellectually much more mature and knowledgeable than any politician you would have today. And I assume what I'm saying, but were intellectuals in their own domain. And still, they didn't have clean hands when it came to politics. There were issues with misappropriation of public funds, etc. So the Italian public, there was this big inquiry, this big, massive investigation, which was clean hands, manipulated, led by a pool of judges in Milan that led to a political transition. And this is when there was a moment where I think in retrospect, like 30 years later, we were not ready as a people politically to come in with an alternative. people from the old establishment regenerated themselves, proposed themselves as the change, as the novelty, but they were just people who were recycling themselves. And Berlusconi is one of those. And he has used the power of the media to reshape the mind. And this is, in a way, Karl Popper's for power, if you want. And now we have a much more complicated situation because it's very difficult. We don't have free media anymore. It's very difficult to have an informed debate. And also there is a general lack of preparedness about international affairs compared to before. So, for example, for the new generation, what they know about Congo, about Sudan, about what's happening in Serbia, for example, or Palestine comes from social media. Because it's not what I'm talking about is not necessarily discussed in mainstream media. So there is now there is this disconnect between the mainstream media, which speak to the older generation, my age and above, and the younger generation grows through other means. And we are still trying to make sense of where we are going as a society. I don't think that this is applicable to Italy only. Francesca,

let's now apply this to Palestine and Israel.

Let's start

with the social media.