Fiamma Nirenstein

Silvio Berlusconi and his ally, Gianfranco Fini, the former leader of Alleanza Nazionale, Italy's conservative party, invited Nirenstein to become a candidate for their joint list Il Partito della Liberta ("The Party of Liberty") for the April 2008 national elections. During her campaign for a seat in Liguria, she did not talk at rallies about local issues, but rather concentrated on expounding her belief that Israel was in the vanguard of Western democracies in the battle against Islamic terrorism. In her view, the most important thing for Italians in grasping their national identity was to stand by the side of Israel.[lower-alpha 1][5] In general, through her political career, Nirenstein aimed to contribute to an anti-terrorist, pro-Israeli and Atlantic Alliance, which advocated the values of the culture of human rights.[9]

Elected Member of the Italian Parliament, she served as Vice President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies for the entire XVIth legislature, ending in March 2013. She was also a member of the Italian delegation to the Council of Europe, where she represented Italy in the Network for the fight against violence on children. Nirenstein also established and chaired the Committee for the Inquiry into Antisemitism of the Italian Parliament. During her parliamentary activity, she had a particular focus on Israel, human rights, international controversies, democratization in the Middle East and awareness of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Among the most significant activities during her parliamentary activity there are the letter to the Ambassador of Syria in Italy, Khaddur Hasan, to stop the repression of the Assad regime, signed by 50 parliamentarians belonging to all political groups and various parliamentary questions including the question to the Foreign Affairs Committee of May 4, 2011 on the ongoing repression in Syria.[10]

Nirenstein is a leading columnist for the conservative Italian daily "Il Giornale". From 1991 to 2006, she has been correspondent from Israel for "La Stampa" daily and the Berlusconi-owned "Panorama" weekly. She also wrote for the newspaper Grazia and was the founder of the monthly Rosa.[11]

She is the author of thirteen books in Italian and seven in English.[12] In Italy, Nirenstein has introduced and prefaced Bernard Lewis, Natan Sharansky and Ruthie Blum. She has been granted over twenty awards for her literary and journalistic activity.

Nirenstein started her career in 1977 and has been a columnist and correspondent for all major Italian magazines (Panorama; l'Espresso; Epoca). Nirenstein contributed to The New York Sun, to the Commentary magazine and has written for the Moment magazine.

Since 1998, she predicted the first terrorist threats in bin Laden's speeches and the suicide bombings of Islamic extremist.[13]

Some of Nirenstein's work has been published in four American anthologies. Bernard Goldberg's book "Bias" (Regency Publishing, 2002, pp. 200–206) quotes her extensively for the view she writes well about the phenomenon of terrorism. A piece she wrote on the 9/11 disaster for Commentary magazine the day after the attack to explain the mentality of terrorists was subsequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal.[14]

Fiamma Nirenstein has produced many documentaries for the Italian TV, the last by the title of "Settlers", about the disengagement from Gaza seen from the perspective of the settlers themselves. In 2006 she conceived and conducted a program on foreign affairs, "Ore diciotto/Mondo", on channel RAI 2. Radio Radicale has interviewed here for its "Il medio Oriente visto da Gerusalemme" program.[15]

She has interviewed Rajiv Gandhi and met Deng Xiaoping, protagonists of the anti-communist regimes revolutions of the '80s, and in the area of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, Arafat, Sharon and Netanyahu.

Fiamma Nirenstein began a working relationship with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli-based think-tank, in the late-2000s. Nirenstein's interests largely focus on European-Israeli relations, anti-Semitism, and sociological studies of terrorism.[16] Nirenstein served both as an editor and contributor for her most recent publication, Lessons from Israel's Response to Terrorism. Within the publication, Nirenstein authored an article entitled "Resilience, the Israeli People's Weapon against Terror". In the essay, Nirenstein argues that Israelis have a unique culture built upon resilience which makes the country particularly strong in responding to terrorism.[17]

In 2016, Nirenstein participated in an interview at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on the subject of European Anti-Semitism. Among the subjects discussed include the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and its contemporary manifestations, particularly in what Nirenstein terms "Israelphobia".

One of her works produced while at the Israeli think-tank was Israel is Us: A Journalist's Odyssey in Understanding the Middle East. According to the organization's website, Nirenstein confesses the publication's premise is 'very simple': "Israel, contrary to commonly accepted propaganda, is a positive model, a case study for anyone who finds himself living in a democratic society that must eventually confront a defensive war- one that encompasses the entire universe of Western democracy today.”[18]

Nirenstein continues to work at the think-tank.

Nirenstein's writings have also appeared, among other websites, on the Times of Israel, the Gatestone Institute and the Machiavelli Center for Political and Strategic Studies.[19] Since 2007, she has also maintained her own personal website on which she publishes material in English and Italian. Today she is columnist for the Jewish News Syndicate.[20]

On June 29, 2011, Nirenstein was unanimously elected chairperson of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians (ICJP),[29] an organization that brings together Jewish legislators, parliamentarians and government ministers from around the world.

In the same year, she established a center on Foreign Policy, "SUMMIT - for the dialogue between Europe and Middle East, human rights and democracy", with which she organized tens of events and conferences.

Nirenstein is a Selection Committee Member of the Genesis Prize, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and of the Gatestone Institute, as well as a member of the advisory board of Ngo-Monitor and a board member of the European Friends of Israel (EFI).[30] She is also one of the six founding members of the steering committee of the Interparliamentary Coalition on Combating Antisemitism (ICCA), and in the board of the Friends of Israel Initiative, established on 2010 by former Prime Minister of Spain José María Aznar. She is also a board member of the "Talmud Project", a major initiative, sponsored by the Italian government, to translate the Babylonian Talmud into Italian.

Nirenstein has been dedicating a great effort in voicing for Muslim dissidents. In December 2007 she promoted and organized in Rome the international conference "Fighting for Democracy in the Islamic World", which was the continuation of the great Prague conference on dissidents, promoted by Natan Sharansky, Václav Havel and José María Aznar in June the same year.

Fiamma Nirenstein has discussed antisemitism, anti-Zionism and the left. She has been official speaker in a variety of conferences on antisemitism, among them, the world forum of OCSE in Berlin about antisemitism, the Boston Conference on "antisemitism, the press and Europe" (2004), "Multiculturalism, the left and antisemitism" during the 2006 international symposium of the Vidal Sassoon Center (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the 2014 SICSA international symposium, she raised the issue of fighting what she deemed to be "Israelophobia" as a means of beating contemporary antisemitism.

• On 16 December 2009 Nirenstein, together with the other members of the ICCA steering committee, was awarded by the Israeli Knesset for her commitment in the fight against Antisemitism.
• In April 2011, she was awarded in New York by CAMERA, together with José Maria Aznar and John Bolton, for her activity as "Friend of Israel".[31]
• In June 2011, Nirenstein was included in the Jerusalem Post list of the 50 most influential Jews in the world, headed by Mark Zuckerberg.

In an interview with Haaretz, Nirenstein stated that her country of origin, Italy, had much to learn about democracy from Israel. She also made the following assertions:-

• "Every Jew in the world is an Israeli even if he's not aware of it. Anyone who doesn't know it is making a big mistake."[5]
• "...morally speaking, there mustn't be negotiations with Hamas, which thinks that Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs. You can't negotiate with cannibals, who eat human beings."[5]
• "I'm not saying that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all Muslims are criminals. But Hamas has announced that it wants to conquer Rome, to make it the outpost from which it will conquer all of Europe.".[5]