The granddaughter of Italy’s World War II dictator, Benito Mussolini, said the whole world should “beg forgiveness” from Israel.

Wow.

Alessandra Mussolini, a member of Italy’s neo-fascist National Alliance party, is touring Israel with Gianfranco Fini, who also this week “condemned his country’s fascist past and said lessons must be learned to deal with racism and anti-Semitism today.”

It’s a very peculiar apology, and one that raises some historical questions. For example, how bad did the Jews have it in fascist Italy, that such an apology should be warranted? According to one source (cited in The Jewish Press),

Italian Jews, among the most highly assimilated in Europe, did in fact survive in greater numbers than their brethren in other countries, but it cannot be denied that nearly 8,000 Jews out of a 1939 population of 35,000 never returned from the concentration camps. While it is true that Italians found racism, on the whole, repulsive, Mussolini did succeed in pushing through the notorious 1938 racial laws as a nod to Hitler. And while the Italian army was often humane in its behavior towards Jews, the fascist squads in Florence and elsewhere were infamous for their murderous cruelty.

Well, that settles that. Il Doucheneck murderers.

But still, other questions persist. What of Vlad Jabotinsky and his Revisionist party? Often called “the Jewish Hitler,” Jabotinsky was a proud fascist, and a friend of Mussolini’s. It should be noted that today’s Likud party, of which Ariel Sharon is a member, is in fact the remnant of Jabotinsky’s Revisionists. And just like the Revisionists, Likud advocates a militaristic, expansionist, ethnocentric political platform. If Likud is a watered down fascist party, its relationship with Italian neofascists should be unsprising, as should its relationship with the Bush administration. Unsuprising, sure, but alarming nonetheless.

[Updated] Forgive me for the transgression of linking to something published by Lyndon Larouche, but these pieces on Jabotinsky are rather thought provoking. I wouldn’t swear by ’em, but most of their sources are Jewish ones.