Last week, images of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir taunting kneeling activists from a Gaza-bound flotilla quickly circled the globe.

In Europe, within minutes of Ben Gvir posting the video on X, the story shot to the top of virtually every major media outlet.

For center-right Italian politicians, the episode represented yet another embarrassing incident in which they had to distance themselves from a country that, until recently, they had largely described as an ally.

“It is not acceptable that these activists, many of whom are Italian citizens, are subjected to treatment that violates human dignity,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on X less than two hours after Ben Gvir’s original post. “Italy demands an apology.”

According to Alissa Pavia, an Italian senior fellow at the American think tank Atlantic Council, the episode could represent a dramatic turn in ties between the two countries.

“Israel may be losing one of its last major allies in Europe,” she wrote in a thread on X the following day. “As more details emerge from the testimonies of Sumud Flotilla activists, the divide between Rome and Jerusalem appears headed toward a complete rupture.”

Meloni and her government have hardly been fans of past flotilla initiatives or the activists behind them.

In September, as the previous Global Sumud Flotilla sailed toward the Middle East, she described it as “gratuitous, dangerous, and irresponsible.”

However, seven months later, even before Ben Gvir’s stunt, Meloni struck a different tone, following the April 30 Israeli interception of several flotilla boats near the Greek island of Crete over 1,000 kilometers from Italy’s coast.

“The government condemns the seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla vessels in international waters off the Greek coast and calls on the Israeli government to immediately release all Italians who were illegally detained, ” read a statement by the premier.

Since Meloni was elected in 2022, Rome has been one of Jerusalem’s most sympathetic allies within the European Union. While Italy maintained the traditional European stance in favor of the two-state solution, the government also largely considered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a member of the same political family.

“Italy has a historical tradition of good relations with Israel, but also with the Arab world,” said Giovanni Orsina, director of the Political Science Department at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, who has written extensively on right-wing movements and their political history and evolution in Italy and beyond.

“Under the Meloni government, the closeness to Israel has intensified,” he told The Times of Israel over the telephone. “They have been more favorable toward Israel than [previous governments].”

That closeness has weakened in the past few months.

“The actions taken by Israel sparked a very strong outcry among a significant portion of the Italian public,” Orsina said. “In my opinion, it’s not as large as people say, but it’s very active. Italy has also always valued its European partnerships and multilateralism. For all these reasons, the Italian government has visibly found itself in difficulty and has changed policy.”

Don’t mess with the Catholic Church

According to Lorenzo Castellani, an analyst for........

© The Times of Israel