An Israeli right-wing editor framed Berlusconi’s Italy as a model for Israel

Evidence

In 1997, Ofir Ha-Ivry, the editor-in-chief of Azure, an Israeli right-wing publication, published an article titled “The New Prince” about the maverick Italian businessman and politician Silvio Berlusconi. Italy, according to Ha-Ivry, has held a unique position in the history of Western political history. “Its vigorous social and cultural conservatism,” he wrote, “has enabled this once-beleaguered nation to become an industrial power without paying the price in bloodshed or suffering that often leads to leftist regimes.” Under Berlusconi, Ha-Ivry argued, Italian conservatism crystallized ideologically as a healthy synthesis of the economic freedom of classical liberalism and the social and cultural conservatism of Catholicism, a synthesis that promises economic prosperity and political and social stability that other nations (including Israel) should adopt as a political model. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 529

Categorization

• SEED: An article angle: how the Israeli Right’s admiration for Italy (from Jabotinsky’s Revisionists to Berlusconi) reveals a recurring search for a ‘conservative modernity’ — industrialization without revolutionary bloodshed.
• XREF: Connects to the theme of nations seeking political models abroad, echoing the broader reading about how movements mythologize foreign societies to solve domestic problems.