ROME (Dispatches) – The government of Italy’s Southern Puglia region has severed all relations with the Zionist regime in protest of the genocide of Palestinians, local media reported.
According to state-run ANSA news agency, Puglia Governor Michele Emiliano said he took the decision “owing to the genocide of defenseless Palestinians underway by the [Zionist prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s regime.
“Emiliano issued instructions to “all managers and employees of the region, its agencies and participating companies to break off all relations of any kind with the institutional representatives of the Israeli regime and with all those subjects attributable to it who are not openly and declaredly motivated by the desire to organize initiatives to stop the massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” according to the news agency.
“This is a position towards the Netanyahu regime,” the governor noted.
The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal aggression against Gaza since October 2023, killing more than 54,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former war Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war crimes against civilians in the enclave.
In a related development, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim described the Zionist regime’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza as a “test of our collective conscience” that demands concrete action.
While addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue, a prominent annual forum for defense and security held in Singapore, Anwar brought attention to the worrisome surge in global armed conflicts, noting that the count of these conflicts is currently at its highest level since World War II, citing the ongoing situations in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, and Sudan.
“Genocide in Gaza is a test of our collective conscience, the scale of devastation, open defiance of humanitarian norms, and the paralysis of institutions meant to uphold them, demand more than sympathy; they demand consistency and actions,” he said.
The United Nations says the besieged Gaza Strip is the “hungriest place on Earth”, adding that the territory’s entire 2.3 million people face “catastrophic hunger.”