Fiamma Nirenstein

In 2008 she was elected to the Italian Parliament for Silvio Berlusconi's The People of Freedom party and she served as Vice President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies for the length of the legislature, ending in March 2013.

[1] In 2015, Nirenstein was nominated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the future ambassador to Italy, but subsequently withdrew for what she stated were personal reasons.

[7] In the debates that ensued in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 - when Nirenstein signed a letter of protest - she found herself in disagreement with fellow communists who considered that Israel had become an occupying power.

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.

[a][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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

The main topic through all Fiamma Nirenstein's political activity is the fight against totalitarianism and terrorism, informed by her definition of antisemitism and hate against Israel.

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.

[15] She has interviewed Rajiv Gandhi and met Deng Xiaoping, protagonists of the anti-communist regimes revolutions of the 1980s, and in the area of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, Arafat, Sharon and Netanyahu.

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.

[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.

[citation needed] 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.