Presentation of “The New Middle East”

On Tuesday, June 29, at the Camis de Fonseca Foundation, the Italy-Israel Association presented Giovan Battista Brunori‘s book, THE NEW MIDDLE EAST (not very recent, published in 2025).
Alberto Nigra and Tullio Monti, who shared their views on the Middle Eastern question, discussed the author’s work.
In the text, Brunori attempts to outline the Middle Eastern context, foreseeing the decline of the Iranian “Shiite Crescent” and the emergence of a new balance of power. But as we know, time passes very quickly in those places, and in the meantime, a new war has upended the structures hypothesized in the book. An original aspect of the text is that it contains QR codes that, when scanned with a smartphone, allow the reader to rewatch television reports from the RAI networks.
Personally, I found the debate between the author and those present very interesting: it was short-lived because the previous contributions had taken up most of the meeting’s scheduled time, but perhaps this very situation led to concise and essential questions and equally incisive answers.

Brunori is certainly a “different” journalist than what we’re used to seeing and hearing, and the first question was: how does he live at RAI?
The media war has been brutal from the beginning, since October 7th: personally, I’m satisfied that I’ve kept the torch of doubt burning. I’ve also tried to propose a different narrative, even provoking a parliamentary question, for having exposed aid for Gaza that was rotting in the sun and not reaching the population. But I also received the Biagio Agnes Award for Special Correspondents—for my reports and services from the front that documented the complex situation of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. I believe I’ve emerged victorious from this experience: I don’t shirk my role and I’ve maintained my space.
The off-the-cuff statements of Israeli government ministers have put me in a difficult position: editors asking me not to broadcast pre-packaged reports or to endorse long-standing, hard-to-die prejudices. If Smotrich claims that Gaza is a real estate investment (a statement aimed at a small audience of internal supporters), the immediate conclusion, and one to be supported more or less explicitly, is that behind every action of the Israeli government there is a Economic interest.
I overcame most of these situations thanks to the mediation skills I acquired during my years of service in the Vatican.
I also had difficulty talking about the Hamas rapes. I should have reported on the phantom helicopters that fired friendly fire on the affected areas on October 7th. The interview with the Nova Festival producer aired months later, after it had already been published on other news programs.

More examples follow.
More questions: why isn’t Jordan being talked about? And Turkey? How did we get to the point of allowing such rampant anti-Semitism? What did we do wrong? How can we fix it?
“Jordan has discreetly collaborated with Western forces, while simultaneously making it appear that it was distributing aid to the Gaza Strip. It has tried to stay on the sidelines, keeping the jihadists under control.
Turkey’s position? It needs to be monitored; it is a sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas; it wants to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, just as Russia did the Russian Empire. We’ll have to see how the agreements with Trump and Iran go.”
On anti-Semitism… he doesn’t respond, but a spectator chimes in, bluntly: “We have to be realistic; if we’ve survived 3,000 years… we have to be pragmatic like the Prophets. Look at the facts and the news to understand how the world is going. In ’48, we made it, despite everything.”
Feelings after this afternoon? Great appreciation for your courage, honesty, and optimism.

Bruna Laudi