“I have a hotel and I have banned Jews from coming by blocking their reservations”. Or “the world has always been in danger because of the Jews”. These are some of the comments written on social media by a hotelier from Bergamo Alta, owner of the “Le Funi” structure. An example of anti-Semitic hatred which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, one of the main organizations monitoring the phenomenon, has become “a tsunami”. As in universities, where the intifada launched by pro-Palestine groups risks updating the list of cases registered from 7 October onwards.
The Union of Italy-Israel Associations immediately took action on the Bergamo case and filed a complaint against the entrepreneur for inciting hatred. And he asked the world of local hospitality to distance itself from the case in question. But it is precisely from the various affiliated associations in the various territories that worrying signals are coming. In Livorno, in the week of April 25th, Puccini’s “Turandot” was performed at the Goldoni Theatre. Everything was normal except that at the end of the opera the actors and workers went on stage with a banner reading “Stop the genocide” and wrapped in Palestinian flags. A demonstration that the city mayor and president of the Theater Luca Salvetti downplayed, focusing only on the request for a “ceasefire”, considered acceptable. In Rovereto the left-wing municipal councilor Omar Korichi, who defines himself as a “Palestinian partisan”, after Tehran’s attack against Israel published a post on his social networks in which he said that “Iran has the right to defend itself. Iran should now raze Israel to the ground as Israel bombed and killed 11 people by targeting the Iranian embassy in Iraq.”
As highlighted by the Anti-Defamation League in its report, the sudden increase in cases of anti-Semitism was recorded immediately after October 7, therefore even before there was a reaction from the Israeli Armed Forces in the Gaza Strip: between October and December last year alone, 216 cases of anti-Semitic hatred were recorded in our country. Among these, two emblematic cases occurred in Milan. On October 22, drawings painted on the ground depicting the Israeli flag were found on the Navigli. The drawing was accompanied by the invitation “please clean your shoes”. In the same days, a bar in the Lorenteggio district, also in the Lombardy capital, was attacked and covered with graffiti such as “criminal Jews = murderers” or “shitty Jews, you are murderers”. The only fault of the bar owners was precisely that of being Jewish. But as mentioned, especially now that the pro-Palestine revolt is coming to a head, with the start of the student intifada which yesterday saw a new protest demonstration inside the Sapienza University of Rome, it is the university context that worries the most . Immediately after 7 October, an American boy who studies at a private university in Milan and who was wearing the necklace with the Maghen David was the victim of an attack by another student who began to rail against him with the sound of ” free free Palestine” and who threw a cocktail at him. They tried to rip off a necklace with the Star of David from a Bocconi student, also in Milan, while he was on the subway. In another university, a Jewish student, who always had the Star of David, was spat on. Which is why it is clear that many of these students have decided to attend campuses as little as possible or only for the bare minimum.
These are cases that tell of an anti-Semitism that is perhaps invisible, but well documented by statistics and the stories of those who fall victim to it. For this reason, also to offer guarantees to students of the Jewish religion, University Minister Anna Maria Bernini has asked for a meeting with Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi for next week. Crui president Giovanna Iannantuoni will also participate. You will try to find a solution to keep the students safe. Because, as the minister recalled yesterday, “It is in the country’s interest to safeguard universities as spaces of democracy. Protest, dissent, criticism, even harsh, are completely legitimate expressions. The real distinction, unacceptable and insurmountable, is violence. Preventing someone from speaking is the opposite of democracy”.
