In Italy, antisemitism seems to be on the rise
05-08-2025
Southern Europe
Aart Heering, RD
Italian and Israeli flags are seen at an earlier demonstration in Rome against antisemitism. Photo EPA, Riccardo Antimiani
Southern Europe
“Alarm Antisemitism”, the national Italian daily La Stampa headline read recently. The alarm was prompted by an attack on a Jewish man and his six-year-old son by a group of visitors to a roadside restaurant near Milan.
Images of this are circulating in the Italian media. The Milan court has opened an investigation on suspicion of assault, with racial hatred as an aggravating factor. It is the latest in a rapidly increasing series of anti-Semitic incidents in Italy since the start of the war in Gaza.
On a Sunday evening, a 52-year-old French tourist and his infant son entered a restaurant. Both were wearing kippahs, which was enough for a few bystanders to shout insults in their direction: “Murderers!”, “Get out!”, “You are not in Gaza!”, “Viva Palestina!”
When the man recorded all this with his smartphone and then walked to the toilet, he was pushed to the ground and beaten by at least three men. He sustained minor injuries in the process, and his glasses were smashed. His little son looked on, dumbfounded, and will soon receive psychological support.
Pogroms
Thanks to the footage recorded by the victim, which is now circulating on social media, the incident has become big news. The police, who also requested the images from the restaurant’s surveillance cameras, have identified some of the assailants.
There are apparently fewer and fewer people who distinguish between the state of Israel –and the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu– and Jews in general.
Remarkably, there were no fanatical pro-Palestinian activists among them. As far as is known now, they are ordinary men and women from the countryside of Milan, who had refuelled before eating a sandwich or drinking an espresso in the restaurant. They spontaneously formed a group when a riot unfolded around the French Jews. A mechanism eerily similar to that of countless anti-Semitic persecutions and pogroms in past centuries.
Another worrying sign is that there are apparently fewer and fewer people who distinguish between the state of Israel –and the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu– and Jews in general, who can, therefore, even be held personally responsible for the Gaza atrocities recurring day after day in the media.
Hate phone calls
In 2024, 877 anti-Semitic actions were recorded, double that of 2023. Of these, only 8 per cent were from neo-Nazis and fascists, and the majority came from pro-Palestinian sources.
In Rome, an eight-year-old boy was punched in the head by an adult on the street for wearing a kippah. The president of the Jewish organisation Agei was dragged from the speakers’ podium at the University of Turin. A student in Rome was taunted by his teacher for being Jewish. Israeli tourists were sent out of a restaurant in Naples. And the Jewish Frenchman received several hate phone calls in his hometown of Milan in addition to expressions of support.
Most Italians do not know any Jews.
Such expressions of hatred partly go back to an undercurrent of Roman Catholic and Nazi-Fascist anti-Semitism that never truly disappeared, but also stem from ignorance. The Jewish community predates our era, and cities like Rome, Venice, Ancona and Livorno boast a rich Jewish tradition. Since World War II, however, Italy has only had about 30,000 Jewish citizens, or 0.05 per cent of the total. Most Italians do not know any Jews, and against this background, the fallacy “Israel is Jewish, therefore Jews are Israel” is easily believed.
Worried
Italian politics is obviously opposing anti-Semitic expressions en masse, but is not entirely consistent in doing so, Davide Romano argues. He is the director of a Jewish museum in Milan. “The left is ready to condemn right-wing anti-Semitism and the right that of the left. But they are not united.”
Jewish-Italian journalist Andreas Steiner is nevertheless quite positive. “There will undoubtedly be many more such incidents, but I am not very worried. I am reminded of the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt. In the preface to her book “The Banality of Evil”, she described Italy as a country with an ancient civilisation, where anti-Semitism has never really been popular. I assume that will be the case again.”
This article was translated by CNE.news and published by the Dutch daily Reformatorisch Dagblad on July 31, 2025
Related Articles
