Italian Jews warn of widening threat of antisemitism, anti-Zionism

Dalia Gubbay had attended Milan's April 25 Liberation Day march many times before. There had always been shouting when supporters of the Jewish Brigade reached the center of the city, she said, but the hostility had usually been confined to a tense corner or a brief confrontation. This year, she said, the atmosphere was different. The Jewish Brigade, whose volunteers fought alongside Allied forces during World War II, was being commemorated during Italy's annual celebration of liberation from fascism. Gubbay, vice president of the Jewish Community of Milan, said demonstrators surrounded Jewish participants carrying Israeli and Jewish Brigade flags, shouted insults and ultimately forced them out of the procession under police escort. One woman looked at Gubbay and called her a murderer. Nearby, a man wrapped in an Israeli flag sat down in the street and refused to move, shouting that he was Jewish and would remain where he was. Gubbay said she cried when the group finally withdrew, not from fear but from anger. “Milan is my city,” she later wrote. “I was born here, and my children were born here.” That afternoon, she said, it felt as though the city had betrayed them. Less than three months later, the Jewish community learned of an anonymous Google form asking members of the public to report Israeli tourists, Jewish visitors, hotels, businesses, property purchases and projects allegedly connected to what its authors described as “Zionist tourism” and “Zionist neo-colonization” in Italy. The questionnaire circulated through social media and messaging groups with connections to Milan, although it sought information from across the country. It asked respondents to provide locations, supporting sources, and details about local organizations already addressing what it called the phenomenon. The form stated that the information would be shared confidentially with the Global Sumud Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist network that denied creating, commissioning, or knowing about the form when it appeared in press reports. The questionnaire was removed after the intervention of Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, Italy's national coordinator for the fight against antisemitism. Its authors have not been publicly identified. Publication condemned across ItalyFor Italy's Jewish leaders, the form did not emerge in isolation. It appeared after years of increasingly aggressive campaigns against people and institutions classified as Zionist, as well as a succession of incidents involving Jewish students, tourists, businesses and public commemorations. The Google form was not the first recent attempt to create a list of alleged Zionists in Italy. In August 2024, the fringe Nuovo Partito Comunista Italiano published a lengthy online document naming Jewish community figures, politicians, journalists, businesspeople, companies and other organizations it accused of forming part of a “Zionist bloc.” The group indicated that its research was incomplete and could be expanded. The publication was condemned across much of Italy's political spectrum. The Jewish Community of Rome described it as a proscription list that exposed individuals by name and professional affiliation. Senate President Ignazio La Russa warned that identifying people publicly in that manner could endanger their security. There is no evidence that the communist organization created the Milan form or that the two projects were coordinated.The initiatives nevertheless followed a similar method: define people through a real or presumed relationship with Israel, record their identities or locations, and encourage others to act against them. The form represented a further step. Rather than concentrating primarily on public figures and organizations, it sought information about ordinary travelers, places where Israelis were staying, property transactions and businesses connected, accurately or otherwise, to Jewish or Israeli activity. Walker Meghnagi, president of the Jewish Community of Milan, warned that collecting such information could provide practical assistance to someone intending to commit violence. Community representatives alerted Italian authorities and contacted journalists and politicians shortly after the questionnaire appeared. Gubbay said the community's secretary-general posted the form in a board group and told members the issue could not be ignored. Meghnagi used his contacts with government officials, while Gubbay reached out to the press. By the next day, the form was no longer available. The speed of the intervention reassured community leaders, but not enough to persuade them that the underlying problem had been resolved. Benjamin Birely, a PhD candidate and researcher at L'Orientale University in Naples and the creator of @holylandspeaks on social media, said he was more surprised by the public shock over the questionnaire than by its existence. He had already encountered the earlier online database of people described as Zionists, including names, cities and business details. “This website was taken down, but there will be another one,” Birely told The Media Line. His own experience in Naples illustrates how the language used in such lists can be directed against an identifiable person. Birely arrived in the city in the fall of 2024 to begin his doctoral research. During his first month, he said, he found the words “Intifada until victory” painted on the entrance to one of L'Orientale's main buildings. The neighborhoods surrounding L'Orientale and the nearby Federico II University were filled with anti-Israel posters and graffiti, he said. Some promoted organizations or language associated with violent resistance rather than making a general appeal for Palestinian rights. Birely expected Naples to have a strong left-wing and pro-Palestinian political culture. What he did not expect, he said, was the hostility he experienced after other students and members of the university community learned he was Israeli. The situation intensified after pro-Palestinian activist Vincenzo Fullone published a video apparently describing Birely as a “soldier without a uniform” and alleging that he had been sent by the Israeli government to influence debate at L'Orientale.Birely denied both claims and said he plays no role in the Israeli military. 'Are you a Zionist?'Shortly afterward, Link Orientale, a student organization represented in several university bodies, published material calling him a “PhD candidate in genocide,” according to Birely. He said Fullone's video and the student group's posts set off a wave of hostile messages and threats from people who knew his university department and where he lived. “The only reason I'm being accused of being a soldier and of genocide is simply because I'm a Jew with an Israeli passport,” Birely said. Before the public campaign, Birely had repeatedly encountered a question that he said has become central to the treatment of Israelis in Italy: “Are you a Zionist?” He said owners or employees at restaurants, cafés and stores sometimes asked him the question after hearing that he had moved from Israel. In several cases, he said, identifying himself as a Zionist would have meant being told to leave. To avoid confrontation, he sometimes responded that he opposed the war, opposed the Israeli government and supported peace. In much of Italy's current political discourse, Birely said, Zionist is no longer treated as a descriptive term for support for Jewish national self-determination. It has become an accusation associated with murder, racism and genocide. “When people say 'Zionista,' it is just the new way of saying 'Ebreo,'” he said, using the Italian word for Jew. Gubbay described a related demand in Milan. Italian Jews, she said, are frequently expected to distance themselves publicly from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government before being accepted in social or political spaces. “If I'm not with Bibi, I'm OK,” she said, describing the condition imposed on Jewish participants rather than stating her own political position. “But why should I have to say something like this? They don't ask Russians, Chinese or Iranian people to dissociate themselves from the government of another country.” Birely argues that Italy's current atmosphere cannot be explained by the Israel-Hamas War alone. He points to three historical and political traditions that he believes have combined with the anger generated by the conflict. The first is Italy's incomplete confrontation with its fascist past. Italy was governed for two decades by Benito Mussolini's regime and enacted racial laws in 1938 that stripped Jews of fundamental rights. Thousands of Italian Jews were later deported to Nazi concentration camps. Birely said postwar Italy built much of its national identity around resistance to German occupation and the heroism of the partisans, while failing to address fully the role Italians and Italian institutions played in persecuting Jews. The second factor, he said, is the persistence of older Catholic imagery involving Jewish guilt. Italy is now broadly secular, and the Catholic Church formally rejected the accusation of collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus during the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Even so, Birely said Christian symbolism remains culturally powerful. Birely pointed to religious imagery used during the Gaza war, including a statement he attributed to Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, that “Christ is … buried under the rubble” in Gaza. He also cited Italian nativity scenes showing Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh and public art presenting him as Palestinian. “This taps into these old cultural ideas about Jews being something sinister,” Birely said. “Just as the Jews killed Jesus, now Jews are killing babies in Gaza.” The third element is Italy's political left, which was shaped for decades by a communist movement larger than any other in Western Europe. Birely said some of the language promoted during the Soviet period, particularly the portrayal of Zionism as racism or colonialism, remained part of the country's political vocabulary. He said those ideas can still be heard in universities, trade unions and local activist groups, where hostility toward Israelis is sometimes defended as anti-Zionism rather than treated as discrimination. That conflict now reaches beyond demonstrations and university politics. It has become part of the debate over how Italy should define contemporary antisemitism and whether public institutions should use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition. Jewish organizations say clearer standards are needed when anger toward Israel is transferred to Jewish communities or individual Israelis. Opponents worry that such standards could be applied too broadly and limit legitimate criticism. Gubbay said criticism of Israel, including criticism of its government, is not in itself antisemitic. The distinction, she said, lies in whether the argument addresses policy or turns a person's Jewish identity or Israeli nationality into grounds for exclusion. She cited plans for a luxury resort in Perledo, near Lake Como, involving Israeli architect Yehiel Tsubery. Local environmental groups have raised hydrogeological concerns that remain under review by the relevant authorities. Gubbay said those objections should be investigated on their merits. Her concern was with activists who described the development as a “Zionist resort” and opposed Tsubery's involvement by arguing that he was born in an illegitimate state. A similar dispute arose in Valsesia, a mountainous area of Piedmont where Israeli families have purchased or are considering purchasing abandoned homes through an initiative known as Project Baita. Gubbay described the families as doctors, engineers, teachers and parents seeking a quieter life in Italian communities affected by depopulation. Opponents portrayed their arrival as the establishment of an Israeli “colony.” The choice of that word was not neutral, she said. It transferred the political language used to describe Israeli settlements into Italian villages where families were legally purchasing homes, sending children to local schools, and contributing to the economy. “Baita means home,” Gubbay noted. “Valsesia is not becoming a colony. It is becoming a place where the sound of children walking to school can be heard again.” The controversy later escalated beyond public rhetoric. A mayor in the area received a threatening letter containing a bullet after supporting the arrival of Israeli families, according to the material provided for this article. Another project near Perledo drew a protest from activists who called it part of a Zionist takeover of the area. For Jewish leaders, these cases show how Israeli involvement in ordinary property development can be recast through the vocabulary of occupation and settlement, regardless of the location or legal circumstances. The pressure is also affecting daily family life in Milan. Gubbay said some parents now tell children not to wear a kippah, show ritual fringes, or speak Hebrew in public. Jewish schools and synagogues operate under police protection, which she praised but said was increasingly difficult to explain to young children. She described an incident in which three Orthodox Jewish children, ages 13, 11 and 9, were stopped and searched by a security guard in a Milan store after saying they were Israeli. According to Gubbay's account, the guard searched their pockets and wallet but found no stolen merchandise. Days later, she said, an older brother returned to the shop with his pregnant wife and young child. The same guard allegedly searched him and continued to detain the family after finding nothing. When the man began recording the confrontation, store management demanded that the images be erased before the family was allowed to leave, according to Gubbay. In a separate case, two young Argentine Jews wearing kippot were attacked near a Milan supermarket, Gubbay said. One suffered a broken nose, and both decided to leave Italy shortly afterward. The source material for this article did not include police reports or responses from the businesses involved in those incidents. Gubbay presented them as examples of a fear that has become routine among Jewish families, even when no national controversy or organized protest is involved. That fear now shapes decisions about education and emigration. Gubbay's daughter, Rebecca, is 18 and will soon have to decide where to attend university. She was born in Milan, has close family there, and had expected to build her future in Italy.After witnessing the exclusion of Jewish participants from the April 25 march and absorbing what Gubbay described as a constant stream of antisemitic content on social media, Rebecca began questioning whether she could attend an Italian university without hiding her identity. Studying in Israel is another possibility, but leaving would mean separating from much of her family. Gubbay said many young Italian Jews are now considering similar choices. The concern is no longer limited to whether an anonymous online form can be removed or whether the authorities will condemn the next list. It is whether Jews born in Italy will continue to believe they can live openly in the country. “Rebecca is Italian. She was born in Milan,” Gubbay wrote. “Do we really want to watch our young people leave and hand them a world we promised would never exist again?”