Online forms asked respondents to share locations of Israelis, Jews

The president of the Jewish Community of Milan (Mosaico), Walker Meghnagi, has gravely condemned online forms urging people to report the presence of Israeli citizens and Italian Jews staying in Italian hotels and other tourist accommodations."I think we're going back to the 1930s, to hunting Jews," Meghnagi said.The forms were removed following intervention by General Pasquale Angelosanto, Italy's National Coordinator for the Fight Against Antisemitism.The Google form that was circulated - before its removal - read: "This form is intended to record cases of Zionist tourism, property purchases, and, more generally, Zionist neo-colonization in Italy. The data collected will be received by the Global Sumud Movement and will remain protected and confidential. However, we ask you to provide a source so we can verify the information, coordinate possible initiatives, and support areas affected by the phenomenon."It then said: "The sole purpose is to map the spread of the phenomenon and its various forms."Form asks if groups were 'manageing phenomenon' of Jewish visitorsAccording to Italian paper La Repubblica, subsequent pages of the form asked respondents to report on locations where Jewish or Israeli visitors were seen, whether local organizations or activist groups were already "managing the phenomenon," and other information.The stated objective of the form was to map the phenomenon and coordinate unspecified future initiatives."What is happening today shows that there are unbalanced individuals out there, and if this kind of message spreads widely enough, you are certain to find someone willing to act on it," Meghnagi said."For this reason, mapping where Jews are is extremely serious."The Jewish Community of Milan said it will not launch its own legal initiative but has already forwarded the questionnaire to the relevant authorities.The Global Sumud Movement - infamous for coordinating flotillas to Gaza - denied any involvement with the forms when contacted by La Repubblica."Zionism is one of the issues we work on, but we do not hunt Jews, and we know nothing about this questionnaire," it said. "We did not commission it and had not even seen it before it was taken offline. We only learned about it through the newspapers, and we reserve the right to take appropriate action, including issuing an official statement."'Those responsible must not go unpunished,' Deputy Secretary of State Alessandro Morelli saysDeputy Secretary of State Alessandro Morelli condemned the form as "abhorrent," adding "those responsible must not go unpunished.""This is a deliberate campaign based on disinformation and propaganda that seeks to push society toward hatred and prejudice by literally pointing the finger at Jews and Zionists as the outcasts of our time," Livia Ottolenghi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), said."We are witnessing a new escalation of antisemitism that cannot be underestimated. This time, with an online form, we have arrived at new 'yellow stars': reporting and cataloging alleged 'Zionist colonies' in Italy, marking Jews, and insinuating dark conspiracies that simply do not exist. It is the culture of conspiracy theories that takes us back to the period before Italy's 1938 racial laws.""The appearance online of a questionnaire designed to map and catalog Israeli citizens, businesses and hotels in our country is not an act of political criticism, but a form of intimidation that drags Italy back to the darkest periods of the twentieth century," commented Davide Riccardo Romano, director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan."History shows that when propaganda identifies a target and provides the coordinates to find it, violence ceases to be a possibility and becomes a certainty," he added.