A summer of ordinary antisemitism

The UCEI corner

The third summer since October 7th.
A 22-year-old French tourist was targeted by four individuals in the streets of Rome’s historic center. He is Jewish and was wearing a kippah. His assailants, acting aggressively, struck him while shouting “Free Palestine.” A few days earlier, on August 2nd, a pub in Umbria displayed a sign near the cash register reading: “Israelis are not welcome in this establishment.” On July 16th, a mural in Milan dedicated to Anne Frank and Primo Levi was vandalized. Three days prior, in the province of Pavia, the words “Nien Juden raus” appeared on a sign at the entrance to the town of Cilavegna—an explicit reference to the Nazi slogan “Juden raus” (“Jews out”). On July 2nd, in Naples, members of the Jewish LGBTQ+ group Keshet were verbally abused and spat upon during the Pride parade. On July 21st, in Varallo Sesia (Piedmont), the mayor of a town that is home to an Israeli community received a bullet accompanied by a threat: “This is the only warning before we start shooting.” On June 15th, a swastika appeared in an apartment building on Via Martin Lutero in Milan, accompanied by the inscription: “Death to Jews.”
Outside Italy, incidents have been even more severe in just the last two months. On August 4, in Sofia, Bulgaria, a group of young people from the Italian Jewish community was besieged in a hotel by neo-skinheads. On July 27, unidentified individuals broke into the Great Synagogue of Levallois-Perret, just outside Paris, and stole more than a dozen Torah scrolls. On July 25, in France, six people were detained on suspicion of plotting an attack against a synagogue in Sarcelles. On July 20, in Antwerp, a man threatened Jewish people while brandishing a hammer. That same day, in Germany, a fifteen-year-old was accused of plotting an attack on a synagogue in Augsburg. On July 17, in Montenegro, a group of Israeli tourists was assaulted by more than ten youths in the resort town of Budva. On July 15, a woman hurled antisemitic insults at young people outside a Jewish secondary school in London and assaulted the father of one of the students. On July 6, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain reported a serious antisemitic incident involving a group of French Jewish visitors in Barcelona.
This tragic list opens the August 13 interview conducted by Livia Ottolenghi with Claudio Cerasa of the newspaper *il Foglio*. Ottolenghi decries the indifference and the normalization of everyday antisemitism—as if we were back in 1938. By now, hate speech and physical assaults go largely unnoticed; they no longer make the headlines.
The UCEI has responded to this situation with great vigor, issuing press releases that denounce the extremely serious escalation—one that has left us, as Italian Jews, deeply alarmed.
In statements issued over the summer, the UCEI denounced a series of distinct incidents that could nonetheless be traced back to a shared climate of rising antisemitism.
Following the vandalism of the Milanese mural dedicated to Anna Frank and Primo Levi, he condemned the attempt to subvert and distort the memory of the Shoah.
The online dissemination of a form for the “mapping of Zionist tourism” has been described as a leap in quality: a filing compared to the new “yellow stars”.
The UCEI recalled the atmosphere preceding the 1938 racial laws and denounced the silence of a large part of civil society.
In the statement regarding the antisemitic poster targeting Rai journalist Giovan Battista Brunori, he highlighted the attempt to intimidate the media through an “a priori ideological test.”
The Union expressed solidarity with the journalist and his family, denouncing a climate dominated by hatred, prejudice, and a monolithic mindset.
Following the threats made by neo-Nazi skinheads against young Italian Jews in Sofia, he spoke of an increasingly worrying rise in antisemitic incidents.
He also reaffirmed the right of Italian and European Jews to live, travel, and freely express their identity in safety.
Following the assault on a young Jewish tourist in central Rome, the UCEI highlighted how antisemitism has now escalated from words to violence against individuals.
He therefore called for more effective tools for prevention and enforcement, also highlighting the urgency of the bill currently under parliamentary review.
However, the most disturbing fact highlighted by the UCEI is the sense of resignation: the risk that the repetition of these incidents will end up making them seem commonplace, and that societal indifference will foster their normalization.

Sara Levi Sacerdotti