Italy’s president on Friday denounced rising antisemitism and delivered a powerful speech in support of the Jewish people as he commemorated a Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In a ceremony at the Quirinale Palace attended by the premier and leaders of Italy’s Jewish community, President Sergio Mattarella called the Holocaust “the most abominable of crimes” and recalled the complicity of Italians under Fascism in the deportation of Jews.
Also Friday, Rome’s police chief ordered pro-Palestinian activists to postpone a rally in the capital that had been scheduled for Saturday, the actual day of Holocaust Remembrance. Israel’s Jewish community has complained that such protests have become occasions for the memory of the Holocaust to be co-opted by anti-Israel forces and used against Jews.
Mattarella’s tenure as president has been marked by strong affirmations in support of Jews, and he continued that Friday. He said the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel were “a gruesome replica of the horrors of the Shoah.”
Antisemitic episodes in Italy hit an unprecedented high last year, with 216 incidents reported in the last three months of 2023 following the Oct. 7 attack, compared to 241 in all of the previous year, the Antisemitism Observatory reported. Overall, 454 incidents of antisemitism were reported last year, the biggest-ever increase.
“The dead of Auschwitz, scattered in the wind, continually warn us: Man’s path proceeds along rough and risky roads,” Mattarella said. “This is also manifested by the return, in the world, of dangerous instances of antisemitism: of prejudice that traces back to ancient anti-Jewish stereotypes, reinforced by social media without control or modesty.”
Mattarella also strongly condemned the Nazi-Fascist regimes that perpetrated the Holocaust. Sitting in the audience was Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has neo-fascist roots but who has strongly backed Israel and supported Italy’s Jewish community.
Mattarella said it must never be forgotten that Italy under Fascism adopted “despicable racist laws” which barred Jews from schools and the workplace. He called the laws “the opening chapter of the terrible book of extermination.”
Referring to Benito Mussolini’s final government in the Nazi puppet state in Salò, northern Italy, he added that “members of the Republic of Salò actively collaborated in the capture, deportation and even massacres of Jews.”
Significantly, he quoted Primo Levi, the Italian-born Auschwitz survivor whose memoir “If This is a Man” remains a standard work of Holocaust literature. Just this week, Italy’s Jewish community denounced that pro-Palestinian protesters had cited Levi in a flyer promoting Saturday’s planned protest, but in reference to Gaza, not the Holocaust.
It was one of several instances of pro-Palestinian advocates using the memory of the Holocaust against Israel and Jews. On Friday, nearly 50 small bronze stickers appeared on the sidewalk in front of the offices of the U.N. refugee agency in Rome with the names of Palestinians killed in Gaza. They were copies of one of the most potent symbols of Italy’s remembrance of the Holocaust: the bronze memorial plaques affixed to cobblestones around Rome in front of the homes of Jews who were deported during World War II.
Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of the Jewish Communities in Italy, said such a demonstration offended the memory of Holocaust survivors and diminished their particular suffering and stories.
“Palestinians should invent other quotes, other writers, other forms of art,” she said.
The organizer of the sticker protest, who refused to be identified by name citing security concerns, defended the use of the same symbols as evidence that “something very serious is happening” to Palestinians.
(AP)
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(Arab) Students in Haifa: Hitler did not get to it – so we will burn you now
Yishai Fridman, Now14, Jan 14, 2024.
The Rector of the University of Haifa, Professor Gur Alroey, said that the university administration received screenshots of students’ posts and correspondence, including shocking support for the Hamas massacre on October 7 • Alroey immediately suspended those students, but the university administration overturned his decision on the grounds that his actions were done without authority and a trial should be held and discussion between the university and students.
The chairman of the student union in Haifa, Elad Asis, gave a harsh speech of rebuke yesterday (Sunday) in which he accused the administration of the University of Haifa of turning its back on and even betraying the abductees. Essis claimed that the administration of the University of Haifa canceled the suspension of inciting students who supported the massacre of Hamas on the 7 to October and thus harmed the families of the abductees.
Assis’s words are strengthened in light of a Zoom call obtained by Channel 14 in which the rector of the University of Haifa, Professor Gur Alroey, makes very harsh statements against Israeli Arab students who supported the atrocities committed by the terrorist organization Hamas on October 7.
Prof. Alroey, the rector of the university, was the one who immediately suspended a number of students in Haifa already on October 8 after he saw that the statements and phrases said by those students constituted explicit support for the actions of Hamas.
However, the university management decided to cancel the rector’s decision on the grounds that his actions were done without authority and a trial and discussion should be conducted between the university and the students who are represented today by lawyers. Therefore, their suspension was lifted and their case is currently being discussed by the disciplinary committee.
Professor Alroey told in a Zoom call that he had together with senior officials in the Israeli academy why he decided to suspend those students. From his words it appears that anti-Semitic students who support the massacre perpetrated by the terrorist organization Hamas study at the University of Haifa.
“We are starting to receive photos from social networks and also from WhatsApp photos of statements by students who upload photos and support Hamas and their actions,” said Alroey and emphasized: “We do not support the Palestinian people or the Palestinian flag, but support the atrocity of Hamas.” Alroey gave an example of an unimaginable statement by a student, who said ‘Hitler did not have time to burn you in the Holocaust and we are burning you now’.
Another case was that a student at the University of Haifa said that October 7th is Palestinian Independence Day and that they will be burned at the stake every year. Prof. Alroey claimed that such extreme cases should not reach the disciplinary committee but should be immediately removed.
“I don’t think there is any reason to invite a student to the rector’s office and start explaining to him why it is forbidden to say that ‘it’s a shame that Hitler didn’t burn Jews’ or ‘that this is the greatest day in the history of Palestine and now it’s our independence day and we will be burned in the coming years,'” he said, “we won’t see I need to invite a student to the rector’s office and start explaining to him and educating him and giving him a history lesson.”
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