Italy’s Jews Are in Danger

In 2021, my husband, son, and I left the chaos of Los Angeles for the peaceful hills of Tuscany. Settling in Florence with our eight-year-old son felt like a dream. But that dream began to unravel on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its attack on Israel.

Within days, life in Italy changed in ways I could not have imagined.

Before Oct. 7, Italy was considered one of the safest countries in Europe for Jews. Antisemitic incidents were rare, and the Italian government consistently promoted Holocaust remembrance and tolerance. But the Hamas massacre marked a turning point. Anti-Israel graffiti appeared almost overnight, including on synagogues, followed by an unmistakable hostility toward Jews themselves.

Public opinion has shifted. In the final months of 2023 alone, Italy recorded 216 antisemitic incidents, nearly equaling the total for the previous year. By the end of 2023, the number had doubled to 454. In 2024, that figure nearly doubled again. According to one 2025 poll, 15% of Italians said physical attacks on Jews were “justifiable,” and 18% saw nothing wrong with antisemitic graffiti. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported that 98% of Jewish respondents in Italy encountered antisemitism in daily life, and 75% avoid Jewish symbols in public. The CDEC Foundation recorded 877 antisemitic incidents last year—nearly double 2023’s total.

What was once unthinkable has now become socially acceptable.

Even small interactions have taken on a new edge. When my hair stylist noticed my Star of David necklace, she whispered, “I’m with you, but don’t wear that in this area. It’s not safe.” Online and on social media, where I often write about Jewish issues, I’m regularly attacked by Italian users spewing conspiracy theories and hate and making violent threats toward me and my family.

Jewish children are also bearing the weight of this shift. This summer, a Jewish father and his son were beaten by a mob in Milan shouting pro-Palestinian slogans. At my son’s international school, antisemitic comments are regularly directed at my son or just expressed generally. Perhaps most disturbingly, this month the majority of teachers at his school joined anti-Israel strikes and demonstrations along with more than two million Italians nationwide—organized by Italy’s largest union in “solidarity” with Gaza. Trains were blocked. Schools closed or unable to hold classes, including my son’s. One protest even featured a hang glider flying over Florence, an eerie echo of the Hamas militants who used paragliders to invade Israel and slaughter civilians at the Nova music festival. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni dismissed it as politically motivated. Yet such massive actions have fueled the conflation of criticism of Israel with hostility toward Jews.

It’s no surprise that many Jewish and Israeli children now feel anxious in classrooms that should feel safe and neutral. When teachers, especially in international schools with children from countries all over the world, abandon their classrooms to protest against Israel, Jewish families get the message. Our children are not welcome.

Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, said it plainly: “We are faced with the emergence of hatred toward Israel that disregards any reasonable context—hatred that can have no other explanation than antisemitism that has been simmering all along.”

Italy has always been a country of protests—they love the sciopero as it’s called in Italian—but there were no mass strikes for Ukraine when Russia invaded. No national demonstrations for Sudan or the victims of Boko Haram. And certainly no protests against the chaos, violence, and starvation that the Houthi have inflicted on the people of Yemen. The moral outrage seems almost exclusively reserved for Israel. We would ask ourselves why, but we already know the answer.

Recently, a kosher bakery in Rome was vandalized with the words “Ebrei di merda, bruciate tutti” (“Sh*t Jews, burn all of you”) and a violent rally in Bologna celebrated and commemorated the Oct. 7 massacre, calling for more like it. Even the memorial stones for Holocaust victims, found around the cities of Italy, have been defaced with pro-Gaza stickers. For Italy’s Jews, the message could not be clearer.

When I moved here, I believed Italy’s long memory of its own dark past would protect its Jewish citizens. But history’s lessons fade quickly, and the comfort of the past offers no guarantee for the future.

Antisemitism rarely arrives suddenly. It creeps back in, disguised as “activism” or “justice,” until one day it no longer needs to hide. Italy’s Jews are seeing this unfold in real time. And for Jews in America and elsewhere, the warning is clear: If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.