Mick Hartley

Benjamin Birely at the JC – How Italy became the dark heart of European Israel-hate:

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories and originally from a small town north west of Naples, appears frequently in Italian media, becoming a local “expert” voice on Israel. Her rhetoric, which frames the state of Israel as fundamentally illegitimate and criminal, has been consistently platformed and amplified in mainstream discussions on the war in Gaza.

Over the summer, the Italian LGBTQ Jewish group Keshet faced aggressive protests at Pride events. In Rome, they faced chants of “terrorists” and “murderers”, while in Naples they were shouted off the open-mic stage and plastic bottles were thrown at them over a rainbow flag bearing the Star of David. Their speaker pleaded in vain with the angry crowd waving Palestinian flags, emphasising they were Italian Jews and that the Star of David is a Jewish symbol. “Zionists aren’t welcome!” was the crowd’s response.

On September 22 and October 3, in two consecutive national strikes organised by the country’s largest trade union, CGIL, at least one million Italians protested against Israel and the war in Gaza. Both strikes received broad support from a diverse array of unions, centre-left regional governments, student and cultural groups, and Italian celebrities.

This is all only a small glimpse into a much larger movement that has taken Italy by storm and become a defining feature of Italian political culture: the new Palestinismo, or “Palestinianism”.

This movement goes far beyond anti-war sentiment or solidarity with the Palestinian national cause. Deeply rooted in Italy’s Catholic cultural past, the complicated legacy of the fascist period and influential post-war leftist propaganda, Italy’s intense focus on Palestine brings together powerful trends in Italian history and culture to develop a new popular religion that leaves no room for dissent.

The current obsession with evil Israel and poor baby Palestine feeds right into the old Catholic teachings of Jews killing Christ.

This is exemplified by a votive shrine to the “Palestinian Madonna” on one of the narrow alleyways in the historical centre of Naples, which I regularly pass on my daily walks. The traditional statue of Our Lady of Sorrows is wrapped in a veil with the Palestinian national colours and dedicated to the suffering children of Gaza.

When the Italian Cardinal and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, stated this summer that “Christ is not absent from Gaza, he is there, crucified in the wounded, buried under rubble”, he was speaking to a long tradition of religious symbolism that has been historically weaponised against Jewish communities.

Dangerously, it is yet again the archetypal Jew responsible for the crucified Christ – only now he’s buried under rubble in Gaza.

It is precisely within this symbolic context that the mainstream centre-left Italian newspaper La Repubblica published a cartoon in July 2025 following the IDF shelling of the only Catholic parish in Gaza. In the cartoon, Netanyahu appears with the text: “It was a regrettable mistake… we were aiming at the bambinello” (baby Jesus).…