Antisemitic Attacks on the Rise in Italy

In Italy, the Bel Paese, there has been a wave of antisemitic attacks from Venice in the north to Rome in the south. Many of the victims have been Jews from foreign lands. Pro-Palestinians, Muslim and non-Muslim, enraged by the war in Gaza, have attacked some; others have been the victims of old-fashioned antisemites. More on what they have endured can be found here: “Orthodox Jewish Tourist Assaulted at Milan Train Station Amid Rising Wave of Antisemitic Attacks in Italy,” by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, November 12, 2025:

A group of Orthodox Jewish American tourists was brutally attacked at Milan’s Central Station on Monday by a pro-Palestinian individual, the latest in a rising wave of antisemitic hate crimes across Italy, sparking outrage within the local Jewish community.

Local authorities in Milan, northern Italy, arrested a 25-year-old Pakistani man for allegedly assaulting a Jewish tourist from the United States, Italian news agency RAI reported.

The victim, who was with a group of 10 Orthodox Jewish tourists visiting Italy, was checking the departure board when the assailant began harassing him.

The attacker then allegedly chased the victim while punching and kicking him and striking him in the head with a blunt metal ring.

During the attack, the Pakistani man reportedly shouted antisemitic insults and threats, including “dirty Jews” and “you kill children in Palestine, and I’ll kill you.”

Shortly afterward, train personnel restrained the suspect, and local police arrested him on charges of aggravated assault motivated by racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination.

Meanwhile, the victim was taken to a local hospital with a minor head injury.

According to local reports, Judge Sofia Fioretta explained that the charges were expedited due to “the seriousness of the conduct, its brutality, and the total absence of remorse.” The 25-year-old assailant admitted to the charges against him.

Walker Meghnagi, president of Milan’s Jewish community, condemned the incident, warning of the growing climate of hostility toward Jews in Italy.

“Many Jewish tourists, particularly Americans but also others, avoid visiting Milan because of the climate of hatred and the fear of being attacked,” Meghnagi told the Italian news outlet Il Giorno.

This latest incident comes amid a surge in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment across Europe and around the world since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

In Italy, Jewish individuals have been facing a surge in hostility and targeted attacks, including vandalism of murals and businesses, as well as physical assaults. Community leaders have warned that such incidents are becoming more frequent amid growing tensions related to the war in Gaza….

On the hopeful side, the three most important opinion makers in Italy — the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, the President, Sergio Mattarella, and the Pope, Leo XIV — have all come down strongly against any displays of antisemitism.

Prime Minister Meloni has repeatedly denounced antisemitism, especially when she discovered in 2024 that several members of her party’s (Fratelli d’Italia’s) Youth League had made Hitler salutes and delivered antisemitic rants. She had them banned from the party.

President Sergio Mattarella has been even more ferocious in his response to the antisemitism that the war in Gaza prompted. He said that “October 7, 2023, remains and will remain in consciences as a vile page in history: a cowardly terrorist attack that took place against defenseless Israeli citizens, doing great harm to the cause of peace and mutual security in Palestine. A wound that affected every people. What is happening in Gaza and the different sentiments it arouses cannot flow into the vile one of antisemitism, which, particularly in the last century, touched peaks of monstrous atrocity, and which today appears to be resurfacing at times, grounded in imbecility and spreading hatred. Two years after October 7, 2023, I wish to renew my closeness to the people of Israel and to the families of the victims and the kidnapped persons, who must be freed immediately, in the hope that the attempts to put an end to this unprecedented wave of violence will have a positive outcome as soon as possible.”

Pope Leo has repeatedly denounced antisemitism in general, as during his speech on the 60h anniversary of Nostra Aetate, which removed the charge of Jewish deicide, and on other occasions he has deplored specific antisemitic attacks that have taken place in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, including one in the British city of Manchester.

Nonetheless, despite such firm words from the president, the prime minister, and the pope, antisemitic attacks in Italy, often committed by Muslims who happen to be living in Italy and are unimpressed with what the prime minister, the president, and the pope have all said on the subject of antisemitism, have not died down. The struggle to contain the hate in the Bel Paese continues. A severe limit on Muslim migrants would certainly be of the greatest help, and there is reason to believe that after the much stricter policy on immigrants that the government in the UK has just announced, other countries in Europe, similarly bedeviled with a Muslim migrant problem, will follow suit.