31 July 2026 – 6:00 p.m. – Introduction – As the conflict in Ukraine continues and the stalemate in the war between the United States and Iran is generating intense instability across the Middle East and throughout Europe, today we will turn our attention to a Jewish world that we often judge harshly, with remarkable ease and superficiality, without even knowing its most basic features. The terms anti-Zionism and antisemitism are perceived by many – indeed, by a great many people, including several intellectuals—as synonyms. Historically false claims that can easily be disproved are cited in support of this view, yet highly skilful propaganda distorts, manipulates and leads us to perceive alternative “truths”. Today we will try to understand these issues more clearly, without in any way forgetting the critical problems within Israeli society, the extremism of Itamar Ben Gvir, the tragedy of Gaza, the uncertain future of the West Bank, the political ambiguity and the cruelty of the military wings of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. And the list could go on for a long time. However, we must never forget that in Israel people are allowed to criticise the decisions taken by the government of the day, to practise Christianity or follow the precepts of Islam, and to express their opinions freely about the policies pursued by Jerusalem. We should always remember that all this would be impossible – because it is prohibited under Islamic law – if we were in Iran, in several Arab countries, or under the control of Hamas or other radical organisations in the Middle East and beyond. Nor should we forget, with explicit reference to the recent attack in Berlin, that in Tel Aviv the customary Gay Pride took place as normal last June, having been suspended for two years solely for security reasons.

As we know very well, because we witness it every day, hatred towards Israel is growing and, consequently, so is hatred towards the entire Jewish community worldwide. Old slogans that we had hoped were buried are being revived; Jewish lecturers are prevented from speaking at conferences, including at universities, just as Jewish artists are prevented from taking part in exhibitions. Images, symbols and anti-Jewish behaviour from the Nazi era have been normalised. There is a skilful attempt to isolate the State of Israel, including diplomatically and commercially, even to the point of questioning its legitimate right to exist.

If we remain silent, we will be complicit in this dangerous drift!

I wish to offer this brief contribution to young people so that, free from prejudice, they may gain a deeper understanding of history, peoples and events – all of them, not just one side – and become witnesses to and advocates of peace and unity in a world that today seems to offer us only wars, division and the destruction of human dignity.

Let us try to understand together.

Definition of antisemitism

The best-known definition is that of the IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, adopted by 43 countries, including Italy, and formulated in 2016. It states: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA, is an intergovernmental organisation comprising 35 member countries, one liaison country and seven observer countries. Founded in 1998 by former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, the intergovernmental organisation addresses issues relating to the Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma.

More specifically, in order to help us better understand the exact meaning of this definition, the IHRA states that manifestations may include attacks against the State of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity and is often used to blame them for “why things go wrong”. It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and actions, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.

Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, workplaces and the religious sphere may, taking the overall context into account, include but are not limited to the following:

Calling for, assisting or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist interpretation of religion.

Making false, dehumanising, demonising or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or about the power of Jews as a group, such as – but not limited to – the myth of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other social institutions.

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms or intentionality of the Holocaust, perpetrated by National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during the Second World War.

Accusing Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of having invented or exaggerated the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, for example by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour.

Applying double standards by requiring of Israel conduct not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using symbols and images associated with classical antisemitism, such as claims that Jews killed Jesus or the blood libel, to characterise Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.

Furthermore:

Antisemitic acts are considered criminal offences when they are defined as such by law, as is the case, for example, with Holocaust denial or the distribution of antisemitic materials in certain countries.

Criminal acts are antisemitic when the targets of attacks, whether people or property – such as buildings, schools, places of worship and cemeteries – are selected because they are, or are perceived to be, Jewish or connected to Jews.

Antisemitic discrimination consists in denying Jews opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.

Within this framework, in order to define more precisely anti-Jewish hostility throughout history, as stated by the Observatory on Antisemitism, it would also be necessary, broadly speaking, to refer to Egyptian national-religious anti-Judaism, Hellenistic-Roman anti-Judaism, Christian theological anti-Judaism and Islamic political-religious anti-Judaism.

https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism

https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/2020-ihra-ministerial-declaration

https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/stockholm-declaration

https://holocaustremembrance.com/who-we-are/member-countries

https://www.osservatorioantisemitismo.it/antisemitismo/

Anti-Zionism

On the official website of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Government, we read: “Anti-Zionism is an ideology that historically denotes opposition to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. It is a controversial term, because definitions of Zionism take on different meanings depending on who interprets them. Today, anti-Zionism expresses opposition to and denial of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and of its right to peace and security. In particular, traditional definitions of Zionism – understood as the idea of the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel – differ significantly within the Jewish world from those used by the far left, the radical right and Islamism, which tend to employ the term as a means of disparagement, demonisation and political abuse directed at the State of Israel.”

Zionism

According to the UCEI, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Zionism is identified with a political and cultural movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century, whose objective was to make possible the creation of a “home for the Jews” in the territory of ancient Palestine. Like all movements with a nationalist vocation, it is founded on an origin myth designed to identify the nation-that is, the people – with a geographical territory.

Like all modern nationalist movements, it comprises various ideological and political currents, sometimes in sharp conflict with one another. Initially, the Zionist movement was an expression of a secular component. Religious Jews did not share the view that a political state should be created unless by divine will.

Within the secular component there were many political currents, reflecting the radical right, liberalism and socialism. The liberal current, represented by the founder Theodor Herzl and later supported by Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, proposed the idea of a state designed to foster the construction of a parliamentary system with a Jewish majority.

The socialist current, inspired by European democratic socialism and led above all by Ben-Gurion, built its vision of the state around the idea of the occupational regeneration of the Jew, who would leave behind commercial or artisanal roles and aspire to become a producer.

The far-right current, founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, proposed the idea of a community separated from the surrounding Arab world.

Another cultural current, partly close to socialist positions and partly distant from them, held that the mission of Zionism, alongside the redemption of the Jews, should be to promote emancipation and coexistence with the surrounding Arab world. Its representatives included the Italian Enzo Sereni, Martin Buber and Judah L. Magnes, founder and later rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

https://www.ucei.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SIONISMO-Finale-1-04-1.pdf

A little history to help us understand

In an attempt to put an end to sterile debates about the birth of Israel and its right to exist, often fuelled by the distortion or deliberate alteration of history, I would like to share a brief article by Paolo De Stefani, Professor of International Law at the University of Padua, which I believe can help us better understand the events and the decisions taken by the United Nations in 1947.

By reading the text, which I selected from many others because it succeeds, with remarkable concision, in making us aware of the political dynamics of those not-so-distant years, we can better understand that historical moment. The contribution also helps us interpret the present divisions, fragilities and conflicts in the tormented Middle Eastern region.

Paolo De Stefani states that:

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 made a choice that remains controversial to this day: to divide the territory of Palestine, defined on the basis of the mandate entrusted by the League of Nations to the United Kingdom, between the two peoples who inhabited it at the time: the Arab-Palestinian and the Israeli peoples.

Other solutions were possible: a binational or power-sharing state on the Lebanese model; a federal or confederal state with extensive division into cantons on the Swiss model; or the continuation of a United Nations trusteeship administration, with broad autonomy granted to the territories.

Deep political motivations – the strength of the Zionist movement, the pressures of Arab nationalism and, of course, the wartime and post-war context – together with international contingencies, such as a short-lived alignment between the United States and the Soviet Union, led the United Nations, heavily influenced by Truman’s United States, to favour the “two peoples, two states” solution.

Britain’s improvised course

Having promised the Zionists, through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a Jewish “home” – in other words, outside the realm of metaphor, a state – Britain, during the years of the international Mandate for Palestine from 1922 to 1948, failed to create the conditions for a unitary state by balancing and reconciling the needs of Arabs and Jews, and ultimately dissatisfied both sides.

Indeed, none of the Middle Eastern states that emerged from the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and passed through the mandate system – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and others – achieved satisfactory outcomes, and the consequences of that failure are still visible today.

For more than twenty years, Britain proceeded more or less by improvisation between the growing discontent of the Arab population – which erupted into bloody revolts suppressed with the blunt methods of British colonialism – and the contradictory yet continuous and committed construction by immigrants of a Jewish state within a state in the territories under British administration.

A hasty and pragmatic solution

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the strategic importance of the Middle East began to increase. The support of Arab elites became an object of competition between the Anglo-American alliance, the Nazis and the Soviets. This contributed to making the debate over Palestine’s future increasingly tangled, as it came to depend on a complex web of agreements and strategies largely decided elsewhere: in London, Washington, Berlin, Moscow and Damascus.

With the end of the world war and the sudden loss of its global empire, between 1947 and 1948 Britain decided to withdraw from Palestine, leaving the two factions to confront one another alone. The political, economic and military advantage of the Jewish side was clear, and this favoured the two-state solution.

The Arab illusion that numerical superiority and the broader geographical distribution of Arab settlements would prove decisive in determining the country’s political future disappeared in the face of the international community’s desire to provide a rapid and “pragmatic” solution.

After all, in those same years Britain and the international community were handling, in similar ways and on an incomparably larger scale, the partition of India and Pakistan and the enormous, more or less voluntary population movements associated with it, not to mention the massive transfers that characterised Europe, Asia and the Soviet world at the time.

The two-state option

Among all these cases, Palestine was the most delicate politically and morally in light of the Shoah, but it was certainly not the only one. Within the two-state option, by then the only one left on the table, the United Nations commission that drew up the territorial partition plan in 1947 undoubtedly favoured, in certain respects, the Jewish side, allocating it 55% of the territory, although Jews accounted for only a little more than one-third of Palestine’s total population and held title deeds to less than one-tenth of the land, since most of them lived in urban centres.

An economic union was to be created between the two states, which were expected to adopt democratic systems, while the territory of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to be placed under international authority.

Jewish representatives played their diplomatic cards extremely well, demonstrating that they were capable of organising a modern state and receiving the hundreds of thousands of Jews who declared themselves ready to leave Europe for the new homeland, as well as the many others who, between 1948 and 1949, would be more or less forcibly expelled from Arab or North African countries.

The Palestinian side, by contrast, whose political elite had been decimated by the revolts of 1935–1939, displayed neither the same cohesion nor the same ability to manage such a complex situation.

The weight of the Shoah

The need to “compensate” the Jews of Europe who had been victims of the Shoah undoubtedly weighed on the choice of two states and on the partition line established by the United Nations. Indirectly, therefore, the outcome of the UN vote can be seen as reflecting a legacy of Eurocentrism or, if one prefers, as a form of punishment inflicted on Arab elites that had sympathised with Nazism, albeit primarily for anti-colonial reasons. In fact, support for Israel came from the United States, but also from the Soviet Union.

Beyond its artificiality and contradictions – the plan provided for the presence of a large Arab population in the Jewish part – the territorial partition satisfied the Zionist strategy, which saw its demand for legitimisation as a state actor rewarded.

The plan, however, was unacceptable in principle to the Palestinians, who maintained maximalist positions regarding their right to obtain, sooner or later, their own state and to exercise full sovereignty over the lands they had always inhabited.

The position of the Palestinian leadership

The Palestinian Arab leadership, however, failed to present any alternative or compromise solution. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 was not binding: it called on the inhabitants of Palestine to implement the partition plan or, alternatively, invited the Security Council to adopt binding measures to impose it on the parties.

Neither course was pursued. Instead, clashes and acts of terrorism began in the days immediately following the vote on the Resolution.

When, at the end of the British Mandate, Israel declared its independence on 15 May 1948, it did so on the basis of the right of peoples to self-determination, while exercising effective control over a substantial portion of the territory assigned to it by Resolution 181 and possessing an efficient governmental apparatus capable of engaging with the rest of the international community.

The United States and the Soviet Union rushed to recognise the new state. The Palestinian leadership did not do the same, maintaining its outright rejection of Resolution 181 and instead placing its hopes in the support of neighbouring Arab states.

Two wars that are difficult to classify

Historians are divided over how to classify the civil war of 1947–1948 and the Arab-Israeli war of 1948–1949. According to “official” Israeli historiography, it was a war of independence that redeemed the Jews from the passivity they had displayed for decades in the face of persecution and extermination.

More recent and more critical historiography, although by no means the majority view, sees the conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab states as the implementation of a precise political agenda, shared by the leadership of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, which from the outset had placed the forced removal of the Arab population at the centre of its objectives.

The war, therefore, would not have been a struggle for the birth and survival of Israel, but an operation of “ethnic cleansing” and dispossession directed against the Palestinian majority, within a conflict that at no point would have risked resulting in a new Jewish Holocaust.

In the first phase, the weak Palestinian leadership received no assistance from the countries of the Arab League, which confined themselves to rhetorical reactions without undertaking operations on the ground. Later, when Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt launched an attack against Israel – unconvincingly justified as an operation in support of the Palestinians or as “preventive defence” – it was a war conducted without serious planning or strategy, either politically, since each government sought to annex portions of Palestinian territory, or militarily, owing to poor preparation, lack of coordination and failure to align with Palestinian fighters.

Israel’s military victory, however, came largely at the expense of the Palestinian population. Seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced to leave their lands and villages. Those who were able to remain were marked by a condition of objective legal subordination. From that point onward, a permanent state of emergency, inspired by a very particular notion of “security”, shaped the country’s social and civil life.

The political weakness of the Palestinians and Arab countries

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948 refers to the right of Palestinian refugees to return and to receive restitution. Here too, however, negotiations would be required, and neither side – on grounds that may be more or less legally sound – has ever wished to initiate them.

A crucial point is that, even after the Nakba, the “Catastrophe” of 1947–1948, the Palestinians were unable to articulate their right to self-determination appropriately, because their cause was exploited in different ways by the various neighbouring Arab countries.

The “second state” envisaged by Resolution 181 never came into being, because the areas that were supposed to constitute it—the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, northern Galilee and Gaza – were acquired after 1948 by Jordan, Syria and Egypt respectively.

A Conciliation Commission established by the United Nations to address the urgent issues created by the war, such as the return of refugees and the restitution of property, was boycotted by the Arab states, which did not wish implicitly to recognise the new state by participating in negotiations.

Separate negotiations were conducted to define the armistice lines between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, but the borders thus drawn were never accepted as final. In 1967, moreover, Israel moved far beyond them in the Six-Day War.

Israel as an occupying power

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 clearly states that, following that operation, Israel is an occupying power in those areas and that no annexation of them to the Israeli state can be accepted. This is the basis for the illegality of the policy of expanding Israeli settler communities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The events that led to the creation of the PLO and to attempts to establish a Palestinian Authority in the occupied territories, with a view to forming a Palestinian state, lie beyond the scope of this contribution. It is clear, however, that the issues raised in 1947 by Resolution 181 remain unresolved and, after 76 years, still await a reasonable implementation by the parties involved.

From time to time, the issue re-emerges – sometimes as a nightmare for those who advocate “Greater Israel” or fight for the destruction of the “Zionist entity”, and sometimes as a dream worth pursuing, in the hope of peaceful coexistence or of the gradual formation of one or more democratic, pluralist, fully secular and peaceful states.

Two “twin” nationalisms

During the twentieth century, two “twin” nationalisms developed in Palestine, each arising in opposition to the other: Zionist nationalism, which later became Israeli nationalism, and Arab-Palestinian nationalism, fuelled by the Nakba of 1948.

Both nationalisms were, in some way, sustained by the colonial context and absorbed the ideologies of twentieth-century Europe, which glorified the epics of “explorers” and “pioneers” who, in the United States, South Africa, Australia or the Far East, appropriated territories inhabited by “indigenous” populations regarded as uncivilised and trivialised operations of “biopolitics” that we now recognise as genocides or ethnic cleansing, carried out in the name of racist beliefs, totalitarian ideologies or economic and industrial “progress”.

Today, more than a century after those first manifestations, the toxins of these nationalisms are still circulating and are, indeed, regaining popularity across much of the planet. The renewed eruption of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict records this new state of affairs like an extremely sensitive seismograph. Once again, the urge to destroy and drive one’s evil twin into the sea is poisoning society and politics, not only in Palestine and Israel.

Revisiting the history of 75 years ago does not necessarily help us avoid the mistakes we continue to make, but it should at least help us all feel committed to recognising them and putting them right.

https://www.viandanti.org/website/israele-palestina-un-po-di-storia-per-capire/

Antisemitism is spreading

On 13 April 2026, Tel Aviv University published its Annual Antisemitism Report for 2025, which can be consulted through the link provided in the description.

It should be noted that the Tel Aviv University Annual Antisemitism Report has been published since 2001. This document is regarded as the most important of its kind and is cited by hundreds of media outlets worldwide. It is based on data from dozens of law-enforcement authorities around the world, specialised commissions, Jewish communities, press articles, interviews and field research conducted by scholars. It also includes in-depth studies of the causes, characteristics and trends of the phenomenon. The report is published by the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights and Justice.

The document, which is by no means lenient towards the Israeli government, highlights the following principal findings of interest.

During 2025, 20 Jews were killed in four separate attacks. This was the highest number of victims of antisemitic attacks recorded in more than thirty years. In many countries, 2025 saw an increase compared with 2024 in the number of Jews subjected to physical violence, such as beatings or stone-throwing.

The data on the total number of incidents in the various countries are more complex, because this figure also includes acts of vandalism, verbal threats and harassment on social media. Several countries recorded a moderate increase in 2025 compared with 2024, while others saw a moderate decrease. However, in every Western country the total number of incidents remained dozens of percentage points higher than in 2022, the year before the war in Gaza began.

According to Professor Uriya Shavit, editor-in-chief of the 152-page report: “The data are concerning because they indicate that a high number of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalised reality. The peak in the number of incidents was recorded immediately after the attacks of 7 October, after which we observed a downward trend that, unfortunately, did not continue in 2025. The sharp rise in cases of serious violence is unsurprising. The rule that applies to every type of crime also applies here: when law-enforcement agencies are indifferent to minor offences, the result is major offences.”

According to the report, the figures for Australia in 2025 are particularly alarming. In addition to a high number of violent attacks, including the Hanukkah massacre near Sydney in which 15 Jews were killed, the total number of antisemitic incidents rose from 1,727 in 2024 to 1,750 in 2025. By comparison, 1,200 incidents were recorded in 2023 and 472 in 2022.

Even more alarming is the fact that the end of the war in Gaza led to a relative increase in the number of incidents: compared with the 492 recorded between October and December 2024, 588 occurred during the same period in 2025.

In Canada, the total number of incidents rose from 6,219 in 2024 to 6,800 in 2025, more than three times the 2022 figure.

In Britain, the total number of incidents increased from 3,556 in 2024 to 3,700 in 2025, compared with 4,298 in 2023 and 1,662 in 2022. As in Australia, the end of the war in Gaza also led to an increase in the overall number of incidents in Britain: while 741 occurred in the United Kingdom between October and December 2024, the figure rose to 1,078 during the same period in 2025.

The number of cases of serious violence increased from two in 2024 to four in 2025, while other violent incidents, such as stone-throwing, decreased from 202 to 170. Cases of vandalism, by contrast, increased from 157 to 217.

In France, home to the world’s third-largest Jewish community after Israel and the United States, the total number of incidents fell from 1,570 in 2024 to 1,320 in 2025, compared with 436 in 2022. However, the number of incidents involving physical violence rose from 106 in 2024 to 126 in 2025.

In Germany, the number of incidents declined: 5,729 in 2025, compared with 6,560 in 2024 and 2,811 in 2022. However, for incidents involving physical violence, the decrease was smaller: 144 cases compared with 148 the previous year.

In Belgium, the number of incidents rose from 129 in 2024 to 232 in 2025, while physical assaults increased from 27 to 32.

In New York, the city with the largest Jewish community in the world, the number of incidents decreased from 344 in 2024 to 324 in 2025. However, between October and December, after the end of the war, the figure rose from 68 to 80.

In Chicago, the number of incidents fell from 79 in 2024 to 47 in 2025. However, incidents involving physical violence increased from eight to ten.

The figures for incidents in the United States refer to reports registered by the police rather than those collected by commissions and monitoring organisations. They are therefore less likely to include minor incidents and harassment on social media.

The report sharply criticises the role of the Israeli government in the global fight against antisemitism. The authors state: “The government has not undertaken a single significant and effective action and has often caused harm. Israeli politicians at the highest levels have progressively broadened the scope of the term ‘antisemitism’, including through cynical and hasty statements, emptying it of meaning and damaging the fight against hatred of Jews.”

The authors believe that the Ministry for Combating Antisemitism should be closed and that “its powers and budgets should be transferred to Israeli embassies and consulates, because only continuous, on-the-ground contact with Jewish communities, law-enforcement authorities and educators, carried out by professionals and based on careful listening and determined action, can contribute to the security of communities.”

A comprehensive and unprecedented study published within the report examined the profiles of antisemitic attacks and of the perpetrators prosecuted in the four countries with the highest concentrations of Jews – the United States, France, Canada and the United Kingdom—through the analysis of thousands of legal and journalistic documents and interviews with lawyers. The research covered the period from 2020 to 2025.

Dr Carl Yonker, the research director, observed: “The study clarifies why preventing antisemitic attacks is so difficult. An analysis of dozens of indictments and judgments shows that many perpetrators are ‘lone wolves’ who do not operate within any organisational structure. They come mainly from two completely different political extremes: white Christians devoted to ‘white supremacy’ on the one hand, and anti-Zionist Muslims on the other. The attackers represent a wide variety of ages, geographical areas and ethnic backgrounds. A high proportion of them are unemployed and, more generally, people who have not been fortunate in life.”

The pioneering study was carried out with the participation of researchers Noah Abrahams, Elie Houé and Antonio Peña.

As every year, the Tel Aviv University report also includes data on antisemitic incidents in countries with relatively small Jewish communities. Here too, the overall trend is complex.

In Mexico, 70 incidents were recorded in 2025, compared with 53 in 2024. In South Africa, 95 were recorded, compared with 128 in 2024.

In Italy, 963 incidents were recorded in 2025, compared with 877 in 2024. These included 11 cases of physical assault, compared with eight the previous year.

In Chile, 27 incidents were recorded, compared with 51 in 2024. In Spain, 207 were recorded, compared with 193 in 2024.

In New Zealand, 143 incidents were recorded in 2025, compared with 131 in 2024, including five physical assaults, compared with two the previous year.

In Bulgaria, 55 incidents were recorded, compared with 50 in 2024.

Professor Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former Minister of Justice, stated: “We are witnessing not only an unprecedented global explosion in antisemitic incidents since records began in the 1970s, but, even more disturbingly, an unprecedented explosion in hate crimes against Jews. In Canada, for example, Jews make up 1% of the country’s population but are the target of 72% of reported hate crimes and are 25 times more likely to be targeted than any other minority group.”

Dr Yonker, whose comprehensive article on rampant antisemitism within the American conservative movement is included in the report, observed: “The penetration of overt antisemitism – including admiration for Hitler and Holocaust denial – into the mainstream of the Republican Party is a cause for deep concern. Social media make combating this phenomenon particularly difficult, if not impossible. At present, the United States is experiencing a huge and dangerous shift against Israel, and antisemitism is flourishing in a way not seen since the Second World War.”

The report also includes an exclusive interview with one of the leading Holocaust scholars in the United States, Professor Christopher Browning, as well as an analysis of antisemitism in Western healthcare systems.

https://www.gov.il/en/pages/tel-aviv-university-s-annual-antisemitism-report-2025-13-apr-2026

https://cst.tau.ac.il/antisemitism-worldwide-report-for-2025/

Conclusion

Oriana Fallaci, 2002, excerpts from an article published in Panorama and the Corriere della Sera:

“I often quarrelled with the Israelis, fiercely, and in the past I defended the Palestinians a great deal. Perhaps more than they deserved. Yet I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.”

“I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews, just as I did when I was a girl, that is, when I fought alongside them. I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, and not to be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of so many Italians and so many Europeans, I am ashamed of this shame that dishonours my country and Europe. Even if every inhabitant of this planet thought differently, I would continue to think this way. There is nothing more to add.”

⸻

Stefano Silvio Dragani, formerly a Brigadier General in the Carabinieri. A graduate in Political Science and Security Studies, he also holds a second-level master’s degree in African Studies. After operational assignments in Italy, he took part in international missions in Albania, Kosovo, Ghana, Somalia, Rwanda and Belgium, working as a security and stabilisation expert in crisis areas, including on behalf of the European Union. He has delivered lectures and seminars in Italy and abroad – from the University of Padua to the Carabinieri Officers School and the United Nations congresses on global terrorism – and has served as a special adviser both to the Minister of Security of Somalia and to the police forces of Rwanda and Uganda.

He is the author of five essays published by the Rome-based publisher Fawkes Editions: “Fragments of Life” (2022), devoted to his long experience in Africa; “Cavalry: A Way of Life” (2023), a historical and military fresco; “Conflicts and Words” (2024), focusing on relations between Africa and the major powers; “Another World” (2025); and “The Last Mile” (2026), a contemporary analysis of the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine. He lived for sixteen years in Friuli Venezia Giulia, five of them in Sistiana, just outside Trieste, a city to which he remains deeply attached. His international outlook is combined with a strong awareness of the strategic role of Italy and of our region within the global geopolitical context.

Article by Stefano Silvio Dragani