\n Prominent left-leaning Italian weekly L\u2019Espresso is at the centre of a diplomatic storm online, after the Israeli ambassador to Italy slammed its choice of front cover as “manipulative.” The magazine titled its latest edition \u201cL\u2019Abuso\u201d or \u201cThe Abuse,\u201d illustrating the cover with a photo of an armed Israeli settler sneering, whilst pointing his smartphone at a visibly-distressed Palestinian woman. <\/p>\n
Israeli envoy Jonathan Peled said the image of the grinning settler \u201cdistorts the complex reality with which Israel must coexist, promoting stereotypes and hatred.\u201d Online, pro-Israel accounts cast doubt over the photo\u2019s authenticity, questioning if it is fake or AI-generated, with some saying it dehumanises Jews similar to Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust and reinforces antisemitic stereotypes.<\/p>\n
In response to the criticism, the photographer of the image Pietro Masturzo verified it’s indeed real, sharing a video filmed from the incident in Idhna, west of Hebron on 12 October 2025.<\/p>\n
He explains it was captured the first day of the olive harvest there, when an armed group of Israeli settlers arrived and \u201cprevented the Palestinians from picking their olives.\u201d According to his statement, the expression on the settler\u2019s face “mimics the sound a shepherd makes when gathering his flock, addressing the Palestinians as if they were his own animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u2019Espresso dedicated this issue to denouncing Israeli expansionism, and ongoing settler violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank. The magazine has refused to apologise or retract its cover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prominent left-leaning Italian weekly L\u2019Espresso is at the centre of a diplomatic storm online, after the Israeli ambassador…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5420,5422,537,5074,5419,325,37,5418,5,956,340,5417,5421],"class_list":{"0":"post-7306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-italy","8":"tag-fake-news","9":"tag-anti-semitism","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-diplomacy","12":"tag-explainer","13":"tag-giorgia-meloni","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-israeli-settlements","16":"tag-italy","17":"tag-middle-east","18":"tag-social-media","19":"tag-truth-or-fake","20":"tag-west-bank"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}