Jews Forced Out of Partisan Day Observance in Milan

In Milan, a parade celebrating Italy’s Liberation Day — liberation from Fascism — took place on April 25. Italians of every persuasion were welcomed to take part, with one exception. Jews who showed up to march, including some who had been Partisans themselves, or were the children of Partisans, were the object of harassment and threats of violence, and forced to withdraw under police protection. This display of antisemitic hate would have been fitting if the march had been for Fascism, rather than for the triumph of those who fought Fascism. More on this latest outburst of antisemitism can be found here.

The Jewish Brigade and members of the Milan Jewish community were violently insulted and harassed during a parade celebrating the 79th anniversary of Italy’s Liberation Day on Saturday, and ultimately were forced to withdraw under police escort.

Italy’s April 25 Festa della Liberazione is a national holiday marking the end of Nazi-fascist rule and the victory of the Italian Resistance during World War II.

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Every year, the Jewish Brigade Group, a military unit of the WWII era made up mostly of Jewish volunteers from Mandatory Palestine who fought as part of the British Army against the Nazis, is honored. Many members of the Jewish community march under the brigade’s banners to commemorate the Jewish soldiers’ role in defeating fascism.

While the Arabs in the Middle East, and especially in Mandatory Palestine, rooted for the Nazis during World War II, the Jews of Palestine volunteered to fight, and did fight, on the side of the British forces, often volunteering for the most hazardous undertakings in the fight to drive Rommel’s army out of Egypt.

On Saturday, Jewish Brigade and Milan Jewish community members – as well as anti-regime Iranians who were protesting alongside the parade – were excluded from the event by extremist left-wing and pro-Palestine groups wanting to block their passage.

After setting off from Via Boschetto toward Piazza Duomo, the Jewish community members of the Jewish only made it a few hundred meters before they were interrupted by openly antisemitic insults such as “You should have been made into soap.”…

A parade to observe the defeat of Nazi-Fascism in Italy turned into a display of Nazi salutes and antisemitic insults, so bad that the Jewish marchers had to be pulled from the parade under police escort. There was no attempt by other marchers to protect the Jewish contingent from those harassing it. Many Italians have swallowed the pro-Palestinian propaganda that paints Israel as a colonial-settler genocidal state, and what’s more, all Jews are being made to answer for the putative crimes of the Jewish state. The Jewish marchers in Milan were subject to threats, harassment, and were surrounded by others who blocked their way so that they could not proceed. The police had to intervene and escort them away from the march.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry called it “deeply troubling” that, on Italy’s WWII Liberation Day, Jewish participants in Milan were targeted and excluded by violent extremists. It thanked political leaders who have spoken out in condemnation of these “antisemitic and anti-patriotic incidents.”

“Such a shameful exclusion of the Jewish community must never be allowed to happen again,” the ministry said.

But that “shameful exclusion” of Jews will happen again, until the Italian state changes its tactics. Instead of escorting Jews out of this and similar marches, as the answer to their harassment, the police should be arresting those who have been insulting and threatening the Jews. If that means mass arrests, so be it. One wonders how many of these antisemitic marchers were native Italians, and how many were Muslim migrants, who, as their numbers rise, have become ever more outrageous in their antisemitic displays. Shouldn’t this incident lead Italians of good will to be more insistent on keeping out Muslim migrants to Italy who have been spreading, under the guise of anti-Zionism, the virus of antisemitism? These pro-Palestinian groups present two versions of themselves. To fellow Muslims, they describe the war against the Jewish state as what, in truth, it is: a religious conflict, based on the Muslim belief that any territory that Muslims once possessed must forever remain the possession of Muslims. To left-wing non-Muslims, they present the conflict as one of Palestinians conducting a war of national liberation against the colonial-settler, apartheid, genocidal state of Israel that sits on land “stolen” from the Palestinians.

Deportations for those who use violence and threats of violence to shut down their perceived enemies — and pretty soon the once-tottering Italian ship of state will have righted itself, in both meanings of the word.