Global antisemitism has surged in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and throughout the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. Italy, which has a Jewish population of only about 28,000, has seen a 400% increase in verbal and physical antisemitic attacks since the start of the war. In one particularly egregious incident, the chief rabbi of Genoa was attacked with a screwdriver in November by a man yelling antisemitic insults.
Marco Carrai, an Italian entrepreneur and president of a children’s hospital foundation, has been a long-time friend of Israel and of the Jewish people in Italy, even being granted the title of honorary consul of Israel in Florence. But in today’s harsh environment, his support for Israel and Jews has made him a target, and he is forced to rely on the military for his safety.
Carrai spoke about his view of Italian antisemitism and his own experiences standing up for Israel and the Italian Jewish community.
Carrai said that while historic antisemitism was concentrated on the far right, modern-day Italian antisemitism is found more on the far left. He described hearing regular antisemitic and anti-Israel comments over the past months, such as “the Jewish people are killers, they murder a lot of people, on [Jews’] hands is the blood of the Palestinians.”
Because of Carrai’s support for Israel, far-left activists have protested his involvement in the Meyer Pediatric Hospital Foundation, the fundraising organization for one of Italy’s largest children’s hospitals. A petition calling for his resignation received 10,000 signatures.
“Every day in the last more or less six months, they asked me, in all the places in Florence, Carrai, go home,” he said, noting that activists accused him of having “the blood of the Palestinian children” on his hands.
The criticism of Carrai comes even as his hospital cares for Palestinian children.
“I don’t resign,” Carrai said. “I have the full support of the people at the foundation of the children’s hospital, because they know who is Marco, and Marco is the same. And this is not a battle of Marco, it is not a war of Marco, it is not a war of my family. It is a war of civilization. We cannot permit that the history start again like in the past.”
Protests against him have become so threatening that Carrai has had to take steps to protect his family’s safety. “I don’t feel safe right now,” he said, noting that his house is currently guarded by the military.
He described friends’ appeals that he tone down his activism for his own safety. “Please, please, for you and for your family, be silent. Please, Marco,” he recounted them saying.
“And I say, no,” he said. “Because if during fascism someone stays in silence, more Jewish people die. We cannot turn our head the other way. We cannot. We cannot stay silent.”
Many recent acts of antisemitism in Italy have taken place in the country’s universities. A study published in July by the Union of Young Jews in Italy found that 70% of young Italian Jews were dissatisfied by how universities have responded to antisemitism.
Carrai shared his frustration with the lack of response that University of Pisa professors had to a student’s anti-Israel speech at the school’s inauguration ceremony.
“It’s like a sermon, and all the professors in front of me, in front of him, silence,” he said.
While many activists couch their critiques as being “just” anti-Israel, Carrai said the critiques seem to him to be antisemitic.
“If someone is against Zionism, he is against ‘Semitism,’” he said.
The police force has been very supportive of the Jewish community, Carrai said. “But it’s a disaster in the university, in the school, in the secondary school, in the social center,” he added.
Even some members of Italy’s Democratic Party are antisemitic, Carrai said.
He noted that the rise of social media has made it easier for antisemitism to spread.
“Social media is one of the very huge problems. Because in the past, when you want to tell something, you can tell your little couple of friends or you send an [opinion] article to a newspaper, and the newspaper puts it in the trash,” he said. “Now, you can go to the page of the prime minister and tell him that he’s a Zionist and all the people read it and go follow you.”
“In my opinion, we have to block immediately this type of social media when they create problems with antisemitism,” Carrai said.
When he sees antisemitic speech on social media or in real life, Carrai brings it to the attention of a judge.
“I put in front of the judge one of the imams in Bologna, because during his ceremony in YouTube, he said more or less that all the Jews are killers, that we have to murder all the Jews, etc.,” he said.
Yet the massive waves of Italian antisemitism have made a purely legal response to the issue untenable. Carrai called for better education as a way to address the root causes of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.
“We have to come back to the school, first to teach them the real history of Israel, the real history of the world, because the world, as we know, starts there with the Jewish people. And the people don’t know,” he said. “The people think that Israel is the people that attack all the states around them and is fighting.”
Carrai, who has worked with the Muslim community of Florence and helped establish the community’s mosque, also called for better integration of Muslim immigrants into Italy.
“The real integration is integration into our values,” he said. “Otherwise, there will be a division.”
In discussing a vision for the Middle East, Carrai made a point of distinguishing Middle Eastern countries that have supported Israel from those that are allied with Iran.
“We have to divide into two the Middle East, because, for example, in the United Emirates, etc., they know very well the history,” Carrai said. “And they are very prudent, but they are also –in my opinion, and we saw what happened when Iran attacked Israel – they are very cooperative.”