Soon afterwards, there was the local business owner who told me – after I said I had moved from Jerusalem – that I had to leave unless I declared “Free Palestine!”. Next came the anti-Zionist signs in local restaurants and cafes. One incident made national headlines when a popular restaurant owner in Naples allegedly threw out an Israeli couple, stating: “Zionists are not welcome here.”
Then, there was the increasingly extreme rhetoric at the weekly pro-Palestine protests around the corner from my apartment, the colourful posters of Hamas’ Yayah Sinwar and the illustrations of Arab fighters trampling bodies of slain IDF soldiers posted around the city centre. Finally, it was the Israeli flags painted with swastikas and fake blood drops hanging from windows that made me realise it was time to go.
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A poster in Naples (Image Benjamin Birely)[Missing Credit]
National headlines also reflected my personal experience.
Reports of Jewish tourists in Milan, Rome and Venice being harassed and assaulted began to appear. One incident at a service station outside Milan in July involved a French Jewish father and his six-year-old son, both wearing kippot, being surrounded by a crowd yelling “Free Palestine” and “murderers”. The father reported that he was pushed to the ground and repeatedly kicked. Earlier the same month, signs stating “Israelis not welcome” were put up around the neighbourhood of Milan’s Jewish community.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories and originally from a small town north west of Naples, appears frequently in Italian media, becoming a local “expert” voice on Israel. Her rhetoric, which frames the state of Israel as fundamentally illegitimate and criminal, has been consistently platformed and amplified in mainstream discussions on the war in Gaza.
Over the summer, the Italian LGBTQ Jewish group Keshet faced aggressive protests at Pride events. In Rome, they faced chants of “terrorists” and “murderers”, while in Naples they were shouted off the open-mic stage and plastic bottles were thrown at them over a rainbow flag bearing the Star of David. Their speaker pleaded in vain with the angry crowd waving Palestinian flags, emphasising they were Italian Jews and that the Star of David is a Jewish symbol. “Zionists aren’t welcome!” was the crowd’s response.
On September 22 and October 3, in two consecutive national strikes organised by the country’s largest trade union, CGIL, at least one million Italians protested against Israel and the war in Gaza. Both strikes received broad support from a diverse array of unions, centre-left regional governments, student and cultural groups, and Italian celebrities.
This is all only a small glimpse into a much larger movement that has taken Italy by storm and become a defining feature of Italian political culture: the new Palestinismo, or “Palestinianism”.
A pro-Palestinian protest in Naples (Image: Benjamin Birely)[Missing Credit]
This movement goes far beyond anti-war sentiment or solidarity with the Palestinian national cause. Deeply rooted in Italy’s Catholic cultural past, the complicated legacy of the fascist period and influential post-war leftist propaganda, Italy’s intense focus on Palestine brings together powerful trends in Italian history and culture to develop a new popular religion that leaves no room for dissent.
While most Italians are not particularly religious, Catholicism continues to play a significant cultural role in Italy, especially in southern cities such as Naples and Palermo, which have become strongholds of Palestinismo.
The legacy of centuries of Catholic antisemitism, which positioned Jews as responsible for deicide, did not vanish overnight with the Second Vatican Council and the Church’s commitment to improved Jewish-Christian relations through Nostra Aetate, which shifted the Church’s teaching on non-Christian religions.
Popular dolorismo – the glorification of suffering – which has shaped religious culture in Catholic Europe and emphasises the redemptive suffering of Christ and the Virgin Mary, also creates a potent framework in which Palestinian suffering takes on religious meaning.
This is exemplified by a votive shrine to the “Palestinian Madonna” on one of the narrow alleyways in the historical centre of Naples, which I regularly pass on my daily walks. The traditional statue of Our Lady of Sorrows is wrapped in a veil with the Palestinian national colours and dedicated to the suffering children of Gaza.
When the Italian Cardinal and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, stated this summer that “Christ is not absent from Gaza, he is there, crucified in the wounded, buried under rubble”, he was speaking to a long tradition of religious symbolism that has been historically weaponised against Jewish communities.
Dangerously, it is yet again the archetypal Jew responsible for the crucified Christ – only now he’s buried under rubble in Gaza.
It is precisely within this symbolic context that the mainstream centre-left Italian newspaper La Repubblica published a cartoon in July 2025 following the IDF shelling of the only Catholic parish in Gaza. In the cartoon, Netanyahu appears with the text: “It was a regrettable mistake… we were aiming at the bambinello” (baby Jesus).
Together with the Catholic cultural legacy, Italy’s unresolved fascist past also contributes to its unique brand of “Palestinianism”.
Unlike in Germany, post-war Italy did not undergo a thorough cultural and political process of denazification. Italian society never took full responsibility and accountability for fascist Italy’s collaboration with Nazi Germany, the 1938 anti-Jewish race laws, and the deportation of nearly 8,000 Italian Jews to concentration camps in 1943 and 1944.
The dominant post-war Italian narrative blamed Nazi Germany while emphasising the heroic role of Italian anti-fascist partisans.
Post-war leftist politics then cemented the association between Italian partisans and Palestinian “freedom fighters”. It is often forgotten that Italy had the largest post-war communist movement in western Europe.
The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was the second largest political party in Italy in the post-war period and its popularity peaked with 34.4 per cent of national votes in the 1976 general elections. Like other leftist movements, Italian communists adopted Soviet propaganda on the Middle East and Zionism. Narratives glorifying the Palestinian “freedom fighter” as a modern-day heroic “partisan” fighting against American and Zionist “imperialism” shaped the perspective of at least two generations on the Italian left. The implications of this process were clear on June 25, 1982, when Italian trade unions and the Communist Party called for a national strike to protest against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
In their protest over the Jewish community’s perceived complicity, trade union members threw an empty coffin outside the Great Synagogue in Rome.
A little over three months later on October 9, 1982, a Shabbat morning and the holiday of Shemini Atzeret, Palestinian terrorists threw several hand grenades into the Great Synagogue and opened fire. Dozens were injured and one two-year-old toddler, Stefano Gaj Taché, was murdered. No Palestinian group officially claimed responsibility, but one of the terrorists was allegedly affiliated with the PLO – the same organisation many Italian leftists idealised as the Palestinian partisans.
Weaving these cultural and political legacies together, the new Italian Palestinismo thrives on a perfect storm of deep-seated religious symbolism, an unresolved fascist legacy and leftist anti-Zionism that frames Israel and Zionism as archetypal and quintessential evils that must be purged from society. For its adherents, the issue of Israel and Palestine is not only or even primarily a foreign policy issue, it is at the very heart of domestic politics and identity.
When my neighbours or colleagues ask me, “Are you a Zionist?”, or when a local business declares “Zionists not welcome” and tells me to leave, there is no actual interest in real solutions for Israelis and Palestinians or how to build a shared, equitable and peaceful future for both peoples.
The issue is whether one is essentially “good” or “evil”, ideologically “pure” or “murderous”, and yet again, those Jews who cannot adequately prove that they belong to the former, are by default assigned to the latter.
Benjamin Birely is a PhD candidate and researcher at “L’Orientale” University in Naples, Italy, working on late ancient Zoroastrian and Jewish texts. He is also a content creator on Instagram and Substack as HolyLandSpeaks. You can reach him at holylandspeaks@gmail.com
'Intifada until victory' is etched on the main doors of the University of Naples (Image: Benjamin Birely)[Missing Credit]