The bill to combat anti-Semitism presented by Graziano Delrio and other PD senators and immediately disavowed by the Nazarene leadership can be discussed and criticised in a serious manner, examining the scope of the regulatory intervention, which is, to tell the truth, decidedly restrained in its repressive aspects, and the consequences that might ensue, starting with the dreaded unintentional effects, to which any political initiative ‘for good‘ is always exposed.

Alternatively, one can discuss it and brand it with infamy in the very little serious and not at all honest way, which the elders of the Campo Largo have immediately chosen, inside and outside the PD, worried that this initiative, like those of Left for Israel, will compromise the anti-Zionist revival of the entire camp, with respect speaking, progressive, and distance it from the path traced by comrade Francesca Albanese, who, as is well known, does not accuse Israel of colonialism or genocide for what it does – for its policies in the West Bank or the Gaza war – but for what it is, that is, for the fact of its existence.

In fact, Albanese’s thesis is that Israel is in itself a project of ethnic cleansing of Palestine and extermination of the Arab population, as well as representing – as they used to say in the PCI of the 1950s – the ‘bridgehead’ of an only formally post-colonial imperialism.

The bill by Delrio and his (few) colleagues and the activity of Left for Israel would deserve sincere appreciation, even if in the end it only served to mark a point of difference from the Left’s unanimous subjection to a political and historiographical canon – Zionism as racism – that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) qualifies as explicitly anti-Semitic.

Still on the subject of the definition of anti-Semitism, which Delrio’s bill adopts, and which also refers back to the solemn declaration of the IHRA – a non-governmental organisation between states, in which Italy also participates, not an NGO – it is interesting to note how precisely after 7 October 2023, this definition becomes suspect and problematic despite previously appearing peaceful, to the point that it was the Conte II government (M5S, PD, LEU, IV) that adopted it in January 2020, following a motion passed unanimously in the House in 2018.

Which confirms that 7 October did not reawaken the sense of the horror of the Shoah, but slated the hatred that led to the Shoah. The subsequent Gaza war, which was a goal of 7 October, not just its predictable consequence, further legitimised it – exactly as Yahya Sinwar intended – as a dutiful moral reaction to the genocide, as a political necessity imposed by humanitarian sensibilities.

So saying that Israel is, in itself, a racist state after 7 October has become easier, not more difficult and more acceptable, not more scandalous. And the Italian left has accommodated itself within the logical-political framework of the original sin of Israeli Zionism, which makes it impossible today to admit, as Giorgio Napolitano said, that anti-Zionism is just anti-Semitism in disguise.

An initial assessment of the Delrio proposal

Having said that, would the bill be useful, useless or even counterproductive from a practical point of view, if it were ever passed?

His starting point is hardly disputable. The increase in anti-Semitic violence in Italy and throughout the world after 7 October is closely related to the extraordinary spread of the main motifs of anti-Semitic hatred in the political-media ecosystem: which represented, as we said, the continuation of 7 October by other means.

Even the emphasis that the bill places on combating anti-Semitism in the educational sphere – schools and universities – on the side of both students and the teaching class appears hard to dispute, since Italy (and not only Italy) is today a country in which the presence in classrooms of Jewish personalities or organisations entails, at the very least, the deployment of entire police units in riot gear. Which therefore implies, as has happened almost everywhere, that these reckless Zionist provocations are strongly discouraged, when not directly prevented by the academic authorities themselves.

Therefore, more specific attention and surveillance of mass anti-Semitism, without new crimes, without increased penalties, without special repressive apparatuses, can hardly be considered superfluous and idle. Of course, all forms of hatred should be equally repressed on the basis of a general rule. But it is not so undue to consider that since repressive norms (not necessarily criminal) should reflect the theoretical offensiveness of conduct, but first and foremost prevent and sanction its practical spread and its material effect (on people’s lives, freedom, dignity and safety), that there should be a specific norm on anti-Semitism is far from absurd, given that it is really difficult to equate the phenomenon of hatred for Jews with any other phenomenon of social hatred.

The risks to freedom of opinion

What about the risks to free opinion? What if the fight against anti-Semitism also became a paradoxical persecutory device?

I think I understand some of the concerns that are expressed even by people far removed from Albanian-thinking. In the Maga-right, anti-Semitism has become the pretext for laissez-faire and blackmail operations against cultural institutions, the media and private citizens, who are sticking the ‘anti-Semitic’ sticker on the direct order of the White House in order to be more easily discriminated against, repressed, deported, etc., etc.

On the other hand, it is not that there is a shortage of matriculated anti-Semites in the Maga world, like Carlson, but in this, Trumpian and Putinist rhetoric indifferently uses anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic motives, sometimes combined and sometimes disjointed, in an electorally fungible and modular strategy of chaos – to each his hatred, there is room for everyone – as long as it is functional to create cascading emergencies and justify despotic responses.

It is evident that in Italy there are those on the right who want to retrace the footsteps of Maga America and make the fight against anti-Semitism the passepartout of the tailor-made exception, while continuing to foment other forms of ideological-religious and racial hatred and to recognise for them the immunity of free speech. It is full of anti-antisemites who are jumping the gun. Anti-antisemitism has become (also) the anti-racist license of racists, just as, on the flip side, anti-Zionist anti-racism has become the justification for anti-Jewish hatred.

So, having approved the Delrio bill, would there be a danger of officially passing as anti-Semitic if some bot chose to ‘target’ those who dare to call Smotrich a ‘fascist’ or Netanyahu a ‘thug’ on social media? Honestly, not many more than are being taken today. Let’s say that the risks, even judicial ones, for much more outspoken and proud forms of anti-Semitism continue to be very remote, despite the Mancino law, for the same reason that insulting, defaming, harassing, and attacking Jews have once again become acceptable, when not commendable, conduct.