What happened yesterday 15 May at the Luigi Einaudi Campus of the University of Turin is not only an episode of violence, but an act of cultural surrender. There are not many words to search for: a group of students prevented, by force and with fear, the holding of an event designed to affirm democracy, to counter anti-Semitism, to keep a university space open to debate. The president of the Union of Young Jews of Italy, Luca Spizzichino, together with the other members of his organisation and the promoting associations, was insulted, attacked, intimidated: and all this happened inside an Italian university, in 2025.

One scene in particular struck many: the frame shows the exact moment when a woman rips from the lapel of Luke’s jacket the yellow pin worn in solidarity with the Israeli hostages still in the hands of Hamas. A gesture that condenses, in an instant, the will not only to silence, but to humiliate and symbolically erase every Jewish voice from public space. It is not just intolerance: it is dehumanisation.

We at L’Europeista want to express our full, total, affectionate solidarity with the entire Jewish youth community of Italy. To those who, with courage, try to keep a light on in the midst of the darkness of violent slogans and squadrist behaviour. What happened in Turin is not an expression of activism: it is the very negation of the university as a place of freedom and education, it is the humiliation of the right to study, it is the criminalisation of Jewish identity.

Anti-Semitism today increasingly manifests itself in the seemingly harmless face of political militancy. But when militancy goes so far as to spit, threaten, strike, and forcibly prevent a debate from taking place, it has long since ceased to be a legitimate expression. It has become a form of violence.

Pina Picierno, Vice-President of the European Parliament, said it clearly: “This new systemic anti-Semitism that is flooding our society is now a scourge that is taking on the character of an emergency in terms of size and normalisation.” And he is right. The greatest risk today is not just the violence itself, but the habituation to violence, its transformation into a ‘political act’, its being tolerated, and often justified, in the name of a misunderstood spirit of justice towards the victims of the Netanyahu government’s military action in Gaza.

So, if wearing a yellow pin today means being exposed to hatred, let us all do it. Let us make that pin our own. Let us wear it, as a public act of solidarity. To say that we are not afraid. To say that no one will be left alone any longer.

Our solidarity is not just a human gesture, it is a stance. Those who keep silent or minimise these facts, who relativise them in the name of an ideology or a cause, contribute to normalising the idea that Jews are a permissible target.

We want free, open, inclusive universities. We want every student, whatever their origin, religion, political idea, to be able to speak out without fearing for their safety. We want those who believe in peace not to ally themselves with those who incite the intifada or the destruction of the State of Israel, but with those who, like Luca and the other young Jews of Italy, seek the path of dialogue.

We will not be silent. We will not leave alone those who are under attack today because they are Jews, because they defend Israel, or simply because they believe in freedom.