This report presents a summary of the data recorded and analyzed by the CDEC Foundation’s Observatory on Antisemitism in 2023, data that is not exhaustive of the phenomenon in Italian society. Since acts of antisemitism, like other forms of hatred and intolerance, are often under-reported the data presented here, although still representing a significant increase in numerical terms, are certainly not exhaustive of the Italian reality.
The data During 2023, the CDEC Foundation’s Observatory on Antisemitism received 923 reports. After careful analysis, 454 of them were recorded as incidents of antisemitism. 469 reports were not recorded because they reported acts that were not considered antisemitic (270), already recorded (86) or unclear (113). The data for 2023 (454) is far higher than that recorded in 2022 (241).
Never had such a high number of incidents been recorded over the course of 12 months, of which 216 were recorded between October and December. After the terrorist acts committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, there was a radical shift back to a similar climate to that of 1982 during the First Lebanon War,
when Italy experienced the most serious upsurge of antisemitism since the end of World War II, reaching its peak with the bomb placed and blown up in the offices of the CDEC Foundation and the bloody attack on the Synagogue in Rome by Palestinian terrorists.
Most of the cases registered by the Observatory on Antisemitism generally fall into the typology of Defamation and Insults, i.e., antisemitic narratives/prejudices/stereotypes applied to virtual reality (e.g., offensive postings on the social web) or the offline world (e.g., antisemitic speeches in public spaces).
This trend is well-established, but since October 7 there has been a clear break with the past, with about half of the acts against Jews taking place offline: death threats written on the interior walls of places frequented by Jews, mezuzah ripped from the door, threatening letters sent to Jewish communities, assaults (verbal and physical) on students in schools and universities, sharp increase in the activity of BDS groups in some universities, harassment and pressure against Jewish students.
There is a general hardening of speech. The level of aggression increases as social acceptance for Israel-related antisemitism spreads: if “Zionists” are equal/worse than Nazis, it is licit and democratic to oppose them. As also stated by a leading U.S. academic, invoking “genocide of the Jews” may be permissible, “depending on the context”.
