“In Bologna, the PD isn’t standing with the Palestinians, it’s standing with Hamas,” says the president of the Progressive Jewish Community

On 7 October 2026, Bologna was the only city in Italy where Jews commemorated the pogrom of three years’ ago with an open-air event. “In three years, neither the City of Bologna nor the University has ever organised an event to commemorate the victims of 7 October. Last year, however, in Piazza del Nettuno, beneath the windows of Palazzo d’Accursio, that massacre was celebrated as an act of resistance,” recalls Carmen Dal Monte: a former university lecturer now at the helm of an artificial intelligence company, who, as president of the Progressive Jewish Community of Bologna, organised the event. “On 7 October, civilians were killed in their homes, in the kibbutzim, at a music festival, and hundreds of people were taken to Gaza as hostages. In three years, the institutions of this city have failed to find a way to dedicate a moment of remembrance to those victims. We did it last year and we have done it again, because the memory of the victims concerns the whole of Bologna and not just the Jewish community. The City Council and the University are organising nothing and are allowing the public squares to commemorate the massacre.” Hence the invitation to Piazza San Domenico “to all citizens who love peace and truth”.

“We were the only community to hold an event outside the synagogue,” emphasises Dal Monte. “There is a great deal of fear about speaking out. In Bologna, with the mayor, the university and the pro-Palestinian establishment, the atmosphere is getting worse and worse. The war in Gaza is over, but here they haven’t realised it. It was a beautiful, moving demonstration, with the screening of images of children – not only from 7 October, but also of the 12 Druze children massacred by a Hezbollah rocket.”

On the same day in Bologna, the Palestinian Youth organised a debate and a film screening in a lecture theatre at the occupied university, without authorisation. “Unauthorised, but nonetheless tolerated, if not facilitated. Because an unauthorised event is normally broken up.” An event that glorified the attack of 7 October. “Yes! They equated it with the Resistance, claiming that the civilian deaths on 7 October were akin to the civilian deaths resulting from the Via Rasella attack. An obscene and anti-Semitic comparison. In Via Rasella, they targeted soldiers; they did not go into people’s homes to rape children. On 7 October, it was a pogrom in which between 6,000 and 7,000 people – some guerrillas, some terrorists and some ordinary civilians, if we wish to call them that – entered another country and went looking for people house by house.”

Carmen Dal Monte is co-author of a recent book recounting the story of Hajj Amin al-Husseini: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who founded the Palestinian movement and allied himself with Hitler, helping him to recruit Muslim SS units. “Yes, those who prattle on about partisans and the Resistance are ignorant because they do not realise that there is a direct link between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Nazism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. There is a very clear historical thread running through it all, with the Muslim SS units subsequently being declared war criminals.”

So, two events taking place simultaneously. “Three. The unauthorised gathering organised by pro-Pal groups, the rally in the square organised by the progressive Jewish community at 6.30 pm, and following that, the event organised by the Orthodox community in the synagogue – which we naturally attended, just as the Orthodox community attended our event. They were deliberately scheduled at different times to allow people to attend both. The event in the synagogue was held behind closed doors, but the mayor was also present—he had invited himself—and, of course, he was not turned away. He did not speak, however.” Would he have had anything to say? “The glorification of Hamas and the events of 7 October takes place with the complete tolerance—if not complicity—of the city’s most important institutions. The mayor who flies the Palestinian flag; the deputy mayor who goes about wearing a badge bearing a symbol of Palestine that encompasses the entire territory of Israel; the rector who allows this sort of event to take place. There is an atmosphere in the city that is not only tolerated but often encouraged, and you see it in everyday life. There are people in my community who have been attacked at work, and hardly anyone dares to wear the Star of David in Bologna any more. I wear it, but when I went for a hospital appointment a while ago, the doctor who examined me said: ‘You really shouldn’t be wearing that here.’ She was genuinely concerned. All this is the result of three years in which, at a local level, we have seen all the city’s top officials stoking a climate of hatred. When the Fakir case occurred, an hour after the poor man had died, Mayor Lepore organised a demonstration in which they wrecked half the city whilst waving Palestinian flags. The Councillor for Education, Daniele Ara, says that Bologna’s Jewish communities should speak out against Netanyahu’s policies. But why? I don’t understand – I’m from Bologna just like everyone else. Why should I speak out against Netanyahu? Why, when a couple of poor gay men were attacked by the Maranza gang right here in Bologna, was no one asking the Islamic communities to speak out against attacks on homosexuals? In Bologna, the PD is not siding with the Palestinians, nor with the ‘two peoples, two states’ principle, but is actually backing Hamas.” Despite all this, Bologna was the only city in Italy where Jews commemorated 7 October with a public event… “It wasn’t just Jews. Out of 150 people present, according to the police, there may have been around fifty Jews. But the point is that in Bologna the situation is far worse than in other Italian cities. That is why the need to say ‘enough is enough’ was stronger, because people are fed up. Not just Jews. Incidentally, there were many Ukrainians and Iranians amongst those present. Here in Bologna, too, at best they are completely ignored; at worst, pro-Russian groups hold conferences with the full consent of the institutions.”