Tuscany Ghetto. When anti-Zionism turns Jews into a foreign body

Florence is the ‘city of peace’. A noble vocation linked to its history and to Giorgio La Pira, the mayor who made the city a symbol of dialogue between peoples and religions. But since 7 October 2023, that word – peace – has come to sound like a painful paradox. Beneath its magnificent squares and the myth of the democratic and civil left, the Jew – no longer as an individual but as a collective figure – is once again regarded by many as a foreign element, if not a scapegoat.

On the third anniversary of 7 October, a committee of the City of Florence approved the resolution ‘Palestine must not disappear’. Evidently, no other date was available.

One may criticise a government and a war, but if a passport is turned into a moral failing, a medicine into an ideological contagion, memory into a minefield and a terrorist into an honorary citizen, then Tuscany, through its resolutions and rubbish bins, creates a ghetto made not of walls but of suspicion – a place where a Jew, in order to remain, must prove that he is not what he is.

Today, in Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence, demonstrators are calling for the "end of Zionism", as if the scene were being played out in Tehran. The demonstration was authorised. Hundreds of people had just marched through the streets of the Tuscan capital’s centre under the slogan ‘Zionism out of Tuscany’. Authorised demonstration. A year ago, again in Florence, another demonstration took place under the slogan: ‘Let’s stop Zionism through resistance’. Authorised demonstration, perhaps without the Kalashnikovs featured prominently on the posters.

An Israeli soldier on holiday in Tuscany has just been reported to the authorities by the Hind Rajab Foundation. He is alleged to have committed “acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip”, according to the Tuscan councillors of the Five Star Movement, who have announced a motion within the scope of the region’s powers, as if Florence were The Hague. Naturally, there is no motion concerning Islamists.

Meanwhile, the Regional Council has approved another motion tabled by the PD to “cease all forms of institutional cooperation with the Israeli government”. The Region is hosting Dyab Abou Jahjah, head of the Hind Rajab Foundation, for a day. He is given a tour of Palazzo Panciatichi, the seat of the Regional Council, and then takes part in a conference. However, this is the same Lebanese activist whom the British Home Office (led by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith) barred from entering the United Kingdom on grounds related to extremism.

From Florence to Pisa, Tuscan universities are severing academic ties with the Jewish state. There is no discussion of a treaty nor evaluation of a project: they are simply cutting ties with an entire state. Ten days after 7 October, "Israel out of UNIFI. Free Palestine". This is the message left at the Novoli university campus. It marks the start of the demonisation campaign. Then came the leaflets in Piazza San Lorenzo: “On 7 October, the Palestinian resistance dealt the harshest blow in history to the Zionist occupier.”

At the university’s Piazza Brunelleschi campus, right in the heart of Florence where humanities courses are held, another slogan appears: "Long live Hamas, eternal glory to Nasrallah. Let’s bomb Tel Aviv with fighter jets". The political landscape of Tuscany in the second half of the 20th century had built its identity on a dual foundation: the Resistance as a founding myth and left-wing government as a testament to civilisation. Fascism is the evil that has already been defeated; the left is the benchmark; the people are always on the right side because they are Tuscan. And from this certainty stems a cheap morality. Those who consider themselves the heirs of the partisans have no need to question the present: it is enough for them to recognise, in the conflict of the moment, the figure of the occupier and that of the occupied. Israel enters that framework already condemned. The Jewish state is not a state amongst states, but merely a colonial variable.

“Florence has been free since ’44, now it’s Palestine’s turn”, reads the banner at a demonstration in Florence. The message is clear, crystal clear, and refers to ’48. Rino Casella, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Pisa, is attacked in the lecture theatre because he is not pro-Palestine. In that Pisa where the Tower still leans, but is now at least decked out with the Palestinian flag. Meanwhile, acts of vandalism are spreading across the streets of Tuscany. “Merry Christmas, W Hamas” was scrawled on the shutter of a market stall in Via Buontalenti in Livorno, near the synagogue that has already been the target of attacks. During a prayer service for Remembrance Day at the Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the province of Massa Carrara, Hamas’s action on 7 October was described as “fully legitimate”.

The ‘shroud for the children of Gaza’ arrives in Grosseto. A young girl is threatened and shoved at school simply because her father is Israeli. In schools in Lucca, Florence and Prato, a ‘menu dedicated to Gaza’ is served. A tourist books two nights at a B&B in Campiglia d’Orcia. When the B&B learns of her Israeli nationality, it sends her a message informing her of its support for the campaign accusing the Jewish state of genocide. “I’m sorry. I see you’re Israeli. In the interests of transparency, we do not wish in any way to support Israel’s policies and we condemn those who practise systems of injustice and oppression,” writes the B&B. “I hope you understand.” The tourist understood, and at that point the booking was not refused, but the experience was already marred. Just like the response an Israeli tourist received from a farmhouse in Poggibonsi: “You’re welcome here if you disagree with Netanyahu.”

Meanwhile, the protests show no sign of abating: marches, university occupations, calls for boycotts, Palestinian flags displayed in public spaces, political campaigns against Israeli companies and institutional initiatives targeting pharmaceutical products as well.

There have been at least 150–200 demonstrations in Tuscany against Israel since 7 October. Few other regions can boast such a high number. Cardinal Lojudice, Bishop of Siena, accuses Israel of “acting like Herod”. During a feminist demonstration in Florence, a young woman holding up a placard about rapes committed by Hamas was asked to leave by the organisers, who regarded the placard as a provocation. The young woman described herself as “left-wing and opposed to Netanyahu”.

The removal on 7 October must proceed without a hitch, and today the attack is remembered only by the Jewish community in Florence, which has just named a room in its refurbished community education centre in memory of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the little brothers aged four years and nine months who were abducted from the Nir Oz kibbutz and then strangled in Gaza along with their mother, Shiri.

However, Tuscan civil society is so confident in its own anti-racism that it fails to recognise the moment when it begins to single out Jews once again. Unicoop Firenze therefore decides to halt the sale of products from Israel following requests from members and activists, whilst stocking ‘Gaza Cola’ in its shops. At the Coop in Gavinana, protesters remove packets of Israeli peanuts from the shelves and place them in a trolley with a sign urging shoppers not to purchase them. The municipality of Cascina votes to boycott products originating from Israel: “The decision taken by the local council will begin with the municipal pharmacies, which we have asked to stop stocking medicines produced by Israeli companies. We also urge citizens to stop buying medicines, food, cosmetics, clothing and technological products that come from Tel Aviv.” Jerusalem doesn’t even exist for these staunch Tuscan resistance fighters.

Israeli medicines are no longer on sale even in the municipal pharmacies of Sesto Fiorentino. Institutional and commercial relations have also been severed. The mayor says: “A drop in the ocean, but we must do our bit.” Pharmacies in San Gimignano and Barberino Tavarnelle also want to do their bit: Israeli medical products are being removed from the shelves.

Healthcare workers in Florence are fasting ‘for Gaza’. In Pisa, firefighters are kneeling before the Palestinian flag. In several healthcare facilities across Tuscany, including Careggi, the film ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ is being screened. The film was commissioned by the BBC but shelved by the British broadcaster (certainly not known for its pro-Israeli sympathies) due to “concerns regarding impartiality”. The Gaza-based producer of the documentary, Osama al Ashi, had published posts in which he defended the events of 7 October.

The town councils of Barberino-Tavarnelle, Calenzano, Campi Bisenzio, Impruneta and Vicchio in the province of Florence, Calcinaia and Pontedera in the province of Pisa, wish to play their part and are conferring honorary citizenship on Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader who has been detained for over twenty years in an Israeli prison, where he is serving five life sentences for planning numerous terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada.

Tuscany, which for decades has cultivated a culture of resistance against fascism, is honouring a man whose life story is intertwined with violence against Israeli civilians. After 7 October, the then mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, chose to remove the Israeli flag from Palazzo Vecchio and replace it with a ‘unifying’ flag in the colours of peace. Months passed and the President of the Region, Eugenio Giani, ordered the Palestinian flag to be displayed in front of the Regional Council headquarters. In Florence, the City Council approved a motion calling for an assessment of the possibility of severing ties with Teva in the AFAM Florentine pharmacies, with the exception of life-saving medicines. This was no small change: the conflict shifted from the streets to administrative proceedings. Then two videos: in one there is a doctor, in the other a nurse; both are wearing white coats and are in their public healthcare facility in Casentino, in the province of Arezzo. The two take a medicine, scribble on it and throw it into a bin. It is not just any medicine; it is a product from Teva, the Israeli multinational.

In Florence, the ‘stumbling stones’ dedicated to the Passigli family, who were deported to Auschwitz, have been vandalised. A Star of David has appeared on the door of a lecturer’s office at the University of Florence, accompanied by the words ‘beware of Jews’. A keffiyeh has been placed on the Bambin Gesù statue in the Duomo. At the Uffizi, pro-Palestine activists have displayed banners reading ‘The Palestinian resistance is the true masterpiece’Leaflets targeting the Israeli consul in Florence, Marco Carrai, appear bearing his photograph, the word "Wanted" and accusations that he is a "war criminal" and a "Zionist agent complicit in genocide". Meanwhile, two American Jewish tourists are attacked in the centre of Florence by a man who, after noticing their kippahs, intimidates them and shouts "Free Palestine". The Kalashnikov on the banner, citizenship for Barghouti, the Teva bin, the message at the B&B: variations on the same theme. The Jewish state (and by extension all Jews who do not declare themselves anti-Zionist) is not a negotiating partner. It is an impurity to be expelled from the region’s moral territory.

In Calenzano, a hang-glider was greeted with applause during a demonstration to ‘stop the war in Gaza’. The organisers deny any ulterior motives. However, on 7 October, Hamas also used hang-gliders to reach the border with Israel and massacre 1,200 people. They, too, call themselves ‘muqawama’: resistance. Ultimately, there is no need for a ghetto. All it takes is a region convinced that it is too welcoming, pacifist and righteous to be able to create one.