Walker Meghnagi, President of Milan’s Jewish Community, has issued a sharp rebuke to Democratic Party (PD) leader Stefano Bonaccini, challenging the party’s commitment to combating contemporary antisemitism. This follows Bonaccini’s dismissal of Meghnagi’s prior accusation that the PD harbors antisemites as “shameful.”
Meghnagi asserts Bonaccini’s response focused solely on commemorating Holocaust victims, demonstrating an inability to address “actions to defend living Jews who are under attack, physically or virtually.” He reiterated his core concern: the lack of concrete steps to protect Jews facing current threats.
“The Jewish community sees you growing accustomed to attacks on Italians of Jewish faith,” Meghnagi stated. “You issue no statements condemning the assaults, hold no solidarity demonstrations against antisemitism, organize no debates on attacks against Jews. Why? Without a concrete answer to these questions, dear Bonaccini, words are not enough.”
He links the surge in attacks globally to Hamas’s media campaign, amplified by “many media outlets and politicians” despite the clear “genocidal intent of Palestinian jihadists.” Meghnagi cited the exclusion of Israel from the Bari Levante Fair as further evidence Jews are targeted “as such, always and everywhere.”
Calling for action from the Left, Meghnagi demanded: “What are you doing for today’s Jews and for Israel, both under attack in plain sight? We expect concrete counter-evidence to make the ground less fertile for the terrible, sick, poisonous seeds of antisemitism.” He concluded: “Antisemitism is fought in the present and future, not only by looking to the past.”