A furore has erupted after a
convention on Israel scheduled to take place at Milan's Statale
University on May 7, seven months after Hamas's October 7
attacks, was scrapped following a police warning about the
danger of violent incidents.
"We couldn't do otherwise," Alessandro Litta Modignani of the
'Pro Israele' association, which organized the event with
Savona's Italia-Israele association, told ANSA.
"The police told us that the event had been reclassified from
high risk to extremely high risk and said it was necessary to
close the university that afternoon for the students' safety as
members of (left-wing) 'social centres' (squats) from all over
northern Italy were set to come.
"We must guarantee the safety of all participants and avoid
attacks on the police too.
"So, faced with a clear threat of violence, we could not do
anything else.
"And this is a defeat for democracy".
The university stressed that Dean Elio Franzini had decided to
turn the convention into an online event and "certainly not
cancel it" to minimize security risks but added that the
organizers had not gotten back about this proposal.
The row comes in the wake of series of protests and occupations
at Italian universities against institutions having relations
with Israeli ones and calls for boycotts amid the war in Gaza,
which have led Italy's Jewish community to sound the alarm about
anti-Semitism in the world of higher education.
"It is becoming dangerous to be a Jew in Italy. The climate has
become intolerable," Daniele Nahum, a Milan city councillor and
member of the Jewish community who recently left the centre-left
Democratic Party (PD) over the word genocide being linked to the
war in Gaza, told ANSA.
"The students calling for a boycott of Israel say nothing about
Iran, which last year sent 853 people to their deaths.
"The anti-Semitism is no longer so disguised.
"Let's hope no one gets killed".
Pietro Balzano, a political science student, said the scrapping
of the event was "the umpteenth demonstration that we are going
towards the total cancellation of freedom of expression in
universities.
"The same people who accuse Israel of being a totalitarian State
cannot stand freedom of expression," he said. "This is
inconsistent".
However, another student, Samuele of the Cambiare Rotta (Change
Course) group, hailed the cancellation as an "important victory
for the pro-Palestine student movement".
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