Viewing entries tagged
antisemitism

Rome’s Pride parade bars Jewish LGBTQ float over refusal to call Gaza war ‘genocide’

Rome’s Pride parade bars Jewish LGBTQ float over refusal to call Gaza war ‘genocide’

Organizers of Rome’s annual Pride parade have barred Italy’s only Jewish LGBTQIA+ organization from marching with a float at this year’s June 20 parade, although they are still allowed to participate in the march itself.

In a statement that came out Monday, Roma Pride said Keshet Italia had failed to endorse its political manifesto, which characterized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide. It also accused the organization of making an “unacceptable lexical distinction,” by refusing to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

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The Mayoral Race Redefining New York’s Jewish History

The Mayoral Race Redefining New York’s Jewish History

As Zohran Mamdani leads in the polls, his unprecedented candidacy is testing the city’s long-standing political and cultural ties with its Jewish community and the State of Israel.

NEW YORK — With just weeks to go before election day, New York’s mayoral race remains unpredictable. One thing, however, is clear: it’s been unlike any in the city’s modern history. If frontrunner Zohran Mamdani wins on November 4, it would mark an extraordinary shift in New York City’s Jewish history. He would be the city’s first anti-Israel mayor, the first without close ties to the city’s large and diverse Jewish population, and the first in decades to face accusations of peddling antisemitism—or, at the very least, of failing to forcefully denounce it.

Leading mayoral candidate in Rome apologizes for Holocaust comments decried as antisemitic

Leading mayoral candidate in Rome apologizes for Holocaust comments decried as antisemitic

(JTA) — A leading candidate for mayor in Rome has apologized to the Jewish community over an article he wrote last year in which he suggested that victims of mass murders other than the Holocaust gain less attention because they “didn’t own banks.”

Jewish community leaders and others had decried the comments by Enrico Michetti, a radio host who is the center-right coalition’s candidate in the Oct. 17 and 18 mayoral election. He received more than 30% of votes in the election’s first round earlier this month, more than any other candidate.

“Each year, 40 Holocaust-related movies are shot, trips and cultural initiatives of all sorts are financed to commemorate that horrible persecution, and up to here, I have nothing to say,” Michetti wrote on the website of the radio station where he is a host. “But I wonder, why the same pity and the same consideration are not given to the dead killed in the foibe massacres [of Italians by Yugoslav Partisans], in the refugee camps, and in the mass murders that still take place in the world?”

Among the answers he offered: “Perhaps because they did not own banks, perhaps because they did not belong to lobbies capable of deciding the destinies of the planet.” Continue reading here.