The director of a Jewish museum in Italy protested the presentation on Wednesday of a book celebrating the Oct. 7 Hamas massacres at a state-funded university.
“If we continue like this, Amsterdam is around the corner,” Davide Romano, the director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan, wrote in a statement about the presentation of the book titled “La rivoluzione palestinese del 7 ottobre,” which translates as “The Palestinian Revolution of Oct. 7,” at the University of Milan, colloquially referred to as La Statale.
Romano was referencing the Nov. 7 assaults of Israelis by Muslims in the Dutch capital.
The university on Wednesday said it never authorized the book tour event, but did not say what it intends to do about it.
“The guerrillas of Gaza on hang gliders have become gusts of wind and cries that have subverted time, they have painted one of the most elevated of liberation images in the recent history of humanity. An immortal picture of joy that no Palestinian, no woman, no man enslaved by liberal totalitarianism, will ever remove from their recollection,” the book in question reads.
Romano said, “In a state university, you can praise Palestinian terrorism but not talk about Israel,” noting that the same school canceled a May 7 event that featured a debate about the Jewish state following pressure by anti-Israel activists.
Thousands of Hamas-led terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and abducted another 251 to Gaza, plunging the Middle East into an ongoing war.
“Yet another chapter in the terror advocacy festival that we see too often in our city,” Romano wrote about the presentation of the book by author Filippo Kalomenìdis.
The Jewish Community of Milan on Wednesday wrote on its website, Mosaico-CEM, that it had contacted the university for clarifications. The university acknowledged that the event is advertised on social media as sponsored by it and taking place on campus grounds, but said that it “has not been authorized, nor has any request for authorization been made in this regard.”
The Community has called on police to prevent the event from continuing.
Separately, unidentified individuals defaced murals in Milan depicting two prominent Holocaust survivors: Senator Liliana Segre and author Sami Modiano.
Alexsandro Palombo, the artist who drew the portraits with municipal permission, posted earlier this week images showing that the faces had been crossed off in the murals along with the yellow stars depicted on the characters’ prisoner’s uniforms.
