Italy’s capital was blanketed with posters, signed by an extreme-right group, calling for the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.
by far-right Italian group Vita Est Militia, amid a global rise in anti-Semitic incidents and two weeks after San Giovanni, Rome’s Jewish quarter, was defaced with similar flyers, the International Business Times reported on Monday.
The poster signed by ‘’Vita Est Militia’’ listed the names of 50 clothing stores, butcher shops, restaurants and bars and hotels that the group claimed were owned by Jews.
“Boycotting any type of Jewish product of business is fundamental to stop the massacre in Palestine’’, the poster claimed, adding that “every shop, factory and business under Jewish ownership sends a percentage of its profits to Israel.” The pro-Palestinian text echoed also slogans of the extreme left.
“Buying from these INFAMI [villains] means contributing to kill thousands of other women, children and elderly who have to fight day by day to maintain their land, which was pillaged transforming every road in trench, raping women, burning children and destroying houses,” it said.
Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino condemned the incident and said the language used in the posters “echoes the anti-Jewish blacklists of the Nazi period”. The posters were removed shortly afterwards.
‘’This is an alarm bell that cannot be ignored,’’ said Renzo Gattegna, President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities.
He added: “We are witnessing with concern the solidifying of the extremist underworld in the name of a common anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred, whose most violent mode of expressions, still partially latent, risks forming a danger to the entire national collective.’’
Two weeks ago, swastikas and posters that said “Anne Frank storyteller” appeared on Rome’s Appia Nuova street.