The Romeo bill soon to become law in #Italy is a legal abomination and is going to be major fuel over #antisemitism in Europe.

The Romeo bill soon to become law in #Italy is a legal abomination and is going to be major fuel over #antisemitism in Europe.

All while unconditionally shielding Israel from accountability, violating the democratic premises of the Italian Constitution itself, and potentially creating a clash between Italian law and the resolutions of international bodies that Italy is a member of.

Antisemitism isn't only a form of racism or religious intolerance. It's a very specific form of hatred and discrimination stratified in Europe over centuries.

Jews were persecuted in the late Roman empire, by Christian emperors who after the Edict of Milan inflicted upon them acts of discrimination similar to those imposed upon their fellow Christians just one or two centuries earlier.

It evolved through the Middle Ages, through the belief that Jews were deicides to punish for murdering Christ.

Once the religious fervor dissipated, it evolved into the pseudo-scientific racist theories and the Eastern European conspiracy theories of the 19th century, into the tales of Jewish bankers controlling the world, and it culminated in the Holocaust.

Antisemitism is a multi-headed hate movement with a long and complex history that must be fought - and everyone with some common sense agrees on that.

But you don't fight acts of discrimination and hate towards people for being what they are by silencing political dissent nor evidence-based reporting.

And here is where the problems with the Romeo bill start.

The adoption of IHRA definition of antisemitism

The IHRA 2016 definition of antisemitism is, by its own admission, non-legally binding.

The IHRA is an uncompromising and political definition of antisemitism pushed by Likud.

It is a definition criticized even by prominent Israeli legal scholars (who proposed the Jerusalem Declaration in response to it), and actively lobbied by the political far-right in Israel.

It is the manifestation of a political minority that pretends that it should be scientific law.

And by the way, the Jerusalem Declaration isn't perfect either. It says that it's legitimate the condemn the acts of the Israeli government in the occupied territories, but it doesn't say anything about the rights of the Palestinians to live in the land that juridically belongs to them. But it's at least a starting point for a discussion - a discussion that is instead suppressed by the pushes to adopt the IHRA definition as a de-facto working standard, ensuring that it infects Western law systems deep enough.

The IHRA definition is a political and divisive definition that State-sponsored propaganda (in the form of think tanks, cultural associations, social media accounts, ambassadors and political groups) has been lobbying for years to turn into a worldwide legally-binding definition, while it doesn't even have widespread consensus at home.

By turning a divisive and non-legally binding definition into an de-facto operative definition, the Romeo bill triggers legal cascading effects that that definition was, by its own admission, never supposed to trigger.

The Romeo bill isn't a law supposed to actually solve any problems of discrimination against Jews. Italy already has laws (Legge Mancino and following amendments) that punish crimes of racial, ethnic and religious hatred. It didn't need one specifically fit for antisemitism.

The Romeo bill is just a backdoor to turn the IHRA into Italian law under the pressure of Israeli lobbies in order to silence political criticism against a genocide.

When someone is trying to sell you any of the examples from the IHRA as a definition of antisemitism, they're not selling you a definition with wide legal and academic consensus. They're just selling you cheap Hasbara propaganda that they want people to keep repeating like a mantra until it becomes true. And anyone who reports your account for violating that definition is a propaganda asset.

And, when they try to apply the same definitions by just scraping "antisemitism" and replacing it with "antizionism", they are just trying to sell you the same shit after changing the label on it.

The IHRA is problematic in particular in two of its examples of antisemitism:

Applying double standards by requiring [from Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

This first point is problematic because it condones colonialism, imperialism and discrimination ("if other democratic nations could do it then we can do it too"), ignoring that those who condemn Israel for these actions are often the same who also call other countries with (no matter how flawed) democratic processes (such as the US or Russia) accountable when they do similar bad things.

It doesn't even specify what those "standards" that shouldn't be expected from Israel are, creating in fact the grounds for unaccountability.

That definition turns the process of democratic selection into a carte blanche, up to and including crimes against humanity ("we're only accountable to our voters"), through the same degenerate interpretation of accountability (only to a cherrypicked group of stakeholders) that CEOs use to justify the unethical acts of their businesses ("we're only accountable to our shareholders").

It treats legitimate political opinions as acts of ethnic hatred - a feature of the most uncompromising Zionist narratives already noted by Bertrand Russell in 1970.

It ignores that being democratically elected is not a guarantee of not being jerks.

And then there's this example of "antisemitism":

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

This second point is problematic because it sets an unconditional ceiling to the exercise of speech that is unbound from any actual actions performed by the Israeli government or army.

If I can never say that some Israelis behave like Nazis, then I can't even say it while they actually enact systematic and coldly planned acts of collective displacement and genocide.

If I can never say that you're an arsonist, then I'm not even allowed to say it while you set a forest on fire in front of my eyes - and probably I'm not even allowed to call the police and tell them that there's an arsonist setting the forest on fire. Logical gibberish.

Not only: there is political and civic opposition in Israel as well against the genocide being perpetrated. Also including support for forms of boycotts.

Calling such speech or acts as discriminatory against Jews or Israelis as a whole, while being supported by some Jews and Israelis themselves, is a logical short-circuit that doesn't make any sense.

Not only: by accepting those unconditional constraints even UN bodies or Amnesty International may be found guilty of incitation of hatred for simply publishing reports based on evidence collected from the ground and from other legal experts, thus putting Italian law in an uncomfortable clash with international institutions that it's a member of.

The ultimate generalization

Antizionism is not antisemitism, nor it shares its deep roots of hatred and prejudice.

But this is exactly the framing proposed by the IHRA definition, which poses absolute constraints not only to speech against Jews but also to speech against Israel, its actions and the comparisons you can or you cannot do.

Not only: even the generic "antizionist" blanket misses at least four clear distinctions:

1. Those who unconditionally oppose the existence of Israel as a nation;
2. Those who are open to compromises (multiethnic State or two-State solution), regardless if they see the institution of Israel as a "historical mistake" or not;
3. Those who consider the UN 1948, 1967 and successive solutions legally binding and consider the indefinite occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights illegitimate;
4. Those who may support a gradual institution of a Jewish State, but still condemn the way it's being executed, and still call out a genocide when they see one.

Not only not acknowledging the existence of these distinctions means flattening a spectrum of opinions into a generic blanket definition (or accusation; or stereotype; or prejudice).

But adopting the IHRA 2016 definition of antisemitism means also to perform one further unforgivable generalization: conflating even political protected speech or objective reporting with ethno-religious hatred. Or at least seeing them as different stems of the same tree, or worth of the same punishment. Which is exactly the problem that the following declarations tried to address.

Uncompromising Zionism is antisemitism

Accepting these generalizations as working definitions only pours fuel on antisemitism.

Those who condemn antizionism (without even acknowledging its shades) like they would condemn antisemitism are the greatest enablers of antisemitism (see Abraham Yeoshua).

By suppressing ideological confrontation, political discourse and even legitimate reporting they create the perfect climate for conspiracies, generalizations and ignorance.

The outrage that you aren't supposed to express becomes the foundations for tomorrow's prejudice and hatred.

They are trying to sell you an "only in that land, and in all of it, we can be safe" extremist propaganda that has no foundation in reality (and a lot of foundations in religious fundamentalism and terrorist ideologies like Kahanism instead, explicitly espoused by neo-Kahanist parties in the Israeli government).

Propaganda whose lineage actually shares the same ideological roots as the European antisemitist ideologies of the 19th century.

The idea that Jews are a "foreign body" in Europe, and that the only way of solving the "Jewish problem" was to dump it on the Arabs.

An idea firmly embodied by all the Israeli recruitment agencies who travel Europe trying to convince Jewish people to move to Israel, enabled by the criminal Law of Return.

I live in the middle of one of the largest Jewish districts in Western Europe. Jews have never been subject to prejudice here for being Jews - for at least four centuries. We actually shielded Jews when they were persecuted (see Anne Frank). Jews are not a foreign body here. The only foreign body I saw in my district in recent times were the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans who sang chants about raping Palestinian girls.

Don't believe the narrative that Jews can only be safe in that piece of land, because THAT is the true antisemitic narrative.

Pre-crime-style persecution and anti-democratic suppression of speech

All the words I wrote above are firmly rooted in logic, history and law.

And yet they may be considered hate speech in Italy once the Romeo bill is law.

And I haven't even mentioned the most outrageous part of the bill: the article 3.

It allows law enforcement to preemptively suppress protests, academic discourse or even social media groups if there is even a risk (the law is even vague on how that "risk" is evaluated) for the use of "symbols, slogans or messages" that may be interpreted as antisemitic (note: according to the IHRA definition of antisemitism).

"Free Palestine", of course, is most likely among those slogans, and perhaps a Palestinian flag may be among those symbols. Or maybe calling out the "Gaza war" for what it actually easy (a Nazi-style genocide). Or perhaps even just calling Israel accountable to solve its existential trilemma, preferably through two-State or multiethnic solutions, and preferably without genociding its way out of it ("expecting standards from Israel not expected by other democratic countries" nonsense).

The sole remote risk of those slogans being chanted, or those symbols being exposed, or those words being said, may cause law enforcement to preemptively enact censorship.

If it sounds like Minority Report-style pre-crime department, it's because that's exactly what it is.

If it sounds like an in-your-face violation of the article 21 of the Italian Constitution (which protects free speech and the right to protest), that's exactly what it is.

If it smells like fascism enacted just to please the Israeli government while it commits a genocide, it's because it's exactly what it is.

Italians still have the power to take to the streets and strike in mass to ensure that this legal and logical abomination never becomes a part of the Italian law.

https://www.senato.it/leg/19/BGT/Schede/FascicoloSchedeDDL/ebook/57902.pdf