Italy’s antisemitism commissioner called upon all parties to join in the fight against antisemitism as Congressional elections are about to occur.
Milena Santerini, coordinator for the fight against antisemitism at the Prime Minister’s Office, released a letter urging all political factions to join the country’s national strategy to combat antisemitism, the Shalom Italian news site reported.
The letter, written to “all political forces,” explained that the “commitment represents an essential challenge in the general interest of the whole country and an indispensable task for the democratic stability, social cohesion and peaceful coexistence of our society.”
It stressed that there must also be a “recognition of the responsibilities of the fascist regime in the racist laws of 1938, with the subsequent Nazi-fascist persecutions, and the firm distancing from the legacies of this past.”
The strategy, based in part on the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, the strategy calls for rejecting all antisemitism, including Holocaust denial, revisionism, trivialization and distortion.
“This antisemitism, drawn from ancient mythologies, feeds on a conspiratorial mentality that tends to attribute all the evils in the world to the Jews, including the Covid-19 pandemic. According to this form of antisemitism, Jews, as individuals or collectively, are accused of having control of world finance, the media, banks or other institutions. Sometimes this antisemitic view considers Jews as globalists who conspire to replace citizens of a country with immigrants,” the letter said.