Facing The Mirror: E TU, Italia? (A Plea to Italy)
Facing The Mirror: E Tu Italia (A Plea to Italy)
Where is the enforcement of Article 414 (istigazione a delinquere — incitement to crime) and Article 612 (minaccia — threats) of the Italian Penal Code when crowds openly chant for the erasure of a nation?
“Palestina libera dal fiume fino al mare.” / “From the river to the sea.”
Crimes Demand Prosecution
Chanting ‘From the river to the sea’ is not a geographic slogan. It is not a poetic metaphor. It has always meant one thing only: the elimination of all Jews.
A crowd chanting for death is never neutral.
To call for the murder of Jewish children and grandmothers is not argument but intent: public, moral, and legal violence.
Italy’s silence is not neutral — it is a verdict. By failing to act, the state hands incitement and hatred expressed as calls for violence (the call for the elimination of Jews) permission to grow.
The law exists to prevent exactly this. Article 414 of the Codice Penale (public incitement to commit crimes) punishes incitement itself with imprisonment from one to five years. Article 612 (threats) makes clear that serious threats are punishable with imprisonment up to one year. A call to murder is therefore not speech; it is a crime, and it must be prosecuted.
Complicity Through Silence
Et tu, Italia? Your choice is simple: let it slip — tolerate criminality and hatred as they grow unchecked and turn Italy into a third London or a second Paris.
Or stop it now. Protect your moral standards and your roots — show that you learned from WWII and be a role model for a cowardly Europe.
The Cost of Criminality
And beyond words, there is the bill. The October 3 strike paralysed Italy not only in spirit but in substance. Unions claimed two million demonstrators; the government’s more cautious estimate spoke of c. 396,400. Translate those absences into lost labour hours, blocked transport, delayed commerce — and the price tag runs into the hundreds of millions, perhaps close to a billion.
Conservatively calculated (government estimate): direct losses of over €118.9 million, rising to €143–178 million when indirect costs are included.
If the unions are right (2 million participants): direct losses of €600 million, with a total of €720–900 million.
This is not protest alone. It is self-inflicted economic sabotage.
How Italians See It
Many Italians, especially on the Right, were outraged — but at the wrong thing. They complained of blocked roads, missed appointments, wasted hours. To them, the protests were a nuisance, not a threat.
But nuisance is rubbish in the street. This was not rubbish. This was a public call to murder.
By treating incitement as mere inconvenience, Italians risk blindness to the iceberg beneath. These chants are not background noise; they are warning shots. Ignore them, and irritation will become destruction.
The Iceberg Already Visible
Some shrug: one million out of sixty-three? A noisy minority.
What Italy sees in its cities is only the tip of something already rooted in its culture, waiting for permission to grow. And permission is exactly what silence gives.
That is how it spread in Paris. That is how it spread in London. First tolerated as protest, then normalised as culture, until hatred became spectacle and institutions bent beneath it.
It will be beginning of the end.
The European Mirror: Dutch Cowardice
If Italians doubt what is at stake, let them look north. Let them look at the Netherlands. There, chants were not limited to “from the river to the sea.” They became cruder, clearer: “Hamas, Hamas, joden aan het gas.”
On Dutch campuses, activists demanded that Jewish students and professors be named and identified. In Dutch theaters, anti-Jewish slogans were staged as “artistic expression.” Ministers invoked “freedom of speech” as a shield. Police stood by while hatred echoed. Universities dithered. Theaters provoked not thought, but hatred.
This is what cowardice looks like. This is what complicity sounds like. A European democracy rehearsing history’s darkest failures, in the name of tolerance — where Jews are attacked on the street, where Jewish schools have been guarded for decades, and where Jewish celebrations in venues such as the Concertgebouw must be ringed by police.
Let Italy not follow this path.
A Plea to Italy
Italy carries a history it must never repeat. Silence once led to catastrophe; silence now, in the face of chants that demand annihilation, would be betrayal of the same magnitude.
It is thanks to the strength of Italy’s Christian–Catholic roots that sharia has not yet claimed the streets from Milan to Rome to Palermo. This heritage — reverence for the Pope, fidelity to the roots of Christianity, and a tradition that honours women rather than reducing them to second-class — still guards the nation. Italy should be proud of these roots. They are not relics; they are living foundations.
In Mary, Italy honours not only faith, but womanhood itself — mothers and grandmothers at the heart of the nation, not erased from it.
Now Italy has the chance to show Europe how it must be done. To prove that it has learned. Where Paris and London tolerate, where Amsterdam hides behind excuses, Italy can act.
Enforce Article 414 and Article 612. Prosecute incitement. Expel those who use universities and cultural institutions as platforms for hate. Do not allow chants that call for death — whether their chanters understand them or not — to go unpunished.
What Will the Gospel of Italy Become
Italy must choose: clarity or excuses.
To punish incitement is not intolerance; it is survival.
To prosecute hate is not censorship; it is democracy’s defense.
Italy can still say not here, not again — or let delay turn into complicity and contagion.
Et tu, Italia?
The question is not rhetorical. It is a desperate plea.
References
Agenzia Nova. (2023). Calenda sulle manifestazioni per Gaza: attenzione agli slogan sempre più radicalizzati.
Corriere della Sera (2025, October 3). Milano, manifestazioni e scioperi per la Flotilla e Gaza: la diretta.
Il Quotidiano (2025, October 3). “From the river to the sea”: il corteo blocca la tangenziale di Trento.
Il Giornale (2025, October 3). “Porti, treni e università bloccati dai pro-Pal. Slogan choc nei cortei.”
Reuters (2025, October 3). Italy protests: unions and pro-Palestinian groups organise nationwide strike.
Times of Israel / Newsweek / i24news (2023–2024). Reports on Dutch protests and chants “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas”.
NRC / NOS / Volkskrant (2023–2024). Coverage of Dutch universities under pressure during pro-Palestinian protests.
Italian Penal Code (Codice Penale). Art. 414 — Istigazione a delinquere (public incitement to commit crimes).
Italian Penal Code (Codice Penale). Art. 612 — Minaccia (threats).
