There is something almost tragically absurd about contemporary antisemitism and its insidious ability to resurface under the guise of progressive causes and social justice. This was on full display during the Italian Labor Day program on May 1 as the iconic Jewish song “Hava Nagila,” a historic Zionist hymn of joy and resilience, was repurposed into a pro-Palestinian anthem.
As members of the I Patagari band played the tune that once celebrated the Jewish return to Israel, its lead singer, Francesco Frazoli, led the crowd with chants of “Free Palestine,” enlisting the unwitting masses in a campaign built on misinformation and inversion.
This appropriation is not merely symbolic; it reflects a deeper inferiority complex within the pro-Palestinian movement. It strips a cultural artifact of its meaning, twisting a song that once uplifted a persecuted people into a weapon against them. In this upside-down narrative, Palestinians are cast as today’s Jews, the oppressed, while Jews are vilified as oppressors. The inversion reaches a grotesque peak when Israel is accused of Nazism, turning the victims of decades of terrorism into alleged perpetrators of genocide.
Such rhetoric is not confined to the streets. Public broadcasting, exemplified by the Italian program “Presa Diretta” on RAI TRE, features figures like U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese talking about Israel without challenge or critical balance. Her unfiltered hostility toward the Jewish state stands as a testament to the failure of the United Nations in its mission of peacekeeping. The media’s reliance on casualty figures sourced from Hamas, despite independent investigations challenging their accuracy, further fuels an already skewed narrative.
This disconnect extends into the environmentalist movement. Israel, the only country to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had a century prior, has planted more than 250 million trees since 1900. The Jewish National Fund, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, has played a vital role in this effort, with their iconic blue donation tins gracing Jewish homes worldwide. Forests have flourished across Israel, and once arid hills have transformed into green havens. Yet when these same forests are destroyed by suspected arson or enemy fire, activists who normally rally to protect the planet remain conspicuously silent.
Meanwhile, the reality on the ground is distorted or dismissed. The current war, in which Israel defends itself against a brutal enemy whose aims include the extermination of Jews, infants included, is reframed as colonial aggression. Even the plight of 58 kidnapped Israelis, with 24 possibly still alive, is sidelined in favor of selective outrage.
True, journalism should aim for truth, not propaganda. To claim impartiality while broadcasting unverified or one-sided information is not freedom of expression but complicity in hate. To twist a joyous song like “Hava Nagila” into a cry for destruction, to mourn forests globally but not those in Israel, to ignore Jewish lives under fire while demanding rights for others is not solidarity.
It is a resurgence of the world’s oldest hatred, cloaked in modern rhetoric.
In a world that claims to stand for human rights and environmental justice, Israel’s forests and people deserve more than silence. They deserve the truth.
{Reposted from JNS}
