BOLOGNA/1 – Angry rally against local Jewish community
De Paz to city mayor: Take down that flag

On the evening of 18 January in Bologna, participants in a presidium in memory of Ramy Elgaml, the 19-year-old of Egyptian origin who died in Milan on 24 November while being chased by the Carabinieri, clashed with the police in Via de’ Gombruti, where the offices of the city’s Jewish community are located. The protesters threw stones and paper bombs, and daubed the walls with inscriptions such as ‘Nahel Ramy’ and ‘Justice, free Gaza’. ‘It is not correct to call it an ‘attack on the synagogue’, because the synagogue overlooks another street, but it was certainly an attack on the Jewish Community. Indeed, to the entire Jewish world,’ the president of the Jewish Community of Bologna, Daniele De Paz, told Pagine Ebraiche. ‘There was no reason for the demonstrators to pass. They did it on purpose, to send a message to the Jewish world. One wonders why Bologna was the only Italian city where protests targeted a subject like ours,’ De Paz added. For the president, one of the reasons is linked to Mayor Matteo Lepore’s decision to display the Palestinian flag outside the city hall months ago. ‘This is the only large city in which a Palestinian flag flies outside the municipal palace; it is a choice that I have long contested with the mayor and for which he must take responsibility, because clearly there is a correlation between the two things’. In Via de’ Gombruti there was no damage to property or persons, but tension was high among members of the Jewish Community.
The day after the incident De Paz and Ucei president Noemi Di Segni in a joint note recalled that ‘”the defence of Jewish places and religious freedom is not a concession to the Jews: it is a problem that concerns Italian democracy and it is the Italians who must reject those who place themselves outside the democratic context.”