The leader of Italy’s Jewish community announced a new hotline that will be used to report anti-Semitic incidents, Tablet magazine reports.
Italians who witness anti-Semitic acts and Jewish victims of such acts will be able to report any anti-Semitism by phone and online to the Anti-Semitism Antenna. Warnings will be verified and filed away for use in analyzing anti-Semitism.
It’s an interesting indicator of the current climate in Europe that this community is no longer focusing on trying to stop these incidents outright, but instead figuring out ways to make it easier for individuals to report them and get help if targeted. It’s a rather bleak portrait of the situation facing Italian Jews—especially considering that the bulk of the anti-Semitic incidents we’ve been reporting since the summer, when these types of acts began to surge in response to the Israeli operation in Gaza, occurred in other countries. It’s a sad reality that European Jews in 2014 are better off finding more efficient ways to report anti-Semitic violence than trying to stop it in its tracks.