An anonymous online questionnaire circulating in Italy asked members of the public to report the presence of Jews, Israelis, and anyone believed to be a “Zionist” at hotels, vacation rentals, and businesses across the country. The form prompted condemnation from Jewish community leaders, government ministers, and opposition politicians alike before Italian authorities forced its removal.
The Google form, titled a project to “map Zionist tourism,” asked users to submit the names and locations of hotels, guesthouses, and shops where Jewish or Israeli visitors were seen, whether local activist groups were already “managing the phenomenon,” and other identifying details. The document stated that submissions would be received and kept “protected and confidential” by the Global Sumud Movement, the same network behind flotillas attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. The group denied any connection to the form when contacted by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, saying it “did not commission it and had not even seen it before it was taken offline.”
The form was pulled from the internet following intervention by Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, Italy’s national coordinator for combating antisemitism.
Walker Meghnagi, president of the Jewish Community of Milan, told the Italian news agency ANSA that the initiative recalled the “hunting of Jews” and the atmosphere of the 1930s. He said the community chose to route the matter through official channels rather than respond on social media, forwarding the materials to the relevant authorities and requesting judicial intervention. “Mapping where Jews are is extremely serious,” Meghnagi said, warning that circulating such a list “concretely increases the risk” that “unbalanced individuals” would act on it.
Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, called the initiative “simply horrifying” and said it should be condemned by every political party and civic organization in the country as an attack on fundamental rights and on the constitutional principles underpinning the Italian Republic. He thanked Angelosanto for the form’s removal but warned that “we are witnessing with growing concern a veritable manhunt, in which people are being singled out, exposed, and stigmatized solely because of their Jewish identity or alleged ties to Israel.”
Livia Ottolenghi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, described the questionnaire as a serious escalation of antisemitism and said it amounted to a “new yellow badge.” She said the form’s references to alleged “Zionist neo-colonization” of Italian soil echoed conspiracy theories reminiscent of the racial laws imposed under Italy’s fascist government in 1938. “This is a deliberate campaign based on disinformation and propaganda that seeks to push society toward hatred and prejudice by literally pointing the finger at Jews and Zionists as the outcasts of our time,” Ottolenghi said.
The response cut across Italy’s political divide. Senate President Ignazio La Russa called the effort a “map of Jews in Zionist tourism” that violated basic civil rights and reflected deep antisemitism, saying, “We must not remain indifferent to such serious incidents, which awaken the demons of the past.” Deputy Secretary of State Alessandro Morelli called the form “abhorrent” and said, “Those responsible must not go unpunished.” Senators from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and from Forza Italia issued similar condemnations, with Forza Italia Senate President Stefania Craxi calling the form’s spread “a disturbing fact of unprecedented gravity, which brings back dark pages of history.”
Davide Riccardo Romano, director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan, said the form was “not an act of political criticism, but a form of intimidation that drags Italy back to the darkest periods of the twentieth century.” He added, “History shows that when propaganda identifies a target and provides the coordinates to find it, violence ceases to be a possibility and becomes a certainty.”
The Anti-Defamation League said the form’s targeting of tourists made the campaign especially alarming, noting that visitors “away from home” are “especially vulnerable.” The European Jewish Congress called the questionnaire “a chilling reminder of some of the darkest chapters in European history.”
The incident comes amid a documented surge in antisemitic incidents in Italy. The Milan-based Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, known by its Italian acronym CDEC, recorded 963 antisemitic incidents in its 2025 annual report, a 10 percent increase over 2024, a 100 percent increase over 2023, and a 400 percent increase over 2022. Physical assaults rose by 225 percent, concentrated mainly in Lombardy and Lazio. CDEC’s report cited one case in which three Orthodox Jewish children were stopped and searched in a Milan store after being mistaken for Israelis.
Hostility toward Israeli visitors has also surfaced on the island of Sardinia, where activists have organized protests and petitions calling for Israeli tourists and soldiers to be barred from vacationing, and where demonstrators have confronted arriving Israelis at airports with anti-Israel slogans. Community leaders also pointed to the exclusion of Jewish Brigade veterans, whose volunteers fought with Allied forces to help liberate Italy from fascism in World War II, from Italy’s Liberation Day commemorations, and the expulsion of a Jewish LGBTQ group from an Italian Pride march, as part of a broader pattern in which criticism of Israel has crossed into open hostility toward Jews.
Under Italian and European Union privacy law, data revealing a person’s religion is classified as sensitive personal information subject to heightened legal protection, and critics said the form’s covert collection of such data likely violated those rules as well as Article 3 of the Italian Constitution, which guarantees equality regardless of religion. Jewish officials have called on Italian authorities to identify who created and distributed the document and to determine whether its circulation violated privacy, anti-discrimination or criminal law.
