I had the opportunity to present Yahya Sinwar’s book, The thorns and the carnation At the Faculty of Letters of Sapienza in Rome “announced Davide Piccardo, editorial director of the online Islamic newspaper on 5 May Light. Sinwar is the terrorist head of Hamas, killed by the Israelis in Gaza, who triggered the tear attack on October 7th. Piccardo presents him as an enlightened writer: “Yahya Sinwar’s book is a fundamental text to understand the Palestinian question and resistance and is now more current than ever”. And it is no coincidence that he thanks “Prof Marco Di Branco for the courage shown in inviting me and giving space to a book so censored and demonized”. Teacher associated with Sapienza, who had opposed Pope Ratzinger, but presents a terrorist like a new Tolstoy.
Not only Harvard, under shooting of the White House for anti -Semitic drifts, but also in Italian universities there is no lack of violence and prevarications Pro Pal.
And the alarm also sounds for the increase in the registrations of Chinese and Iranians, the most numerous of non -EU students. “The phenomenon of” antagonistic integration “concerns political Islam that insinuates itself into western societies. It does not make it by embracing the liberaldemocratic values, but taking advantage of the internal fractures of the West represented by postcolonial, radical and Woke movements, even reaching the Anco-Islamism “, explains Ciro Sbailò, professor by right to Unint, University of International Studies of Rome. «This climate of ideological pressure also affects the academic world. This phenomenon, already evident in the United States, is now radical in Europe and Italy “, adds the teacher, who also directs the geodes center (geopolitical and law) of the international university.
In our country, as in large American universities, we risk embarrassing presences. At the University of Genoa, a Lebanese Shiite began a doctorate of research and until 2024 he had an assistant contract. Attentive by the ASI, internal intelligence, would be one of the children of Hussein Ahmad Karaki, indicated by the Argentine services as “the head of the military operations of Hezbollah for Latin America”. And accused by the Israelis of the attacks against the Embassy and the Jewish cultural center of Buenos Aires in the early nineties.
Any faults of the fathers must not fall on the children, but the PhD student of Genoa, who still has a residence in the Ligurian capital, from 2019 to 2021 would have carried out research at the Hydrographic Institute of the Navy and the Marine Engineering Institute of the National Research Center. Developing a new scientific methodology to create hydrographic research through multisensious systems mounted on drones.
It is no coincidence that it is enabled to pilot commercial drones. And he would have registered a current account in his name at the Qard Al-Hassan banking institution, notoriously linked to Hezbollah. On social media he praised some “martyrs” of Hezbollah portraits in camouflage and with the rifle in his hand. It was not a problem to continue his studies in Genoa, becoming assistant.
From Harvard to Turin the step is short for Pro Pal prevarications. In May, during the book of the book, also contested, the most serious episode on the Einaudi campus of the University of Turin occurs. The Union of Youth Jews of Italy, the students for Israel, the liberal ones and for freedoms have been trying for months to organize a conference “against violence and anti -Semitism in universities”. The director of the Campus, Anna Mastromarino, immediately rejects this phrase contained in the first posters. And erase a first last minute event.
The student group of the “Manifesto we want to study” returns to office and obtains authorization for May 15th. «We arrive half an hour earlier to arrange ourselves and find the classroom already occupied by a hundred unleashed with Palestine flags, megaphones, shopping trolleys full of objects to be pulled on us and two teachers intent on keeping a conference on the Nakba (the forced exodus of the Palestinians in 1948, editor’s note) and the alleged genocide (to Gaza, editor’s note)»Says Cristina Franco, one of the organizers.
At 4 pm, when the conference was to start, “the situation worsens and increase the number of protesters, the launch of objects, screams, insults, pushes. We are always closed in a corner without the possibility of leaving the word ». The director asks the police to keep at a distance and assigns the main hall to the students of the “Manifesto we want to study”. “Still worse: there will be 300 and 20 and 20,” explains Franco. “I double spit, kicks, insults, peeled even to an elderly our companion.”
The propals scarring them outside, where the aggressions continue Until the police intervene, but the event has now jumped. “I took the auction of the Palestine flag auction several times, insults and kicks,” Franco denounces. «And surely there was welding with far -left groups. Among the manufacturers there were representatives of “changing the course”, many of non -university age, “Power to the people”, collective and “young Palestinians”. Students? Few”. Factinorosis have declared that “they can and must use violence against those who believe, to them unquestionable judgment,” fascist, Zionist and accomplice of the genocide “”.
On June 4, the vice -president of the European Parliament, Pina Picierno, of the Democratic Party, launches the alarm: “Today we bring together young Jewish voices from all over Europe (…) to talk about something that worries us deeply: the increase in anti -Semitism in our universities”. The initiative is part of the work of a special Task Force of Strasbourg. “Many Jewish students feel isolated and frightened at university”, underlines the dem member, “a place that should be open, inclusive and safe for everyone”.
Since last year, many episodes of intolerance have been reported. At the University of Perugia a Lebanese student targeted an Israeli, inciting everyone not to sit next to her because Jewish. In Milan they spit on a university guilty of bringing David’s star to the neck. In Umbria another Israeli student has been threatened, together with the family, and insulted as a “terrorist”. Other Jewish students no longer bring Kippah, religious headdress, for fear of being attacked in universities.
Polytologist Sofia Ventura, who teaches the University of Bologna, observed that “universities today are somehow dominated by a unique thought on the theme of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. Not to mention the “pacifist” threats. Sbailò, of the Unint in Rome, reveals that “groups of self-styled pacifists have asked for my resignation from the Scientific Committee of the Med-OR Foundation”. The accusation was to contribute to the “militarization of knowledge” because of the links with the Leonardo group. “Similar and worst pressures have also been exercised in public, on other academic colleagues”.
Another pitfall, highlighted by Trump, it concerns foreign students. “Universities can be infiltrated, even through more or less mediated funding,” said the prefect Mario Parente, referring to China, before leaving the guide of the ASI, internal intelligence. Over the past five years, foreign enrollments in our universities have been 80,881 (over 25 thousand only in 2024/2025). In the last year, the most numerous freshmen from non -EU countries are 1,753 Chinese students. The Iranians are 1,246, exceeded only by Moroccans, Tunisians and Turks.
The Undersecretary of the Prime Minister, Alfredo Mantovano, with delegation on the secret services presented the “National Action Plan to protect Italian University and Research from foreign interference”. The Ministry of Education has drawn up 11 pages of guidelines for universities against “indebted external interference”. In the introduction, the threat is clear: “For a country like Italy it is necessary to be aware that activities of foreign subjects (…) in the context of global competition and international tensions, may involve growing critical issues for the integrity and safety of this system and, in certain cases, to national security”.
