Furore over scrapping of Israel event at Statale Uni

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 3 - A furore has erupted after a convention on Israel scheduled to take place at Milan's Statale University on May 7, seven months after Hamas's October 7 attacks, was scrapped following a police warning about the danger of violent incidents.
    "We couldn't do otherwise," Alessandro Litta Modignani of the 'Pro Israele' association, which organized the event with Savona's Italia-Israele association, told ANSA.
    "The police told us that the event had been reclassified from high risk to extremely high risk and said it was necessary to close the university that afternoon for the students' safety as members of (left-wing) 'social centres' (squats) from all over northern Italy were set to come.
    "We must guarantee the safety of all participants and avoid attacks on the police too.
    "So, faced with a clear threat of violence, we could not do anything else.
    "And this is a defeat for democracy".
    The university stressed that Dean Elio Franzini had decided to turn the convention into an online event and "certainly not cancel it" to minimize security risks but added that the organizers had not gotten back about this proposal.
    The row comes in the wake of series of protests and occupations at Italian universities against institutions having relations with Israeli ones and calls for boycotts amid the war in Gaza, which have led Italy's Jewish community to sound the alarm about anti-Semitism in the world of higher education.
    "It is becoming dangerous to be a Jew in Italy. The climate has become intolerable," Daniele Nahum, a Milan city councillor and member of the Jewish community who recently left the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) over the word genocide being linked to the war in Gaza, told ANSA.
    "The students calling for a boycott of Israel say nothing about Iran, which last year sent 853 people to their deaths.
    "The anti-Semitism is no longer so disguised.
    "Let's hope no one gets killed".
    Pietro Balzano, a political science student, said the scrapping of the event was "the umpteenth demonstration that we are going towards the total cancellation of freedom of expression in universities.
    "The same people who accuse Israel of being a totalitarian State cannot stand freedom of expression," he said. "This is inconsistent".
    However, another student, Samuele of the Cambiare Rotta (Change Course) group, hailed the cancellation as an "important victory for the pro-Palestine student movement". (ANSA).