Jewish schools as a space for education or as a war outpost? The question materialised with the invitation to Adi Karni, a soldier of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), in high schools in Rome and Milan. The reaction from part of the community was stark: this is not education.
Protest takes shape
Raising the issue is an open letter published in Ha Keillah, the newspaper of Italian Jewish communities, and promoted by the Jewish Anti-Racist Laboratory (LƏa) and Mai Indifferenti—Jewish Voices for Peace. The document, addressed to the presidents of the Communities, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) and school principals, leaves no room for misunderstanding: the initiative is called of “new and particular gravity.”
The crux of the criticism concerns the figure chosen for the meeting. According to the petitioners, videos circulate of Karni in which he would “blow up a mosque—a likely war crime.” In his public statements he allegedly described “razed Gaza” as a place where he saw “only hatred,” further claiming that “Islam is advancing in Europe.”
The fear is that behind the façade of the “big guy of 22…brave but also nice” is the import of the “worst Israeli education”: the one that teaches to “devalue or deny the humanity of the intended victims.”
“We believe that the organisation of this event represents a total perversion of the educational mission of our communities’ schools,” reads the letter, which calls for the immediate resignation of the school councillors and those responsible for the initiative.
The alternative proposal
The letter does not limit itself to denunciation. It advances an alternative proposal: invite Israeli refuseniks, those young people who refuse enlistment or obedience to military orders deemed immoral, into schools, facing heavy personal and legal consequences.
The mobilisation is also echoed in spaces such as “Jewish Voice For Peace,” an Instagram account followed by more than 80,000 people, which represents one of Italian Jewry’s leading critical voices on the conflict. The page posts daily content documenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, collects testimonies from repentant Israeli soldiers and peace activists, shares historical analyses on colonialism and information graphics that challenge the official narrative. Counter-information work that seeks to keep alive an alternative narrative within the community.
This is not, the signatories point out, a matter of an “amoral par condicio,” but of offering students role models who embody “universal values of justice and human dignity.” Figures capable of bearing witness to a Judaism that is faithful to its ethical principles even when this involves painful choices.
The numbers of the catastrophe
To challenge what they call “affable propaganda,” the letter cites data on the ongoing humanitarian crisis: tens of thousands of Palestinians killed (more than 80 per cent civilians according to independent estimates), starving to death, hostages killed at times by Israeli fire.
The testimony of Yoni, an Israeli soldier interviewed by Haaretz in September 2025, recounts the accidental killing of two children and the trauma that followed. A narrative that rips apart the rhetoric of war and highlights the psychological and ethical cost of conflict, what psychologists call moral injury.
A conflict returning to the surface
For those observing the internal dynamics of Italian Jewry, this mobilisation marks a turning point. For decades, the pacifist and dialogist wing represented a majority component, at least amongst intellectuals. In recent years, in a climate of increasing polarisation and insecurity, the communitarian establishment has veered towards a more rigid defence of Israeli policies.
The return to the scene of peace groups represents an attempt to claim an autonomous ethical space, a voice that rejects the false alternative between love for Israel and loyalty to universal principles of justice.
The stakes are high: defining what it means to educate “according to Jewish values” today. Whether these values require uncritical loyalty or whether doubt, confrontation and moral responsibility are not precisely their most authentic expression. A debate that the Italian Jewish community no longer wants to evade.
