Jewish Ghetto in Venice
Barry Shaw: Echoes of Venice’s Ghetto Scream at us Today
The new form of European Jew hatred has reached Venice, the place highlighted in Shakespeare’s ultimate exercise in ancient Jewish blood libel, The Merchant of Venice.
The mayor of Venice has condemned the recent attack on American Orthodox Jewish tourists who were targeted by a group chanting “Free Palestine!” and then proceeded to slap them.
The American couple, who were wearing traditional Orthodox clothing, were walking through Venice on a Sunday night when the incident took place, according to Italian news agency AGI.
Three of the assailants of North African origin were apprehended, with two receiving expulsion orders and a third being deported, according to AGI.
Venice’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, said on social media, “Venice is and must continue to be an open, welcoming, and safe city, where mutual respect forms the foundation of civil coexistence. The aggression suffered by two American citizens of Jewish faith is a serious and unacceptable act, which I condemn with the utmost firmness.”
The incident drew condemnation from the small Jewish Community of Venice. The city is home to one of the oldest Jewish ghettos in Europe, and currently has a Jewish population of around 450.
“Reiterating its condemnation of this vile and ignoble act, the Jewish community emphasizes that episodes like these certainly raise questions about Venice’s role as a welcoming city, while a climate of intolerance is emerging that today affects the entire Venetian community,” the statement read.
The incident follows another report of a Jewish couple being attacked in Venice last month.
In that incident, a man and his pregnant wife were walking in the city center when three men began harassing them, calling the husband a “dirty Jew” and throwing water and spitting on them. One of the assailants set his dog on the couple, which bit into a cell phone in the man’s pocket, according to Venice newspaper Il Gazzettino.
The 2024 60th Art Biennale di Venezia was the scene of an attempted artistic anti-Israel boycott.
14,000 signatories declared: “Any official representation of Israel on the international cultural stage is an endorsement of its policies and of the genocide in Gaza. The Biennale is platforming a genocidal apartheid state. No death in Venice.”
According to ANGA, no Israeli artist “can show art without being complicit in Israel’s military actions.”
To his credit, Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano flatly refused any action against the pavilion.
Calling the letter “shameful,” he added, “My deepest solidarity and closeness goes to the state of Israel, its artists and all its citizens. The Venice Biennale will always be a space of freedom, meeting and dialogue and not a space of censorship and intolerance. Culture is a bridge between people and nations, not a dividing wall.”
This year, 2025, the pressure mounted.
The Venice4Palestine initiative demanded the cancellation of invitations to the Venice Film Festival for actors accused of public statements allegedly supporting the Israeli government.
This led Israeli actress, Gal Gadot, not to attend the Festival, which was due to show her new film, Julien Schnabel’s “In the Hands of Dante” in which she starred alongside Gerard Butler.
Venice invented the term “ghetto.” In 1516, Doge Leonardo Loredan declared that all Venetian Jews be formally segregated to the area of the city closest to the foundry, or ghetto, where war cannons were cast for the rest of Europe.
In 1943 Venice fell under Nazi occupation with the rest of northern Italy, and all 43,000 Italian Jews were declared enemy aliens. Confinement, property seizure, deportation, and murder followed. Then the Gestapo asked a Venetian Jewish doctor, Giuseppe Jona, to produce a list of all 1,300 Jews then living in Venice. But Jona burned all relevant records and committed suicide.
Thanks to him, only 243 Venetian Jews were rounded up, taken to Fossoli concentration camp two hours away, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eight survived.
The Venice art world is now calling to “Globalize the Intifada!” The Intifada is the Palestinian cry to exterminate the Jews. Thousands of Israelis have been killed or injured by Palestinian terrorism under the Yasser Arafat-inspired Intifada.
The Venice incidents add to a spate of antisemitic attacks that is growing across Europe, America, Canada, and down to Australia in recent months and has Muslim migrants as the central instigators of the violence.
In Nazi Germany they burnt Jewish books before they went on to burn Jews.
In 2025, they banned and boycotted Israeli Jews less than two years after they burnt and raped them.
But, in Venice, ghetto wall plaques scream the message of missing Jews.
It’s a message of what happens when Jew hatred tied to an evil cause invades and poisons addled minds.
First, drive the Jews into a ghetto to isolate them. Destroy what they have to say or write. Tell lies against them to justify what you want to do to them.
Then kill them.
Barry Shaw,
Israel Institute for Strategic Studies
