An Italian Senate committee last week approved the draft text of a bill that could help authorities ban gatherings that promote antisemitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, which includes anti-Israel hatred.

The draft bill was adopted last week but will undergo an amendments phase in the Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Committee until Feb. 10. It will then be prepared for readings in both chambers of the Italian parliament.

The draft bill would make the IHRA definition binding for Italy’s judiciary and law enforcement. The definition lists as potential examples of antisemitism the singling out of Israel and its demonization.

Opposed by some on the left, the draft bill has the support of the Italian right-wing parties and the country’s Jewish community, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Victor Fadlun, told JNS.

If passed, “The law could make Italy the first country to criminalize antisemitic speech according to the IHRA definition, and it would set an example that other countries could not so easily ignore,” said Fadlun. Both Fadlun and Davide Romano, director of the Museum of the Jewish Brigade in Milan, told JNS the draft bill has a good chance of passing into law.

The draft bill, submitted by Senator Massimiliano Romeo of the right-wing Lega Party, would extend the 1931 Law on Public Safety to events with “a serious potential risk due to the use of symbols, slogans, messages, and any other antisemitic acts pursuant to the working definition of antisemitism adopted by this law.”

If passed, Romeo’s Draft Bill 1004 could give new legal grounds for bans on protest rallies and gatherings.

Anti-Israel activists in recent months have challenged in Italian courts several bans on some of their activities. Authorities frequently cited general public-order considerations in issuing the bans. They were issued after the eruption of a wave of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment in Italy after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.    

Romeo’s draft bill would also require the government to set up a training program for teachers, police and other public servants on antisemitism as defined by IHRA. Established in 1998, the IHRA is a coalition of governments from 35 countries, including Israel, the United States, Australia, Argentina, the United Kingdom and 30 European nations.

The IHRA definition, which Italy adopted in 2020 but has not made legally binding, lists examples of anti-Israel criticism that it says in certain contexts can be defined as antisemitic, including comparing the country’s policies to those of Nazi Germany, denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” as the definition states.

Criticism of Israel similar to that leveled at any other country is not antisemitic, the definition also states.

Fadlun said he does not expect the text to undergo significant changes during the amendment phase. The bill is likely to pass sometime during the first half of 2026 in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, he added. The right-wing bloc has a majority in both of the Italian parliament’s houses.

Antisemitic incidents proliferated in Italy following Oct. 7, 2023, Fadlun noted.

According to the CDEC Foundation, the Italian Jewish community’s antisemitism watchdog, Italy saw a total of 877 documented antisemitism incidents in 2024—almost double the 454 incidents recorded in 2023.

Still, Fadlun said, “We have a better situation in Italy than many other communities because there is a real determination by the authorities to protect the Jewish community.” Under Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, he added, “there is a sense that there is also a sincere desire on the part of the political establishment to defend the Jewish community and the values of the republic.”

IHRA introduced its working definition of antisemitism in 2016, three years after the European Union’s anti-racism agency removed a very similar text from its website amid protests by anti-Israel activists who argued it limited free speech.

The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Parliament are among the national and international bodies that have adopted the IHRA definition.

Italy’s Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee is also reviewing other draft bills on antisemitism, including one submitted in November by Sen. Graziano Delrio of the center-left Democratic Party (PD). The text of the document, “Draft Law 1722,” requires online platforms to treat antisemitic content as a specific category of hate content using the IHRA definition.

Delrio’s draft bill states that online platforms should suspend users who repeatedly repost removed antisemitic content, provide users with flagging tools and set up a registry of content that is antisemitic according to the IHRA definition.  

X, Facebook and TikTok are among the social networks that use internal definitions for unacceptable hate speech against Jews and others. If passed into law, Delrio’s draft bill could expose such platforms to legal action and prosecution if they fail to act on, catalogue and address antisemitic hate speech according to the IHRA definition.

In 2013, a French court ordered Twitter, which later became X, to pay a fine of $1,300 for every day it did not hand over to French authorities the details of users who posted antisemitic hate speech that violated France’s laws. Twitter handed over the details within the two-week grace period afforded to it before the fines went into effect.  

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