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Shoah Museum in Rome Acquires, Exhibits Mural of Holocaust Survivors Repeatedly Defaced in Milan

Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri and Mario Venezia, president of the Shoah Museum Foundation, unveiling the mural in Rome on Jan. 27, 2025. Photo: Provided

The Shoah Museum in Rome exhibited on Monday a mural depicting two of the last living Italian Holocaust survivors, newly acquired by the museum after the artwork was defaced three times and then completely painted over in the streets of Milan by antisemitic vandals.

The street artwork, painted by renowned Italian contemporary pop artist aleXsandro Palombo, portrays two real-life survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp — Italian Senate member for life Liliana Segre and Italian author Sami Modiano. In the mural, the two Auschwitz survivors are wearing concentration camp uniforms underneath bulletproof vests that feature a Star of David with the word “Jude” in the center.

The mural, titled “Anti-Semitism, History Repeating,” was on view in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto and was unveiled in September 2024. In October, the Stars of David were partially vandalized. In November, the yellow Stars of David and the faces of the Holocaust survivors were scraped off of the mural. A month later, vandals painted over the entire mural with white paint, erasing it completely.

The mural has since been reproduced by Palombo and the Shoah Museum has now placed it in the Jewish ghetto of Rome, in front of the ancient structure the Portico d’Ottavia and under the plaque commemorating the roundup of Jews from the Roman Ghetto on Oct. 16, 1943.

“Art is the highest expression of freedom, and repeatedly attacking a work that portrays two survivors of Auschwitz highlights how the very value of democracy and all our freedoms is in danger,” said Palombo. He added in part that the “gesture of courage and resistance” displayed by the Shoah Museum in Rome and the Italian Jewish community “is a great and precious lesson in civilization for all of us” in combating antisemitic violence, hatred, and “these new forms of social and cultural terrorism.”

Now part of the museum’s permanent collection, the mural was unveiled outside the Portico d’Ottavia on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The mural will be on view outdoors in front of the Portico d’Ottavia until Feb. 2 and will then be permanently placed in the museum’s building, Casina dei Vallati.

“Having this beautiful mural here in Rome, on the eve of the [Holocaust] Day of Remembrance and on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, is a very important signal,” said the Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri. “It is the beginning of a new story, a tribute to these great witnesses, an act of justice and a dutiful commitment against antisemitism.”

“When we learned about the vandalism of the mural in Milan, we were overwhelmed with indignation,” added Mario Venezia, president of the Shoah Museum in the Italian capital. “A despicable and senseless gesture that not only strikes at art but attempts to wound the very heart of memory. However, we have chosen not to surrender to this symbolic violence. We transformed our anger into an act of beauty and resistance by contacting the artist, who was able to reinvent the work and create a new version in Rome.”

Venezia added, “This mural is our response: a wound that heals, a symbol that comes back to life stronger than before, because Memory cannot be defaced.”

Venezia, along with the mayor of Rome and a group of children from Roman schools, visited the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland this week to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Segre attended the unveiling of the mural in Rome on Monday and was accompanied by Israeli Ambassador to Rome Jonathan Peled, Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, Vice President of the Jewish Community of Rome Antonella Di Castro, and Noemi Di Segni, who is president of Ucei, the union of Italian Jewish communities.

The post Shoah Museum in Rome Acquires, Exhibits Mural of Holocaust Survivors Repeatedly Defaced in Milan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Palestinian Authority: Jews Should Go to America or Europe, and Gazans Should Flood Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, April 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is trying to garner international support for an alternative to President Trump’s plan to relocate the Arabs of Gaza to countries “with humanitarian hearts.”

The PA has called Trump’s plan “satanic,” and instead wants the Jews to leave Israel to make room for the Gazans in Israel — the place that the PA calls Gazans’ rightful home.

Official PA TV suggested that the Jews should go back to Poland or Russia, as Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported last week.

A senior PA official, Jibril Rajoub, is now suggesting that Trump take the Jews to America:

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Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “[US President Trump] is talking about expelling the original residents of Palestine and forgets that Israelis come from 76 countries, so let him take them to him.”

[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Feb. 15, 2025]

Rajoub also hopes for Fatah-Hamas unity to “besiege” Israel, “and those who stand behind the Jewish State, ” through “comprehensive popular resistance” — a term that also refers to the use of terrorism:

Jibril Rajoub: “We in the Fatah Movement support building bilateral rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas… so that our strategic option in the next stage will be comprehensive popular resistance and an organizational rapprochement that pertains to the PLO… What Netanyahu and Trump have said must constitute for us an incentive to achieve our unity and re-examine many political policies. I hope our brothers in Hamas will also understand that they need to do some self-inspection in a way that will allow building a future for our people and besiege this occupation (i.e., Israel) and those who stand behind it.”

The concept of Israel becoming Jew-free was also echoed in the PA’s official daily:

Instead of uprooting the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, why don’t you return the Israelis to the countries from which they came?’

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 7, 2025]

Senior PA officials, such as Mahmoud Abbas himself and his senior advisor, propose that Gazans flooding Israel would bring “comprehensive peace and real coexistence” and that “then there will be no problem”:

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PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: “If the Americans want a solution, the only place they [the refugees] need to return to is their cities and villages from which they were expelled during the Nakba [i.e., “the catastrophe,” the establishment of Israel] … He [US President Trump] who thinks he has the power to impose a new deal of the century or to exile our people and take control of any inch of our land is deceiving himself.”

[Official PA TV News, Feb. 15, 2025]

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PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “The solution is simple and easy: To return them to the cities and villages from which they were forcibly removed in 1948, then there will be no problem…”

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, Feb. 5, 2025]

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PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “He should return them to the cities and villages from which they were expelled in 1948.”

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, Feb. 5, 2025]

PMW has reported numerous times that the Palestinian Authority does not recognize Israel’s right to exist within any borders. All of these statements by the PA leadership hoping for Israelis to leave and be replaced by so-called refugees reflect messages that the PA regularly broadcasts to its people and upon which it educates its children.

Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.

The post Palestinian Authority: Jews Should Go to America or Europe, and Gazans Should Flood Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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How Hamas Is Using Goebbels’ Propaganda Tactics in Gaza

US-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen and Russian-Israeli Sasha (Alexander) Troufanov, hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, are escorted by Palestinian Hamas terrorists and Islamic Jihad terrorists as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle.”

That statement is often attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, who understood the power of a lie, repeated over and over again. Whether the quote is accurate or not, Goebbels certainly used that very principle to cultivate the myth of the so-called Jewish-Communist betrayal that allegedly led to Germany’s defeat in World War I.

This propaganda enabled Hitler to tap into the frustrations of many Germans suffering from the Great Depression of the 1920s — and also fueled long-standing hatred toward Jews, which eventually culminated in the Holocaust.

It is doubtful that Goebbels, sitting in a Berlin bunker just before taking his own life along with his wife and six children, could have imagined how his principles would live on in the modern era — adopted by those far removed from the so-called Aryan master race. But reality proves that the method works: A lie repeated often enough becomes an absolute truth.

This past Thursday, we witnessed yet another instance of Hamas’ propaganda — this time regarding the return of the bodies of Oded Lifshitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir, who were kidnapped during the October 7 massacre. For months, Hamas operatives claimed that the family had been killed in Israeli airstrikes, even conveying this false information to the captive father. However, forensic examinations have now revealed the grim truth: They were brutally murdered by these terrorists. Yet, just as in 1930s Germany, the lie was repeated so frequently that it became a fact in the eyes of many.

Another example of Hamas’ propaganda unfolded last Saturday, when the release of six Israeli hostages was accompanied by a carefully orchestrated propaganda spectacle — when two other hostages were forced to watch, enduring yet another round of psychological terror. It is worth noting that Hisham Al-Sayed was released discreetly — perhaps because he is Arab or Muslim, or maybe because he did not fit Hamas’ propaganda narrative.

These events played out before crowds of Gazan families who came to cheer and praise the “heroism” of the kidnappers.

Israeli television, rightfully, refrained from broadcasting this spectacle, which echoed Goebbels’ tactics of creating a narrative in which Jews are portrayed as the real monsters. We have seen this before — in pro-Hamas posters depicting the Israeli Prime Minister as a bloodthirsty vampire.

The big lie continues to thrive: We are told that the Bibas family was kidnapped for their “protection”; that Hamas seeks to establish a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel; that a genocide is occurring in Gaza; and that Palestinians are the descendants of the Philistines and Jebusites. There is no truth here — only an endless repetition of falsehoods until they are ingrained in the global consciousness.

Thus, when Israel’s forensic institute confirmed that the Bibas children were brutally murdered as early as November 2023, and that Shiri Bibas’ body wasn’t returned but was instead replaced with that of an unidentified Gazan woman — it no longer came as a shock. The only question that remains is: What lie will they try to sell us next week?

What Joseph Goebbels pioneered in the 1930s has found new life in the age of social media. History proves that in the fight for truth, silence is not an option.

Itamar Tzur is the author of The Invention of the Palestinian Narrative and an Israeli scholar specializing in Middle Eastern history. He holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Jewish History and a Master’s degree with honors in Middle Eastern Studies. As a senior member of the “Forum Kedem for Middle Eastern Studies and Public Diplomacy,” he leverages his academic expertise to deepen understanding of regional dynamics and historical contexts.

The post How Hamas Is Using Goebbels’ Propaganda Tactics in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Media Fall for Hamas Propaganda in Coverage of Israeli Hostage’s ‘Kiss’ to Captor

Families and supporters react as they celebrate the release of Omer Wenkert, a hostage who was held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, on the day of the release of six hostages from captivity in Gaza as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gedera, Israel February 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush

Hamas’ despicable hostage release this weekend was widely covered. But foreign media outlets chose to highlight one particularly nauseating propaganda moment — when Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov kissed a Hamas terrorist onstage after being ordered to do so.

For Gaza photojournalist Ashraf Amra, who infiltrated into Israel on October 7 and was honored by Hamas leadership, it was literally the money shot — which was later sold to Getty Images and platformed by media outlets, including The Times of London and Daily Express.

For Sky News, it was a moment of “warmth.”

Getty Images, The Times, and Daily Express all failed to check the source of the photo.

Amra is a Hamas propagandist: He was fired from Reuters and AP after HonestReporting exposed that he was honored by former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and that he hosted an Instagram Live calling on Gazans to invade Israel during Hamas’ massacre on October 7, 2023.

These media outlets also know that Hamas is producing propaganda moments from their despicable staged hostage release ceremonies.

While they might be bound to cover these events, why should they also be helping to line the pockets of a friend of Hamas?

It’s even more problematic when the media seem to forget what Hamas’ staged spectacles are all about, which is exactly what happened to Sky News’ Diana Magnay.

In a live broadcast on Saturday, as Omer Shem Tov, Eliya Cohen, and Omer Wenkert were humiliated by Hamas on stage, with one of the camera-wielding terrorists clearly instructing Shem Tov to kiss his captors, Magnay overflowed with emotion: “Some amazing scenes today … this is very unexpected to see that kind of reaction, that kind of warmth.”

Even without the later clarification by Shem Tov’s father — who said it was all staged — Magnay, or any other journalist, should not have fallen for Hamas’ propaganda in such a painfully naive way.

Is it so difficult to cast doubt on a live show staged by terrorists who don’t even try to hide their propagandist goal?

The answer is that Hamas got what it wanted. Without the international media noticing, the world has gotten used to the spectacles; they have gotten used to the lies; and they have gotten used to the manipulation. They just want the money shot.

Hamas succeeded in normalizing its own evil.

And it is easily sold by Hamas-affiliated journalists to the gullible media, who celebrate it as “amazing scenes.”

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post Media Fall for Hamas Propaganda in Coverage of Israeli Hostage’s ‘Kiss’ to Captor first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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