A special vacation turned into a nightmare. This is what happened to an Israeli couple. They are Noya and Roy, twenty-one and twenty-three, respectively, on vacation in Rome. “Two days ago, we were leaving dinner at a well-known restaurant in the center of Rome and were heading to another place when a man on a scooter pulled up in the street. Hearing us speaking Hebrew, he started yelling ‘Free Palestine’ over and over again,” says Noya, joined by Shalom. “He spat at us and punched my boyfriend in the face,” Noya continues. The two then began a fight, and the girl screamed in panic. The Israeli man managed to stop the attacker in a matter of seconds, after which he fled at full speed. “I took off my heels and started running. I was scared,” she says, “but at the same time, I was worried that the man would do something worse to Roy.”
The young woman said they had never experienced a situation of hatred or anti-Semitism in Italy and that the scene left them deeply distressed. “I’ve been to Italy many times, but something like this has never happened to me, and I never imagined I’d experience such a nightmare right here in Rome,” Noya continued. “The thing that struck me most was that we were just talking, we weren’t shouting or causing any disturbance. We were simply walking. It’s absurd to be attacked, violently, just because we’re Israelis and Jews.”
However, in the darkness of the night, the couple managed to call for help. “After the attacker ran away, we ran to a nearby street. We found a military guard station, who immediately helped us. One soldier went to look for the boy who had attacked us, while the other stayed with us to calm us down. They were truly helpful. For this, I am very grateful to the Italian police,” adds Roy. This is yet another anti-Semitic incident, adding to similar and equally worrying ones that have occurred in Italy recently.
