The Venice Film Festival is in full swing, the pro-Hamas crazies are out in force, and Roberto Arditti of Il Tempo has taken the occasion to write an excellent op-ed today, which we are translating here. He points out the sheer hypocrisy of those on the left in Italy, including those who walk the red carpet in Venice, for their support for Hamas vs Israel while ignoring the outrages going on in their own country at the hands of the migrants and asylum-seekers, who continue to attack innocent people.
Where is the outrage?
The left in Italy and the rest of the West may be too thick to see it, but there is a definite link between the criminal migrants wreaking havoc in Europe and Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.
Thankfully, there are many sensible people in Italy, like Mr Arditti, who do see it.
The anti-Israel left is silent on migrant violence
By Roberto Arditti
September 1, 2025
The streets of the Lido are teeming with demonstrators: Social centers, progressive Catholics, and starlets in search of visibility, ranting against Israel, accused of every atrocity. "Stop genocide", they shout, ignoring logic: Hamas, whom they defend so much, doesn't want peace, but rather the destruction of the West, our world. Indignation is cheap, so much per kilo, and only serves to reinforce those who hate us. Meanwhile, in Italy, very serious things are happening, silenced by those who prefer the politically correct to the courage of the truth.
In Catania, a 37-year-old Ethiopian, Habtom Hailu, stabbed Alessandro Indurre, a 40-year-old Italian, to death, like him, an illegal parking valet. An argument over a parking space, and the knife did the rest. Indurre leaves a little girl orphaned. It's August 30, who talks about it? Better to march for Gaza. In Florence, a quadraplegic man in a wheelchair, Michele Vannini, 42, was robbed on via Toselli. Two young North Africans yanked a gold chain from his neck. Helpless, he felt like "prey". It was August 26, in broad daylight. San Jacopino is a no-man's land, but the indignation is reserved for the "poor migrants".
In Milan, two Bosnian Roma (Gypsies) were arrested for serial robberies. On July 15, in Piazza (Square) Missori, they attacked Alessandro Briguglio, a 25-year-old financial analyst. A hammer blow to the head to rob him of a 4,000 euro Tudor. A fractured skull, a split eyebrow. "One more blow and I was dead," he said. Arrested two months later, but how many other victims in the meantime? And what is the cost to taxpayers of arresting these people, one, two, three, and countless times?
And then in Padua, August 19: Three North Africans, armed with knives and clubs, break into an isolated farmhouse. A couple had secluded themselves. They robbed them, held down the boy, and one of them sexually abused the girl. The rapist was arrested thanks to the report, but the trauma remains. Another episode that cries for vengeance, ignored by the champions of do-goodism.
These are not isolated cases: They are the result of uncontrolled immigration, which imports violence and disregard for our rules. Integration is a pipe dream when respect is lacking. And while they wave Palestinian flags in Venice, Hamas is laughing: Every parade strengthens them against a West that is committing suicide with its own do-goodism. Enough hypocrisy. Italy cannot be a Wild West for foreign criminals. Harder laws are needed, immediate expulsions, and less chatter.
Security is non-negotiable, not in Catania, not in Florence, not in Milan, not in Padua. Wake up, Italy. Those in Venice will never understand; they are too busy on the red carpet. But the others can do it.
22 comments:
Whether it comes from the left or the right, all of this "why aren't you talking about ______ too?" questions are dishonest by their very nature. Nobody talks about all of the world's problems all of the time.
For instance, I've been tempted to ask you why you do pretty much nothing but point out violence perpetrated by immigrants in Europe while ignoring the fact that the crime rates in your country are far beyond that, and they're perpetrated by its own citizens.
But I resist. Why? Because it's your blog and you get to talk about what you want to talk about.
You should extend the same courtesy to others.
I do and I just did. I post what you write. The only comments I refuse to post are those that are anti-Semitic. racist, threaten or advocate violence.
Do you expect me to write about everything in the world? I have often pointed out that Europe WAS safer than the US by far. I know. I have lived there twice. I support law enforcement everywhere as long as it is serving to protect people and not oppressing them.
One reason I concentrate on Europe is because I have the linguistic ability to translate the news in different languages, and so I feel that is where I can make a unique contribution that most blogs cannot. I admit, in recent years, the blog has become overweighted on Europe, but that is the reason behind it.
You're completely missing my point. I'm defending your right to write about whatever you want.
Somebody could come along and say that you focus too much on crime in Europe when there's so much more to say about crime in the U.S.
But you're writing about what you feel like writing about. And that's fine.
But this extends to the people in Italy who are criticizing Israel's policies and not the crime in their own country. They're focused on what they want to focus on. It doesn't make them hypocrites any more than you writing about what you write about does.
Having just returned from Italy, I appreciated the article about immigration there and your translation of it, Gary. Europe is having tremendous problems with illegal immigration and crime. There were huge problems in the UK with the grooming of young girls who were plied with drugs and alcohol and forced into prostitution and trafficked. This was being done by people from other cultures, and the law enforcement authorities were reluctant to get involved for fear of being called racist. Once immigrant groups attain critical mass they start to wield political power and their values and demands are not always compatible with the mainstream values and culture of their adopted country. If you suddenly took a large group of Europeans or Westerners and had them settle in countries in Africa, the Middle East, India, or Asia there would be cultural and religious differences and conflict. The reason many people want to emigrate to Western countries is because of the freedom and opportunity they offer. It makes no more sense to allow unfettered immigration than it does to allow strangers to come and live in your home without knowing who they are. Western societies took hundreds of years to build and the freedoms we enjoy were hard won, we must protect them and be careful that others do not destroy them; once they are eroded, they are gone forever.
You are very correct, and we should be learning lessons from what has happened in Europe. If this isn't stopped and turned around very quickly, I see a future civil war coming to western Europe, not a civil war like the US or Spanish civil wars, more like what happened in Germany in the years between WW1 and WW2. There is a vast difference between immigration and an invasion by millions of people who do not share our values.
I take issue with the other Anonymous implying that grooming and human trafficking is somehow part of the "values" of immigrants.
Assuming that this person is from the United States, have they been paying any attention to what's going on here? I'm not even simply talking about the Epstein situation. We have plenty of homegrown groomers and traffickers in the U.S. and the people in charge have turned a blind eye to them for decades upon decades. You've got scandals in the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and just try googling "Youth pastor sexual predator" and you'll have enough reading material for a few transatlantic flights.
And look at who we elected as President! A civilly liable rapist who bragged about walking into the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA contestants (not to mention a couple dozen allegations of sexual assault).
We might talk a good game about "values", but clearly we're not ones to go pointing fingers as what supposed immigrants are doing.
And in case anyone reads what I wrote about Trump and wonders, "What about Bill Clinton"?
Yes. He absolutely is a sexual predator/groomer.
The evidence against Trump is even stronger, but you'd have to be in denial to say that Clinton isn't problematic at the very least.
Original anonymous,
We all have our criminals and predators, but there is nothing wrong in screaming from the rooftops when we import them into our countries. And yes, the grooming gangs in the UK, who are 99.9% Pakistanis, do have different values from ours, values that we don't need here or in Europe. You have been reading me long enough to know that I am not anti-immigrant, but we are all doing a lousy job in recent years of screening who gets in and who doesn't. These crimes being committed by migrants in Europe and here are an indictment of the politicians who allowed them to come.
And of course, it all comes back to Trump with you. As for Clinton, my personal opinion of him is that he is a predator of sorts, but he has not been convicted of anything, so I don't go around on this site accusing him of something that has not been proven-beyond a reasonable doubt. You will note that I have not spent any time trying to show that Clinton was engaging in underage sex on Epstein's Island. I just don't know and either do you.
I don't know about whether he was one of the guilty ones on Epstein's island, and that was not my claim. However, what he did with Monica Lewinsky was definitely grooming/predatory behavior. She may have been a legal adult, but she was much younger and he was in a position of power. As to his other accusers, I don't believe that any of them were underage (not that it's any better).
I think it's funny how when these things are brought up, so many conservatives hold "convicted of a crime" as their standard. Well, OJ wasn't convicted of a crime either, but he was a murderer. Adolph Hitler was never brought before any kind of court either, but that doesn't stop me from calling him a perpetrator of genocide.
I think that convictions are necessary when it comes to the law, but OJ is a murderer, Clinton is a sexual predator, and Trump is a racist.
And where do you get your figure that 99.99999% of the grooming gangs in the UK are Pakistani? That sounds made up.
Oh, I stand corrected as to the Pakistani groomers. It's probably more like 90-95%. And that I will stand by. As for the other 5-10% you can bet they share the same religion. Sorry if you think that's a racist statement, but it's just a fact.
Weird you brought up racism because I just wanted to know where you're getting your stats. I'm still wondering.
Just realized that I referred to Trump as a racist. I meant to write "rapist".
Here is some recent, up-to-date news on the Pakistani rape gangs.
https://www.news18.com/world/pakistani-rape-gangs-operated-across-uk-exploited-children-united-kingdom-rape-gang-inquiry-british-mp-rupert-lowe-ws-e-9533620.html#google_vignette
True, we have our criminality, our human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Having done some work in that field, many, but not all traffickers and exploiters are from other cultures. For example so-called Russian organized crime, many of whom are Ukrainian, are involved in human and sex trafficking. I'm not suggesting that ordinary white or black Americans are not guilty of these types of crimes, but in Europe, as Gary points out, the crime rates skyrocketed correspondingly with the influx of immigrants in places like Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. I lived in Europoe in the 80s and it was already starting. Those on the left in these governments are reluctant to report it accurately as are some in the news media for fear of being accused of racism. But the facts speak for themselves. Also, you don't address my point that is just common sense that there should be background checks on people who want to immigrate. Gary and I both know from having been in law enforcement that criminals often demonstrate behavior when they are young and continue with that same behavior throughout their lives and often get progressively worse – – some, but not many change. You can cite all the psychological reasons for their behaviors such as poverty and upbringing, but the reality is that these are broken people who continue with anger management and behavioral issues. Some of them come from societies where there is no law enforcement or this kind of behavior is tolerated and when they come to another country they think they can behave in the same manner. Your "what about-ism" offers no explanation as to why it makes any sense to import criminals when we already have enough of the home-grown variety.
I'm not questioning whether it's happening. I'm questioning your figures.
I tried looking into it myself, and a big problem is a lack of actual data on the ethnic groups who are guilty of these types of crimes. One article in the Guardian stated (if I remember correctly) that about 2/3 of the reports don't even identify the ethnicity of the perpetrators.
The article that I found from the BBC had a report where 42% of the perpetrators were white, but it revealed that it's more than a decade old and represents less than half the number of police departments. So, maybe it's reflective of reality, and maybe it's not. It is worth noting how it goes over several cases of immigrant groomers that received a lot of publicity and a case of white groomers that received little. News coverage affects perception.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65174096
No doubt, the grooming of young children is a problem in the UK (and everywhere, really) and it seems hard to dispute that much of it is coming from a specific immigrant community.
But you do this important issue no favors by making up statistics, especially when part of the problem is bad reporting of the actual data.
You realize the problem here, don't you? For years, this problem was covered up in the UK because they did not want to be accused of being racist. The Rotherham case is a classic example where the problem went on for many years and was ignored by police for fear of being labeled racist. Yet, I read one source recently that claimed that only 64% of the violators of Rotherham were Pakistani men. That is ridiculous, just as ridiculous as the source that says 85% of child sexual offenses are white men while discussing the grooming scandal itself. It seems to this day, it depends on what sources you are reading. The Guardian is a notoriously liberal newspaper.
The reason I threw out numbers in the 90s is because I have seen sources that gave that number when talking specifically about organized gangs that are grooming young, vulnerable British teenage girls, often runaways, plying them with drugs, and making them sex slaves for themselves and many of their friends.. This is a specific phenomenon among child sex crimes.
If you didn't know, let me educate you that police, politicians, and media can manipulate crime figures to show anything they want. For example, child sexual offenses are a wide category. That includes the pedophile priests and anybody else who is a pedophile. Lump those in, and the numbers look different.
I suggest you go back and look up criminal trials in the UK the last few years involving this particular type of child sex crime. You can see the photos of the men who were convicted in these trials, sometimes 15-20 men at a time.
What you will see are almost all Pakistani men, with a handful of Bangladeshis, Arabs, or Indians.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/uk-news/story/grooming-gang-uk-5-cases-pakistani-origin-men-gang-rapes-five-horrific-cases-what-happened-2662829-2025-01-13
Gary, here’s the problem with the way you’re arguing: you’re starting with anecdotal evidence (like photos of convicted men), then generalizing that to “almost all,” and then using that generalization to argue for sweeping policies. That’s not how serious analysis works. If the official data are incomplete or inconsistent, the intellectually honest position is to say “we don’t fully know,” not to fill in the gaps with your own assumptions.
And when you dismiss statistics you don’t like as liberal media manipulation but accept the ones that fit your expectations, that’s confirmation bias. It’s picking evidence to support a conclusion you already believe, not testing your beliefs against the evidence. That’s how stereotypes harden and why they persist, even when the reality is more complicated.
No one here is denying that child exploitation exists, or that grooming gangs in the UK have sometimes come from specific immigrant communities. But when you inflate numbers without proof, you’re not helping victims — you’re making the problem easier to dismiss as politicized spin. If you want to argue for better screening of immigrants or tougher laws, fine, but base that argument on actual evidence, not a feedback loop of anecdotes and assumptions.
That's OK, Anonymous. Go back to sleep. It must have been my imagination or a bad dream, or worse yet, confirmation bias. I'm sure everything will work out fine in the UK, and the Brits can go back to tending their gardens.
Rather than continue this useless back and forth, I suggest you do some serious looking into this issue and get back to me if I am wrong.
Gary, notice what just happened: instead of addressing my point about data and evidence, you fell back on sarcasm and then bowed out. That’s your choice, of course, but dismissing me as “asleep” doesn’t answer the question I raised. Anecdotes and impressions aren’t a substitute for reliable statistics, and if you can’t cite solid sources for your numbers, that should matter more to you than it apparently does.
I don’t expect either of us to “win” this exchange, but I do think it’s fair to point out that brushing someone off isn’t the same as proving them wrong.
https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/informit.T2024062400003801479408026
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