Italian mayor walks back attempt to have Jewish educators sign anti-Israel declaration

(Oct. 16, 2026 / JNS)

An Italian mayor has walked back an attempt by municipal officials to get Jewish-American and Israeli educators to sign a declaration criticizing Israel, the U.S. government’s top envoy for fighting antisemitism said on Wednesday.

“We welcome Reggio Emilia Mayor Marco Massari’s reaffirmation that American Jewish educators are welcome in his city, regardless of their identity or beliefs,” Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun wrote in a statement on X.

The statement concerned a document that members of a planned delegation of Jewish educators received ahead of a study trip to Italy’s Reggio Emilia, which is renowned for pedagogical approaches developed there. The trip was scheduled to take place earlier this month but was canceled after would-be participants were sent a document to sign or endorse, condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza, as one educator wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday in JNS.

The document read: “I distance myself from the occupation of Gaza and the violation of children’s and human beings’ rights in the occupied territories as well as in every place in the world,” the educator, Casey Weiss, head of school at Community Day School in Pittsburgh, wrote in the op-ed. That school’s director of early-childhood education, Katie Riggs, was supposed to go on the trip.

Kaploun said Massari had expressed a “desire to resume the educational exchange.” Kaploun added: “We appreciate the strong cooperation with local law enforcement to help ensure visiting educators can participate safely, free from intimidation or political pressure. I thank our embassy and consulate for working with my office to address this issue.”

On Sunday, Walker Meghnagi, the president of the Jewish Community of Milan, condemned the municipality in a harsh-worded statement.

“It is a principle of racial profiling. The methods and climate established by certain municipalities in Emilia strongly remind me of Goebbels and of what the Fascist leader Roberto Farinacci wrote: ‘Jews, a filthy race, to be buried as such’,” Meghnagi wrote.

The mayor, Massari, said in a speech on Monday that the affair was a “misunderstanding” and that his municipality “has not asked and does not ask those who work in schools around the world to undergo political or religious examinations.”

He also accused Israel of committing genocide in the speech, in which he rejected allegations of antisemitism.