A yellow envelope containing a threatening letter and a 40-millimeter bullet was delivered last Friday to Pietro Bondetti, the mayor of Varallo in Piedmont, northern Italy. Varallo has become home in recent years to dozens of Israeli families, including about 70 families who have settled there since 2023 through the “Beytah” project founded by Ugo Luzatti. The letter warned, “This is the only warning before we start shooting,” and was signed by a group calling itself the “Anti-Zionist Movement.”
Bondetti filed a police complaint, and investigators opened a probe to identify the senders. According to La Stampa, the Turin prosecutor’s office and the anti-Mafia unit joined the investigation because the mayor himself was targeted. The letter, which reportedly reached the municipal council mailbox, ran 16 lines and accused Bondetti, Luzatti and other mayors of allowing “the settlement of Nazi-Zionists.” It also said, “We will not tolerate the transfer of more families.”
So far, no local residents have filed complaints about the arrival of the Israeli families, according to the report in La Stampa. Investigators are now working to determine who is behind the threats against the community that has settled in the town in recent years. Bondetti said the Israeli families’ arrival has been “very positive” for the area, adding that they bought and renovated abandoned homes and brought life back to parts of the town that had been losing residents.
Bondetti said the children attend local schools and that he had never noticed any tension or problem. He added that he felt “great bitterness and concern” over what happened. Luzatti, who was born in Genoa, lived for many years in Israel and now also lives in the Valsesia valley, said this was the first time he had encountered a threat of this kind and called the letter “very worrying.” He said the families came to Varallo seeking a place to live without tension, political pressure or the Middle East wars. Corriere della Sera wrote that, for Israelis seeking a fresh start away from war and terror, no one expected anti-Israeli hatred fueled by the Gaza war to reach there.
