The southern Italian city of Lecce. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A senior staff member at Italy’s first Islamic university recently called for a new “final solution” for Zionists, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported on Sunday.

According to the report, Raphael Villani, who works in the public relations department of the Islamic University in the southern Italian city of Leece, wrote in a Facebook post earlier this month that “there needs to be a final solution for Zionists” and “the real Jews are the victims of Zionism.”

The posts were removed, after Israeli officials reportedly notified the Israel-Italy inter-parliamentary group about their existence. The group then filed a formal inquiry with the Italian education and interior ministries.

The opening of the university last year faced opposition from local residents and politicians, the report said.

The original Final Solution was a Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews during World War II. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide across German-occupied Europe culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the killing of two-thirds of the Jewish population of the continent.