Elly Schlein, the leader of Italy’s PD Party. Photo: Reuters/Roberto Monaldo

Italy’s main center-left party has elected a far left candidate with a record of heavily criticizing Israel as its new leader.

Elly Schlein, a 37-year-old dual US-Italian national, won a surprise victory in Sunday night’s ballot for the leadership of the Democratic Party (PD), beating her rival, Stefano Bonaccini of the party’s mainstream wing, with 54 percent of the vote.

A polarizing figure in Italy who has been the subject of bitter attacks for having a female partner, for having grown up in an affluent family and for her Jewish origins, Schlein stood on an unabashedly left-wing platform emphasizing workers’ rights and climate change. “I received a mandate to change people, methods and vision,” she declared during her victory speech on Sunday night.

On the question of Israel, Schlein is a harsh critic of the Jewish state whose comments have come under renewed scrutiny following her remarks to a press conference on Feb. 3 in which she denied having a “Jewish nose.”

Responding to a series of antisemitic attacks on her, including the commonplace charge that she is an agent of the billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros and the mockery of her family name, Schlein stated that a “real army of haters has been activated who start from my nose and my surname to express vile antisemitic sentiments.”

However, Schlein then went on to deny that her nose was inherited from her American Jewish father Melvin Schlein, an economist.

“As proud as I am of the Jewish side of my paternal family, I am not Jewish, because as you know, that is passed down through the matrilineal line,” she continued. “But the craziest thing is the debate over my nose. Why is it not a ‘Schlein Jewish nose’ that I inherited from my father, as racists write on the web? It’s a typically Etruscan nose.”

The Etruscan civilization dominated the Italian peninsula until the dawn of the Roman Empire.

Among those who denounced Schlein for lending credibility to an antisemitic trope was Ruth Dureghello, the head of the Jewish community in Rome, who charged the PD leader with promoting “one of the most hateful antisemitic stereotypes.”

Schlein’s “nose gaffe” — as her comment was dubbed in parts of the Italian media — is likely to fuel concerns about her attitude towards Israel.

In May 2021, during the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Schlein issued a statement decrying what she called the “asymmetrical” nature of the conflict.

“In Gaza, there is an explosion of violence not since the intifada[s] of the 1980s and 200s that is causing suffering and destruction, with many children among the victims,” she wrote. “But I read too many reports and statements that do not understand that we are not facing a symmetrical clash.”

Schlein went on to accuse Israel of the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from [Jerusalem neighborhood] Sheikh Jarrah and beyond,” arguing that “the balance of power is totally skewed in favor of Israel.” She called for a solution that recognized “the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people by ending Israel’s illegal settlements and occupation.”

Schlein also drew criticism when she appeared at Palestinian solidarity conference in Milan in April 2018, on a panel attacking the US decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem that described Israel’s capital as the “capital of Palestine.” While Schlein has not expressed outright support for the BDS movement targeting Israel, a number of BDS supporters spoke at the same conference, among them Francesco Giordano, a former left-wing terrorist convicted of the 1980 murder of Walter Tobagi, a Catholic journalist.

Several Italian pundits have pointed to Schlein’s lukewarm support for Ukraine’s democratic government as the potential trigger for a mass exodus of centrist PD members.

The Swiss-born Schlein worked as a volunteer in Chicago for former US President Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 before moving to Italy in 2013. She was elected to the European parliament in 2014 before becoming the vice-president of the Emilia-Romagna region in 2020. Her campaign for the leadership of the PD was launched in 2022.