In what it called a «Schools Decree,» the Italian government announced last month that no student may cover their face in class, no classroom may exceed 30% foreign-born pupils and parents who skip mandatory Italian lessons could face fines of up to $1,120.

The decree, which takes effect next summer, is framed as a push for «integration,» but it raises the question of whether a Western democracy can force assimilation, or is it already too late?

Nile Gardiner, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom said that it is «The single biggest issue of our time in Europe: Mass migration and Islamification.» And had an ominous warning, «What you’re seeing in London and other European cities can easily happen in the U.S… These cultural shifts will all come to America, unless American leaders are willing to fight back.»

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni defended the decree on X, calling the new rules «Tools of common sense that do not divide, but truly help to integrate, avoiding ghetto classes and giving all students the same opportunities. This is the direction we want to continue to follow: a school that integrates without giving up on rules, that supports those who have more difficulties and that puts everyone in a position to start from the same point.»

PORTUGAL ENACTS ‘BURQA LAW’ LARGELY PROHIBITING FACE COVERINGS IN PUBLIC

Experts say the decree’s principles are not extreme. «Learning the national language and participating in your child’s education are reasonable expectations,» said Simone Rodan‑Benzaquen, Senior Envoy to Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

«Requiring students to keep their faces visible in an environment built around communication and interpersonal contact is also entirely reasonable.» The question, she told Fox News Digital, is whether such measures actually improve integration or simply target the most visible symptoms while ignoring the deeper forces that discourage participation in wider society.

Italy is not alone. Governments across Europe of every political stripe are tightening integration rules. They range from the «ghetto laws» of Denmark’s center-left government, to France restricting religious symbols in schools, to Germany requiring language and civic courses, to the Netherlands testing newcomers before they even arrive.

Swedish Political scientist Daniel Schatz says, «The real divide is increasingly not between left and right, but between those who believe a state may set firm conditions for membership in a national community, and those who fear those conditions can become discriminatory or exclusionary. It is about whether integration is a voluntary offer or a civic obligation. That question cuts across traditional party lines.»

MASS MIGRATION ERODING WESTERN SOVEREIGNTY, IMMIGRATION EXPERT WARNS

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen addresses the media during a joint press conference after a meeting at Palazzo Chigi. (Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

University of California Irvine political science professor Sara Wallace Goodman calls Denmark «an interesting case where you’ve seen broad consensus on the immigration issue.» She says that due to Denmark’s «very generous welfare state» that «applies to their citizens,» the government has been forced to make it «very difficult for outsiders to establish themselves and really to gain access to those similar entitlements.»

Goodman, who also works with the European University Institute’s Global Citizenship Observatory, says Denmark’s center-left government «can get traction by looking tough on immigration,» which can «really defang the competitors that will come at you from the right.»

Underneath these policies lies a shared fear: the emergence of «parallel societies» – neighborhoods, schools and social environments where newcomers live largely separate lives. Governments worry that linguistic isolation, concentrated poverty and strong communal pressures can create self‑contained worlds that operate alongside, rather than within, the national civic space.

Goodman points to a U.K. report in the mid-2000s from Trevor Phillips, then the head of the Commission for Racial Equality under Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which he wrote about «parallel societies» that «were living separate lives.» Phillips said the «avowedly multicultural» Britain was «sleepwalking into segregation.» Goodman says integration policies try to «break up these non-integrated communities by fiat, but the flip side is that such a blunt instrument… can be restrictive and oppressive and destabilizing.»

FRENCH SCHOOL RIOTS DEEPEN AS EXPERTS POINT TO FAR-LEFT ALLIANCE FUELING ‘BROADER CONFRONTATION’

Groups of Muslim men entering the East London Mosque during prayer time as two women walk by. London, England. (Fox News Digital)

The parallel society Phillips warned about may already be taking hold. A video distributed on TikTok shows shoppers at an Asian market in London waiting in a line mostly separated by gender. Nile Gardiner called the video disturbing. «I think it’s an illustration of the advancing Islamification of the United Kingdom, which has been accelerated in the last decade, and I think it poses a threat to the future of the U.K.

«What we’re seeing is the imposition of the Islamic culture in Britain, which is the heart of Western civilization,» Gardiner told Fox News Digital. He points directly at the «red-green alliance,» noting that «France is in a state of anarchy and a lot of the violence is driven by Islamists in conjunction with the far-left. We are seeing a growing alignment between the greens, the socialists and the Islamists. They’re increasingly working together. This is the case in multiple European cities, from Berlin to London to Vienna to The Hague.»

Schatz said that the politics of migration are driven less by numbers than by visibility. «A country can have falling asylum numbers and still experience an intensifying migration debate if voters believe integration has failed,» he said. «Essentially, the issue is not whether Europe should have immigration. It is whether Europe still has the confidence to expect newcomers to join the society they entered.»

EUROPE’S LEFT COURTS MUSLIM VOTERS AS ANTI-ISRAEL POLITICS RESHAPE CONTINENT

French President Emmanuel Macron addresses the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, United States, on Sept. 22, 2026, as world leaders gather for high-level meetings covering global issues including artificial intelligence and the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran. ( )

But Rodan‑Benzaquen warned that coercive measures only reach the surface of the problem. She said governments «cannot demand attachment to common institutions while those institutions fail children or block advancement, or Islamist propaganda that encourages people to reject those institutions. Nor can public authorities negotiate away basic principles whenever an organized group challenges them.»

She added, «Governments often concentrate on the most visible manifestations of a problem while paying insufficient attention to what produces it… Where there are organized efforts to discourage participation in wider society, we need to examine the people, institutions and financing behind those efforts. Regulating clothing will not, by itself, address them.»

Since 2004, France has restricted conspicuous religious symbols in public schools, including Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and conspicuous Christian crosses. Rodan-Benzaquen says «the principle is that children should be able to develop their own judgment and freedom of conscience in a shared educational space,» and it is part of France’s assimilation model.

SPAIN’S MIGRANT SURGE REIGNITES DEBATE OVER EUROPE’S ISLAMIST TERROR THREAT

A brass band performs during a big banquet organized by the ‘Canon Francais’ in Montelimar, south-eastern France, on May 8, 2026. The banquets of the ‘Canon Francais’, which draw thousands of guests around roast pork and red wine to «promote local traditions and heritage,» are accused by their critics of spreading racist ideas behind their patriotic, typically French image.  (Alex Martin/ AFP via Getty Images)

She said the «central promise» of the French model «remains worth defending… you can become fully French whatever your origins. Although,» she adds, «sustaining it is becoming more difficult.»

Rodan-Benzaquen continued, «There has to be something clearly understood to integrate into,» adding, «a language, a political community, a history and freedoms and responsibilities that people are expected to share. A society embarrassed to transmit these will struggle to ask newcomers to embrace them.»

Goodman said, «Europe is in a really unique situation where it has accepted immigration, but it hasn’t accepted the long-term consequences of immigration. Societies over time adapt and start to see themselves as immigrant receiving countries and as multicultural, and a lot of societies in Europe have resisted this transformation.» She said that the «society that birthed the Enlightenment and the ideas of liberalism and pluralism» must evaluate itself «and say there’s a boundary on this.»

Schatz said that any successful integration model in Europe «will not be one that is simply ‘tough’ or simply ‘welcoming.’… A state that cannot enforce its borders or its basic civic rules eventually loses the public confidence needed for a generous and sustainable integration policy.»

As Israel prepared to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior defense officials disagreed over whether to notify the Biden administration ahead of the operation, fearing Washington could try to stop the mission, according to Wall Street Journal editorial writer Elliot Kaufman and a second source familiar with the deliberations.

«140%, they won’t approve of the mission,» Netanyahu told senior Israeli defense officials, according to Kaufman, co-author of «In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis,» who recounted the exchange in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi favored informing Washington, believing the Americans might support a strike against a Hezbollah leader linked to the deaths of U.S. service members, according to Kaufman. Netanyahu, however, warned that then-U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would «jump out of his skin» if he learned of the plans.

The disagreement reflected a widening divide between Jerusalem and Washington over Israel’s military campaign against Iran’s regional proxies, as the Biden administration sought to prevent the fighting from escalating into a broader regional war.

‘BIBI’S HAIR ON FIRE’: TRUMP-NETANYAHU PUBLIC ‘RIFT’ MASKED UNIFIED FRONT AGAINST IRAN, ANALYST SAYS

Hezbollah: Netanyahu’s warning about Washington

When Israeli jets struck Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut on September 27, 2024, the Pentagon said it had received no advance warning. Gallant spoke with then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin while the operation was already underway.

The strike killed Nasrallah, who had led the Iranian-backed terrorist organization for more than three decades, marking a major turning point in Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, which opened a second front against Israel on October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas’ deadly attack in southern Israel, and had since launched repeated rocket and missile attacks on northern Israeli communities.

Kaufman argued that Israel had spent nearly a year waiting for American diplomacy to end Hezbollah’s attacks on its northern communities, without success.

«From Israel’s point of view, it had been sitting and waiting for 10, 11 months while Hezbollah had been pounding the north of Israel with rockets and with anti-tank missiles, waiting for American diplomacy to succeed,» he said. «It didn’t work. Something had to change on the northern front.»

Kaufman said the confrontation exposed a fundamental difference in how the two governments approached the war.

«The United States may not have been in Israel’s war room, but it could never be denied a seat at the table when it asked,» he said.

«What I was told from the Israeli prime minister’s office is ‘America’s goal is to de-escalate the war. Our goal is to win the war,’ and we saw that clash at every point, especially during the Biden administration.»

VP JD VANCE ADDRESSES US-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP, WHETHER IRAN IS TRYING TO ‘PLAY’ THE UNITED STATES

Hamas fighters secure an area before handing over an Israeli-American hostage Keith Siegel to a Red Cross team in Gaza City on Feb. 1, 2025, as part of the fourth hostage-prisoner exchange. Ranks of Hamas fighters formed up on Gaza’s beachfront in a show of force against the dramatic backdrop of breaking waves. (SAEED JARAS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

October 7: Netanyahu’s reluctance and the question of accountability

The book, written by Kaufman and Jerusalem Post senior military analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob, also describes how Netanyahu initially resisted launching a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, only to emerge later as one of the strongest advocates for continuing the war.

«Prime Minister Netanyahu had just seen the IDF, Israel’s military, fail miserably on Oct. 7, and Israel’s intelligence services fail miserably on October 7,» Kaufman told Fox News Digital.

Senior American generals dispatched by President Biden also warned Israeli leaders that a ground invasion could end in military defeat, even in Gaza City, according to Kaufman.

Netanyahu eventually approved the ground operation on Oct. 27, 2023, after weeks of internal debate.

«Over time, he would gain confidence in the IDF, regain confidence in the military, in Israel’s intelligence services, and end up outlasting, exhausting, or simply firing all of his war room rivals,» Kaufman said.

Kaufman was more critical when asked about Netanyahu’s accountability for Oct. 7.

«I have spoken to Prime Minister Netanyahu several times in person, even more on the phone. I had a three hour conversation with him extending well past midnight in Israel,» Kaufman said. «I have not heard him take responsibility for what happened on October 7th.»

Instead, Kaufman said, Netanyahu consistently points to the failure of senior military officials to alert him before the Hamas assault began. «What he says is, 6:29. They didn’t wake me up until 6:29 in the morning on the day of October 7th,» Kaufman recounted.

Those remarks came as a new controversy erupted in Israel over the official record of Netanyahu’s actions on the morning of the attack.

In a lengthy interview broadcast Thursday by Israel’s Channel 12, retired Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, who served as Netanyahu’s military secretary at the time, said that the prime minister’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, attempted to alter the official record of a telephone call between Gil and Netanyahu.

EXPERTS URGE EXTREME CAUTION ON IRAN’S ‘CROWN JEWEL’ HEZBOLLAH — TERROR GROUP WITH US BLOOD ON ITS HANDS

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Galant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi attend a memorial ceremony marking a decade for Israeli fallen soldiers of the 2014 Gaza War also known as Operation Protective Edge, in the Hall of Remembrance at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem, 16 July 2024. (Abir Sultan/Reuters)

Gil said a stenographer told him she had been instructed to change the recorded time of their first secure telephone conversation from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. Gil said he had raised concerns about irregular recordkeeping with the attorney general’s office in real time. Braverman has acknowledged seeking to change the recorded time but denied wrongdoing.

Gil also challenged the completeness of Netanyahu’s public account of the events preceding the massacre, saying there were significant gaps between what occurred and what had been presented to the Israeli public and in his written statements.

The Likud party dismissed the alleged attempt to falsify the record, saying «the matter had been investigated by police two years earlier and that police had recommended closing the case because it lacked substance.» However, prosecutors have not announced a decision to close the case.

Gil also said that opportunities to secure hostage agreements earlier in the war had been lost because of political considerations.

Asked by Channel 12 whether some hostages who died in captivity could have been brought home alive, Gil replied, «We could have.»

He indicated that opposition to ceasefires and hostage deals from far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition influenced the prime minister’s decisions.

While acknowledging that senior Israeli military officials believed Netanyahu was prolonging the war for political reasons, Kaufman challenged the argument that political survival was his sole motivation, pointing to Israel’s subsequent campaigns against Hezbollah and Iran. «There were real strategic interests to be pursued,» he said.

«Almost all of the real achievements of this war came later in the war,» he said, arguing that the subsequent weakening of Hezbollah, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities complicated claims that continued fighting served only Netanyahu’s political interests.

IDF ANNOUNCES ELIMINATION OF HEZBOLLAH COMMANDER BEHIND MURDER OF 5 AMERICAN SOLDIERS

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced joint military action targeting Iran. (REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt)

Iran: How Israel helped convince Trump to strike

The book also examines how Israel’s early military successes against Iran helped persuade President Donald Trump to authorize U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day war in June 2025.

Kaufman described how a Trump administration official showed him a map of Israeli airstrikes that had opened a route toward Fordow, Iran’s heavily fortified underground nuclear facility.

According to Kaufman, Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir subsequently made the case directly to Vice President JD Vance that American forces had an extraordinary opportunity to strike.

«You have a straight shot to Iran’s nuclear sites. You will never have a better opportunity than this,» Kaufman said, recounting Zamir’s message to Vance.

Kaufman said the Israeli military chief told Vance that Israeli aircraft were already operating over the area, but that the U.S. possessed the heavy bunker-busting bombs necessary for the Fordow mission.

He credited the vice president with helping secure Trump’s final authorization for Operation Midnight Hammer.

«Vice President Vance played a critical role in ultimately securing American participation in the highly successful 12-day war,» Kaufman said.

The account challenges the notion that Trump was reluctantly drawn into the conflict by Netanyahu, Kaufman argued, portraying the president instead as responding to an opportunity created by Israel’s demonstrated military capabilities.

The Commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, recently visited Israel as the official guest of the Chief of the General Staff, LTG Eyal Zamir. The Commander of CENTCOM and the Chief of the General Staff first held an extended one-on-one meeting. This was followed by a meeting attended by additional commanders. The IDF says the meeting serves as another expression of the relationship between the commanders and constitutes an additional step in enhancing the close strategic relationship between the IDF and U.S. military and in strengthening defense cooperation between the two nations. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit.)

Jake Sullivan’s response was not received by the deadline.