Southern Italians are sometimes insulted if someone says that they have non-European ancestors because that's what racists from Northern Italy who don't like southerners like to point out, to 'explain' why southerners are 'inferior' to northern Italians. You even have this Padania movement in Northern Italy which wants to see the north independent from the rest of Italy and looks down on southerners. So it's natural that southern Italians are defensive when it comes to this issue, because they suspect that they're drealing with some anti-southern chauvnistic Padanian nationalism.

It's the same in the Balkans where certain nations are accused of having a lot of "Turkish blood" in them.

When I say that they have Arab blood it's strictly because I think it's true, I don't have any agenda and I don't want to be provocative or anything. It's nothing to be ashamed of anyway, Arabs who invaded Sicily were civilized and Norman-Arab culture in Sicily prospered for many years. Those 'Arabs'/Moors were mostly north Africans who were part of Roman civilization when Germanic/Nordic people were still living in woods.