Italian man sentenced for ‘Jewish lobby’ list

A Rome court has sentenced a man to six months in jail for having posted a list of 162 academics on his blog and describing them as members of an alleged “Jewish lobby.”

In a verdict handed down April 8, Paolo Munzi, 42, was convicted of defamation. But he was acquitted of having violated privacy laws and a law against instigating racial hatred.

In February 2008 Munzi posted a list of 162 people, most of them university professors, and described them in negative terms as members of a Jewish lobby supporting Israel.

Some of the professors on the list were not Jewish but had signed pro-Israel petitions.

The blog had links to far-right and anti-Israel Web sites, calls to boycott Israel and Holocaust deniers. — jta