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Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato.
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ROME (EJP)--- Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato ordered the closure of a blog on Internet on Friday. The blog listed the names of 162 Jewish University professors who are accused of “doing lobby in favour of the Zionists.”
The move came after Rome's Jewish Community complained to the authorities.
Signed by "Re" (king, in Italian) the blog also displayed a number of articles and weblinks dedicated to Holocaust revisionism, to former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and to anti-Zionism. The site was shut down Friday at 1.25 pm.
The website admitted how the author managed to obtain the 162 names: they were copied from a list of signatures put on a petition protesting against an anti-Semitic academic boycott which took place in the UK months ago.
The blog explained that most of the 162 professors “belong to La Sapienza University of Rome, have a Jewish last name and publicly support Israeli politics”.
The professors are accused of serving the cause of Israel and not the interest of Italy, are indicated as spy inside the Italian system. They are accused of allegedly giving to Israel all kinds of scientific information such as theses, data, research results and everything carried out at universities, "that would explain why Israel is so avant-garde.”
The blog also calls on Italian students to be careful with their Jewish professors and to learn how to recognize a Jewish surname.
Rome’s Jewish community spokesperson, Riccardo Pacifici, declared: "We will not get frightened”. He called on the Italian University and the Italian society to show unity and bring an action “in order to stop a cancer that might grow and hit anybody”.
The reaction, he added, "cannot be limited to the people directly concerned”.
Italian University Minister Fabio Mussi recalled the 1938 Racial Laws adopted by Mussolini. “The expulsion of the Jews from our universities, he said, was one of the worst losses for Italian culture and science”, and the he added: “Anti-Semitism is the poison of civilization”.
The Chancellor of La Sapienza University, Renato Guarini, condemned the blog as “an intolerable act of intolerance, totally antithetic to the values and the mission of this University”.
Politicians from all political sides condemned the anti-Semitic website.
Modern history Professor Anna Foa was among the Jewish academicians whose names were on the "black list." She told the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera that "the persons responsible for this delirious initiative committed a crime and shall be punished".
"We are talking about names and anti-Semitic slogans: it is an impressive and quiet scary improvement of racial hatred,” she said.
History professor Marco Teodori declared: “Unfortunately there is nothing new about it. But we need to immediately and publicly talk about it, in order to avoid all steps backwards”.