Italy’s Fiat Motor Co., under an Arab blacklist threat, is refusing Arab demands to fire three employes of the Turin newspaper La Stampa which it owns, including the Jewish editor, Arrigo Levi. The demands and threats from the Arab Boycott Committee in Beirut followed the recent publication of humorous references to President Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya which Qaddafi did not consider funny. Fiat’s interests in Libya, an Italian colony before World War II, are valued at $30 million. Its business throughout the Arab world is much greater.
Qaddafi was the butt of humor in a column written for La Stampa by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini. His ire appears to have been aroused as much by the fact that editor Levi is Jewish and fought for Israel as a volunteer during the 1948 war as by what the two humorists said about him. The latter included tongue-in-cheek suggestions that Qaddafi, who makes much of his Moslem austerity, was a secret homosexual, kept a harem of 48 wives in Switzerland, and ate pork, forbidden to Moslems.
The news staff of La Stampa and its afternoon edition, Stampa Sera, has backed Levi and denounced the Arab blackmail attempts. Their managing editor issued a statement thanking them for their support and declared there was no pressure from Fiat to fire anybody.
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