Italian Jews for the first time today struck back at the anti-Semitic campaign being pressed by a number of Fascist newspapers and some party leaders.
Charges that Jews cannot be good Italian patriots if they are Zionists, made in a book by Parliament Deputy Paolo Orano, are refuted by the Jewish paper “Israel, ” which is published in Florence.
Discussing Dr. Orano’s book, “The Jews of Italy,” which bases its assertion on the allegation that Zionism is pro-British, the paper points out that the adherence of Jews to Zionism has been open and has had the approval of the authorities. The authorities, it declares, have been convinced that Zionism represents not only a Jewish humanitarian cause but also an Italian one.
Meanwhile, the Rome newspaper Il Tevere continued its anti-Semitic pronouncements with the assertion that in a who’s who of contemporary Italians the relative percentage of prominent Jews is sixteen times higher than Christians.
The paper declares it is “high time to remind Italy of racial values.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
