A judge in Milan, Italy last week imposed a $24,000 fine and an 18-month suspended sentence on a well-known novelist who had inveighed online against Jews.
Judge Luca Milani slapped Cecilia Parodi with the 20,500 euro fine over a post published last year against Sen. Liliana Segre, who is a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
“A heartless idiot, I hate all Jews,” Parodi wrote on social media, the news site 24 Ore reported. She later elaborated on her hatred toward Jews in a video Instagram post, saying: “I hate all Jews, I hate all Israelis, from the first to the last, I hate all those who defend them. If one day I have to see you all hanging by your feet—and Loreto Square isn’t [big] enough, we need Tiananmen Square—I swear I’ll be the first to spit on you.”
Davide Romano, director of the Museum of the Jewish Brigade in Milan, welcomed the sentence, which he described as appropriate and sufficient. But, he told JNS, “Unfortunately, it’s just a single case of good justice. Meanwhile, there are countless other cases that are not prosecuted.”
Romano noted verbal and sometimes physical attacks against Jews that he said “are often hidden behind anti-Zionism which—as we know very well—is masked antisemitism.”
In the case of Segre, he added, “I am certain that the victim’s high profile and her past as a Holocaust survivor certainly helped” achieve a deterrent sentence. “But the problem lies with the hundreds of Jews who face such threats daily and for whom justice is not providing answers,” he said.
To avoid the suspended sentence from being activated, Parodi must publish the full text of the sentence on the Italian Justice Ministry’s official website, where it must remain visible for 20 days.
Of the fine, 10,000 euros will go to Segre, who initiated the court case against Parodi, with another 10,000 to be split between the Union of Italian Jewish Communities and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. That group’s president is to receive another 500 euros from Parodi.
Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, Italy’s national coordinator for the fight against antisemitism, unveiled a new program for fighting antisemitism earlier this year following the publication of a report that showed documented expressions of antisemitic hatred rose from 455 in 2023 to 877 last year.
The annual report by the Antisemitism Observatory of the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center Foundation, a Jewish community watchdog, said that both the increase was unprecedented and the levels that it had reached in 2024.
The new five-year strategy focuses on surveillance, with an emphasis on online antisemitism, education and increasing the visibility of protection for Jews and communication.
