Argentine court orders removal of derogatory definition of 'Jewish' from dictionary

An Argentine judge has ordered the publishers of a major Spanish dictionary to remove a pejorative definition of the word "Jewish" from its listing, local media reported late Thursday.

The fifth and last definition of the word "Jewish" in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language, which is published by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), is of a person said to be "greedy or usurious".

The dictionary cautions that this usage is "offensive or discriminatory".

The other four definitions are "Hebrew", a person "who professes Judaism," a "native of Judea, a country in Asia Minor" and "belonging or relating to Judea or the Jews."

Judge Ariel Lijo ordered the academy to "immediately remove the fifth definition of the word 'Jewish' for representing hate speech and incitement to discrimination on religious grounds," according to a ruling cited by the Infobae news portal.

He also ordered that the link to the word on the dictionary's website be blocked in Argentina until it complied with the request.

It was possible to still access it on Friday morning, however.

The ruling stemmed from a complaint filed on August 28 by the heads of the Latin American Jewish Congress and the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations against the RAE and its director, Santiago Munoz Machado, Infobae said.

The complaint cited a law banning the "justification or promotion of racial or religious discrimination in any form," a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

Jewish groups and rights groups have asked the RAE twice to remove the definition, but Munoz Machado refused, while agreeing to add the stipulation that the fifth definition given for Jewish is "offensive of discriminatory", according to Infobae.

Lijo ruled that RAE's response was "unacceptable."

Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America.

The Jewish community in Buenos Aires was targeted in two major attacks in the 1990s, one on the Israeli Embassy in 1992, which killed 29 people, and another on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in 1994, which left 85 people dead.