By: Colleen Long, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP).- A scholar’s son was convicted Thursday of using online aliases to harass and discredit his father’s detractors in a heated academic debate over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A Manhattan jury convicted Raphael Golb on Thursday of 30 counts against him, including identity theft, forgery and harassment. He was acquitted of one count of criminal impersonation. Prosecutors said Golb, a 50-year-old lawyer, used fake e-mail accounts and wrote blog posts under assumed names to take his father’s side in an obscure but sharp-elbowed scholarly dispute over the scrolls’ origins. Golb acknowledged crafting the e-mails and blog posts, and said the writings amounted to academic whistle-blowing and blogosphere banter — not crime. He said outside court he would appeal. His attorney said the conviction violates the First Amendment. The more than 2,000-year-old documents, found in caves in Israel in the 1940s and ’50s, contain