William Korey's otherwise splendid "Century of Hatred: 'Protocols' Live to
Poison Yet Another Generation"

Dr.Joseph Lerner Co-Director IMRA --Independent Media Review & Analysis

William Korey's otherwise splendid "Century of Hatred: 'Protocols' Live to
Poison Yet Another Generation", (Forward 22 August, see below) understates
the significance of 'The Protocols' in the Islamic world. He cites Nasser's
1956 endorsement of 'The Protocols' and at least nine Arabic translations
in the 1960s and 70s and its use by "Al-Ahram" , Egypt's newspaper of
record in June 2001. An important omission is their permeating presence in
textbooks of Islamic countries, so well illustrated by those of Saudi
Arabia. See "The West, Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabian Textbooks",
Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace", www.edume.org. Jordan has a long
tradition of using ' The Protocols' in its textbooks. Its prime textbook in
1967 was written by her Minister of Education. It said "the Jews created the
State of Israel and want to expand
in order 'to enable it to rule the world.' The book ends with the warning
that 'a considerable part of the recommendations of the Elders of Zion have,
indeed, been implemented. But the remnant is more important; therefore
beware! Awaken, O Arabs!' " ("Jerusalem", Meron Benvenisti, p.52). To this
day Jordanian textbooks adhere to this theme. Also, the initial
objectionable textbooks of the Palestinian Authority came from Jordan.

Hamas' formal charter,February 1988, officially incorporates ' The
Protocols', blending in its religious notions which include: "The Muslims
are under obligation, by order of their Prophet, to fight Jews and kill
them, wherever they can find them." ("Muslim Fundamentalism in Israel",
Raphael Israeli pp.21 -22)

In the Islamic world 'The Protocols' impact isn't confined to an occasional
newspaper reference or extremist organizations. It permeates Islamic
culture, as evidenced in at least one article in almost every issue of
Egypt's Al-Ahram citing some horrendous aspect. During the 20th century
Islam effectively used it to rally anti-Semitism through demonization of
Jews and Israel. While in the West, where "The Protocols' originated, it
is confined a noisy lunatic fringe of society, Islam expands its provocative
use. An important aspect of the resolution of Western-Islamic tensions is
the need for Islam to divest itself of this libelous weapon.

++++
FORWARD 22 August '03: "Century of Hatred:'Protocols' Live to Poison Yet
Another Generation"

By WILLIAM KOREY

History's most virulent antisemitic propaganda essay, "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion," was first published 100 years ago this week. Though the
Protocols turned out to be both a notorious plagiarism and a shocking
forgery, the essay would exercise a powerful impact upon the modern era,
principally as a critical factor in generating the Holocaust.

Despite its gross falsehood and the horrors it sparked, the Protocols
strikingly continues to be promoted today, most alarmingly in such important
institutional settings as the United Nations and Middle Eastern governmental
media.

The first publication to print the Protocols was the St. Petersburg
newspaper Znamya - Russian for Banner - from August 26 to September 7, 1903.
Pavel Krushevan, editor of the paper, was known for his ultra-rightist
antisemitic views and found common cause with the so-called Black Hundreds,
a group active on behalf of extremist causes.

Krushevan, however, was not the author of the Protocols. It was drafted
under the prodding and guidance of Piotr Rachkovsky, director of the Paris
branch of Okhrana, the

Russian secret police. Sinister and wily, he cultivated the art of forging
letters or documents in which Jews were targeted as revolutionaries and
anarchists striving for democracy in czarist Russia. As early as 1891, he
revealed his intentions in a private letter.

The published Protocols were said to be the secret decisions reached at a
gathering of Jewish leaders. That gathering was initially held to be the
First Zionist Congress, which met in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. Later, the
source was attributed to B'nai B'rith.

What was stunning about the Protocols, as later scholarly investigation and
research revealed, was that it was lifted almost entirely from a forgotten
political satire published in Paris in 1864 and written by a well-known
democrat, Maurice Joly.

Joly's pamphlet was designed to expose the repressive character of Emperor
Napoleon III's regime, which ruled France at the time. Titled "A Dialogue in
Hell: Conversations Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu About Power and
Rights," the pamphlet made no reference to the Jews.

The creator of the Protocols simply plagiarized the Joly work. Protocols 1
through 19 strikingly correspond with Joly's first 17 dialogues. In nine
cases, the borrowing amounts to more than half of the Joly text; in some
cases, they constitute three-quarters of the test, and in one case, Protocol
7, almost the entire text is plagiarized. Moreover, the very order of the
plagiarized passages remained the same as in the Joly work. The main change
in the shamelessly forged Protocols, of course, was the insertion of
antisemitic content and language into the Joly dialogues.

Nor was the creator of the Protocols original in the inserted antisemitic
language. The forgery rests on the traditional trope of international Jewry,
or alternatively Zionism, aspiring to world domination based on the biblical
concept of the "Chosen People." This aspiration, the Protocols purported, is
to be achieved through guile, cunning and conspiratorial devices,
particularly through Jewish control of the international banking system and
press.

The Protocols also played on the fear of Freemasons among court circles,
aristocracy and the church establishment. The international fraternal order
of Masons, which was identified with liberalism and modernity, was presented
in the Protocols as having already been infiltrated and manipulated by the
Elders of Zion.

In its manipulative conspiracy, the Elders were to focus on both internal,
domestic matters and interstate relations. Within each state, they were to
foster discontent and unrest, especially among workers. By promoting liberal
ideas, they were to produce confusion while, at the same time, seizing
behind-the-scenes control of political parties. Drunkenness and prostitution
were said to be vigorously encouraged and morality undermined.

Interstate conflicts were to be stirred up through emphasis upon national
differences. Every effort was to be made by the Elders of Zion to increase
armament production and enhance the likelihood of warfare. The end game of
the Zionists, according to the Protocols, was not victory for one side but
rather even greater chaos.

The Elders of Zion's ultimate goal, perceived to be but a century away, was
the messianic age when the entire world would be united under Judaism and
dominated by a descendant of the House of David. The emergent structure of a
Kingdom of Zion resembles the nightmare vision of George Orwell's "1984."

The only nightmare vision to result from the Protocols, of course, was the
near destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust. Both Adolf Hitler
and Heinrich Himmler were deeply impressed the Protocols and made it
required reading for the Hitler Youth.

With the destruction of Nazism and the horrors that antisemitism had
wrought, one might have expected that the Protocols would be thrown in the
trash bin of history. The forgery, though, found a welcome readership in
Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union. The extraordinary Soviet campaign against
Zionism reached a crescendo in 1977, with the Soviet Academy of Science's
release of the vehemently hateful publication "International Zionism:
History and Politics."

Ironically, the Communists formally turned to Arab sources for their
anti-Zionist propaganda. One major center of hate literature was based in
Cairo, where Johannes von Leers, a former employee of Joseph Goebbels's Nazi
propaganda ministry, was spreading antisemitism under his adopted Arabic
name, Omar Amin.

The Protocols may have been nourished in Europe with its ancient traditions
of Jew-baiting, but it found new life in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab
world. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser endorsed the document in 1958.
During the 1960s and 1970s at least nine different Arabic translations were
published, some by the Egyptian government press. In June 2001, the Egyptian
paper of record, Al Ahram, cited one of the Protocols as specifying how Jews
plan to "control the world" by a combination of means, including the use of
Freemasons.

A major milestone for the new drive to exploit the old forgery came at the
2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South
Africa. A table at the Durban forum for nongovernmental organizations
displayed the Protocols. The tract and similar racist publications so
shocked Congressman Tom Lantos of California, a key figure in the American
delegation and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, that he described it
as "the most sickening display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi
period."

A century after its first publication, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
continues to nourish a vibrant message of hate. One would have thought that
with all that humanity has learned during the past 100 years, the Protocols'
appeal to ignorance would have waned, if not disappeared entirely. The sad
truth is that as long as the forgery remains a best seller, the ground
remains fertile for antisemitism.

William Korey, a former director of international policy and research at
B'nai B'rith, is the author of "The Soviet Cage: Antisemitism in Russia"
(Viking, 1973) and "Russian Anti-Semitism, Pamyat and the Demonology of
Zionism" (Hebrew University/Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995).