PURELY COMMENTARY

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

`Scapegoat' ism Beckons For Truth In Calamitous Middle East

Whenever an excuse is sought for the
ills that have enveloped mankind, the
Jew has been the means for resorting to a
scapegoat. In matters involving the Mid-
dle East calamities, Israel is available for
that purpose.
Christian and Moslem continue to
battle each other in Lebanon, "Palesti-
nians" are subjected to hunger, even in
these matters of inhumanities, the Jew
and Israel are often treated as causes
behind-the-scenes. The manner in which
Israel is treated, sometimes outright and
often by suggestion, as the responsible
villain is often a very ugly element in the
media treatment and in diplomacy.
Writing in Voice of Jerusalem, in
1921, Israel Zangwill gave this defini-
tion: "Nothing gratifies the mob more
than to get a simple name to account for a
complex phenomenon, and the word 'Jew'
is always at hand to explain the never-
absent malady of the body politic." Sub-
stitute "Israel" for "Jew" and there ap-
pears the target for many hateful excuses
in the not uncommon instigations to
venom.
This is so vital that the facts need be
presented in every instance where there
is distortion of truth.
First, however, in the approach to
factual treatment of emerging issues, a
bit of pride in the morality of Israel's
adherence to diplomacy. Announcement
has just been made in Jerusalem that Is-
rael Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, at
the behest of Minister Without Portfolio
Ezer Weizmann, has named Mohammed

lem — sharing affairs of state with
Jewish fellow citizens. This is something
to pursue and be proud of.
Now we come to matters involving
the numerous problematic, often tragic,
issues affecting the Middle East. Even in
relation to that horrible crime, resulting
from Christian versus Moslem atrocities
and denial of the major element for life —
food — to 20,000 who are an element in
the conflict, there was the trend toward
"blaming" an Israeli role. Therefore the
editorial of Feb. 13, "Recognizing the
Enemy," in the Wall Street Journal,
needs serious consideration:

Israel Zangwill

Masarwa to be the new Israel Consul
General in Atlanta, Ga.
Masarwa, 45, is a Moslem. He heads
a thriving law firm in his native town of
Kasr-Kara, not far from Haifa. He is a
former mayor of his native city but he
failed to win election to the Israel Parli-
ament, the Knesset.
This appointment was labeled "a
bold move." It is more than that: it is proof
of the morality in diplomacy. It is a signal
for continuity in Israeli governmental af-
fairs, with Arabs — Christian and Mos-

When at the United Nations
yesterday the Nordic countries
called for an evacuation of
women, children and elderly
from the camp, the PLO's Mr.
Terzi called the suggestion "non-
sense." The PLO doesn't want
these Palestinians out of harm's
way.
The powers that could have-
prevented this kind of thing— the
United States, Israel and France
— were driven out of Beirut by
contingents of moralists at home
and by the same Soviet-backed
forces now persecuting the resi-
dents of the camps with an ex-
tended siege. This time there
seems to be "no one" to blame —
no one other than the Soviets and
the Syrians. Somehow world
opinion doesn't want to face up to

or speak out against that reality,
which is why these massacres
continue.

Letters to editors of major newspap-
ers often refute distortion of facts and
lead to vitally needed clarifications. Pre-
varications about Jerusalem, for exam-
ple, always need factual consideration of
the Jewish position on the Holy City as
the capital of Israel which can never be
altered. The Washington Post published a
letter from the Jordanian ambassador to
the United States in which the Jerusalem
role was distorted. The Jordanian mis-
conceptions were answered and chal-
lenged by Israel Ambassador Meir
Rosenne who traced truth and facts in
this letter:

It is sad that Jordan's Am-
bassador Mohamed Kamal, with
whose country Israel has for de-
cades vainly sought to achieve
peace, should persist (letters,
Jan. 30) in historical prevarica-
tions about Jerusalem that can
only prolong misunderstanding.
The record must be set straight.
There was no Israeli "mili-
tary push" to seize the entire city
in 1948. Quite the contrary: Israel
was forced onto the defensive
against the attack of Jordan's
Arab Legion, which captured the
city's eastern part and sought to
rout the Jews from the rest of it.
Tragically, it was the Arab

Continued on Page 30

The 'Protocols' Remain A Tool For Arab Anti-Semitism

Rational minds can't conceive it. Yet
one of the vilest anti-Semitic forgeries
remains an instrument for hatred. Con-
stantly exposed as both fake and literary
trash, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
keep reappearing. Father Charles
Coughlin tried to explain and justify
them. The Royal Oak priest's hate sheet,
Social Justice, was a means of reviling
Jews and enthusiastically spreading
hatred. Henry Ford Senior apologized for
using them in his Dearborn Independent.
Then he reverted to the hate he re-
pudiated and retained a- high role in
spreading the big fake, the Protocols.
From Russia and France these fabrica-
tions gained supporters in the capitals of
Islamic countries. That's where they are
being revived again as this Jewish Tele-
graphic Agency report from Paris reve-
als:
A new version of theProtocols
of the Elders of Zion, the "classic"
of anti-Semitic literature, is cur-
rently on sale in Paris. The
French edition was printed in
Kuwait shortly after the Yom
Kippur War and includes a
foreword explaining that its
"publication is now considered
necessary, even imperative."
The book is on view in several
bookshops in predominantly
Arab areas in the north of the city
and is sold for 60 Francs ($10), a
relatively low price for its size.
Several Jewish organizations
reportedly plan to lodge formal
complaints as the Protocols in-
fringe on French legislation
which makes it illegal to spread

racial hatred or contribute to
religious prejudice.
The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion were first published in
Czarist Russia by the secret
police and have since been used
by neo-Nazi organizations and
various anti-Semitic govern-
ments.

It can't possibly be a "new version"
and there is nothing new about anti-
Semitism, even if it spread by people —
Arabs — who use as their defense the
claim that they are themselves Semites.
The puzzlement is the repeated reprint-
ing of the falsehoods and their being
spread in such isolated places as Kuwait.
That's really where the mystery un-
ravels: that it becomes possible for the
hatemongers to find customers for their
libels in a sphere of sheer ignorance.
The pity is that all of the exposes
branding the widely distributed anti-
Semitic canards as deceptive forgeries
have fallen on deaf ears where the desire
to hurt the Jewish people predominates.
That's why it is so important that every
effort be made to prevent the spread of
these fakes in this country. That's why it
is important that "The Official Report on
the Authenticity of the 'Protocols,' " is-
sued in 1964, should be kept on the re-
cord. That official report, which had al-
ready been called to the attention of our
readers declared:

In 1964 the United States
sub-committee on the judiciary
issued a report which referred to
the Protocols as a "fabricated 'his-
toric' document." (Protocols of the

Elders of Zion: A Fabricated "His-
toric" Document. U.S. Government

Printing Office, Washington,
D.C., 1964. The most comprehen-
sive and updated analysis of the
Protocols cf. Norman Cohn's War-

rant for Genocide: The Myth of the
Jewish World Conspiracy and the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1966,
specifically Ch. III ["TheProtocols
and the Dialogue aux Enfers,"],
Ch. VI ["The Protocols Reach

Germany"], and the bibliog
raphical notes 289-296. Cohn's
references to Rosenberg are on
pp. 195-197.)
Senators Thomas J. Dodd
and Kenneth B. Keating pointed
out in their introduction that
among all maliciously invented
documents, the Protocols were
among the most notorious and
durable, and had been "re-
peatedly and authoritatively"
exposed as a vicious hoax. The
purpose of their report, the Sena-
tors slated, was to lay to rest the
matter of the Protocols once and
for all. Among the Senators'
sources of reference were Father
Pierre Charles of the Jesuit Col-
lege in Louvain; Richard Helms,
then the Assistant Director of the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency;
F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover;
and Dr. Hugo Valentin of the
University of Uppsala, Sweden.
The subcommittee's report
mentioned that the Protocols had
been offered for sale under
different names, and were in style

"rambling, incoherent, and tur-
gid." Father Charles was quoted
as having stated that the more
one examined them the more they
were found to be "absurd, con-
tradictory, and childish": nor did
they amount even to a "merest
shadow of a sketch of a pro-
gram." J. Edgar Hoover, in his
Masters of Deceit, pointed out that
the Protocols have been used in
the United States for the malici-
ous purpose of persuading
Americans that Judaism and
Communism were linked.
Richard Helms, in his tes-
timony before the subcommittee,
stated that the Protocols were
concocted more than sixty years
ago by czarist intelligence serv-
ices and were subsequently taken
up by anti-Semitic psychological
warfare organizations. They had
been "exported" and borrowed in
the 1930s and 1940s by Hitler's
propagandist counterfeiters.
Hugo Valentin, in his Anti-

Semitism Historically and Critically
Examined (1936), characterized
the Protocols as the "greatest

forgery of the century," gross
fabrications which were taken
seriously in wide circles "in spite
of their absurdities." "One need
not be a specialist in historical re-
search or have any extensive
knowledge of matters Jewish he
see through the fraudulent na-
ture of the Protocols after a cur-
sory glance." The actual germ of

Continued on Page 30

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