I PURELY COMMENTARY I
Shame Of 'Protocols': Exposure On Agenda Again
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor Emeritus
p
erhaps it is not surprising that
a city official in Chicago should
have become the disseminator of
the vilest and the stupidest kind of
hatred toward Jews. He has been
discharged after spreading the in-
sanities called "Protocols of the Elders
of Zion," and he has aroused a greater
measure of disgust that has been heard
for many years in condemnation of
bigots. If men who were great in their
time, Father Charles Coughlin of Royal
Oak, Mich., and Henry Ford the Elder
of Dearborn, Mich., could swallow the
poison of the vile fabrications called
"Protocols," why not an aide to the
Chicago mayor?
In the latter instance, it is because
Black personalities, Jackson and Far-
rakhan, were drawn into the dispute.
The case served as emphasis on the
need never to be too slow in assailing
bigots and bigotry.
This is why an editorial in the
Washington post emerges as powerful
statement judging the Protocols
dissemination as shameful. Under the
heading "Crazed Bigotry in Chicago,"
one Washington Post editorial stated:
Sometimes one side is so
devoid of decency and so willful-
ly dismissive of the facts that
there is no other choice for those
who believe in basic freedoms
and tolerance but fierce
opposition.
The controversy over the
remarks of Steve Cokely, an aide
to Chicago Mayor Eugene
Sawyer, is one of these cases. In
tape-recorded lectures
distributed by Louis Far-
rakhan's bookstore, Mr. Cokely
charged that Jews are involved
in an international conspiracy
to take over the world and that
Jewish doctors are injecting
black babies with the AIDS
virus. He denounced the
crucifix as a "symbol of white
supremacy," he called
Christopher Columbus "a
Hispanic Jew boy," and he
criticized Jesse Jackson for hav-
ing Jewish advisers and seeking
votes from whites.
To these spewings of crazed
bigotry, Mayor Sawyer's initial
response, relayed by a
spokesman, was that he would
tell Mr. Cokely "to tune down his
rhetoric" and that "what Steve
Cokely does on his own time, as
long as it's not illegel, is his
business!' On May 2 the mayor's
office said Mr. Cokely "humbly
apologizes" and that the mayor
discussed the issue with him "in
a firm and gentlemanly man-
ner." Mr. Cokely had been on Mr.
Sawyer's small aldermanic
payrol from 1985 to 1987, and the
mayor insisted, in language
reminiscent of Jesse Jackson's
explanation of why he did not
dissociate himself earlier from
Mr. Farrakhan in 1984, that he
wanted to "rehabilitate him:'
on May 5, Mr. Sawyer finally
fired Mr. Cokely. In the mean-
time, his choice to head the city's
Commissionon Human Rela-
tions, the Rev. B. Herbert Mar-
tin, said Mr. Cokely's remarks
about a worldwide Jewish con-
spiracy had "a ring of truth,"
and black political activist Lu
Palmer asked rhetorically, "Why
would I be surprised at doctors
injecting AIDS in black
children?"
Mayor Sawyer, who was in-
formed privately of Mr. Cokely's
remarks April 5, should have
fired him immediately and
should have spoken out im-
mediately against these ravings
as soon as they became public.
This kind of poison can spread,
and one of the chief respon-
sibilities of political leaders of
all backgrounds is to work to
see that it does not.
Mr. Sawyers failure to act
promptly not only stamps him
as an irresolute and incompe-
tent public official; far worse, it
threatens to spread hatred and
irrational bigotry in one of the
nation's great cities. Shame.
"Shameful is too kind a work to
describe "Protocols" lies and fabrica-
tions. The sense of disgust develops
from the continuing use of them by
bigots who keep shouting in all areas
of the globe. While the "shame" of it is
understood by all who judge with a
sense of justice, the continuity of the
hatred and bigotry remains a puzzle.
How could it go on as it does, as a tool
for hating Jews?
The "Protocols" were exposed and
condemned since the early 1920s when
the London Times commenced the ex-
posure in the concerned quarters of the
media everywhere. The United States
Senate unanimously branded the
outrageous resort to the "Protocols" by
the world's bigots in 1964. In that im-
portant declaration the Senate used the
word "lasting in expressing contempt
about the notorious fakes.
The analyses of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee report on the
authenticity of the "Protocols" resulted
in a comperium of statements from
authorities in several countries "who
have had occasion to investigate the
origin and circulation of the "Pro-
tocols." The Senatorial committee that
recommended the publication and ex-
posure of the fraudulent "documents"
has signed by Senators Thomas J. Dodd
and Kenneth B. Keating. Michigan
Senator Philip Hart was a member of
the committee in 1964, the year of
publication of the report.
In a significant statement quoted in
the report, Father Pierre Charles, S.J.,
a professor of theology at the Jesuit Col-
lege in Louvain, France, made this
statement in 1938:
"The more one examines the "Pro-
tocols," the more they show themselves
to be absurd, contradictory, childish .. .
I defy anyone to draw from these
statements, which claim to be a pro-
gram, the merest shadow of a sketch of
a program." His exposure is from "The
Bridge," Volume 1, published by Seton
Hall University Institute of Judeo-
Christian Studies.
Emphasis is placed in the
Senatorial report on the aim to resort
to Hitlerite "gibberish" and the Nazi
"Big Lie" in spreading anti-Jewish pro-
paganda. Then there is the warning
against using the "Protocols" falsely as
a guise of fighting Communism under
such false pretensions. The report
declares:
Those who would mislead
the American people by conti-
Continued on Page 36
Pacifism As A Tool In Fanning Anti-Israel Bias
A
native of pre-Israel Palestine
who became an American
citizen returned to the Jewish
state and joined the propagators of
disobedience. He denied that he had en-
couraged violence and claimed to be a
pacifist. The Israeli authorities compil-
ed his record of activities which includ-
ed praise for the rock throwers and
ordered his deportation. That's when
the media, always searching for means
of condemning Israel and accusing
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
(US PS 275-520) is published every Friday
with additional supplements the fourth
week of March, the fourth week of August
and the second week of November at
20300 Civic Center Drive, Southfield,
Michigan.
Second class postage paid at Southfield,
Michigan and additional mailing offices.
Postmaster: Send changes to:
DETROIT JEWISH NEWS, 20300 Civic
Center Drive, Suite 240, Southfield,
Michigan 48076
$26 per year
$29 per year out of state
60' single copy
Vol. XCIII No. 16
June 17, 1988
2
FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 1988
Israelis of resorting to brutalities and
failing to adhere to international
regulations, picked on this case to make
it an anti-Israel issue. That's when the
holier-than-thou in the media criticiz-
ed Israel in claims that a man who in-
sisted he is a pacifist was mistreated
and his American citizenship maligned.
The attack, therefore, was on Israel
regarding pacifism. The New Republic
took exception to the media definition
of pacifism and offered its own:
The attention the world
media have lavished on
Mubarak Awad's troubles is
bizarre. After all, his visa ex-
pired half a year ago; all govern-
ments routinely deport people
who have overstayed their of-
ficial welcome. Moreover, he is
not being sent back to some
country where his life would be
at peril, but to the United States,
where he has lived since 1969.
What has attracted the bien
pensants to Awad's case is the
novelty of a Palestinian pacifist.
One reporter wrote that, thanks
to Awad, elements of civil
disobedience had been in-
the hurling of Molotov cocktails
is a triumph for nonviolence.
Not being a pacifist
ourselves, we don't reproach the
Palestinians for not turning the
other cheek. But this stuff about
Palestinian pacifism is an im-
provisation aimed at eagerly
credulous sympathizers abroad.
Awad is just the latest in a
parade of Palestinian phonies
who have impressed New York
Times columnist Anthony
Lewis, for example, who an-
nounced him to be a follower of
Martin Luther King and Mahat-
ma Gandhi.
Mubarak Awad:
Rock-throwing pacifist?
tegrated into the strategy of the
Palestinian uprising, as if a con-
sumer boycott coordinated with
Almost immediately follow-
ing this accolade, the Palesti-
nian Gandhi issued his im-
primatur to the rock throwers.
Can you blame him? Maybe not.
But please don't call him a
pacifist.
There is a bit of satisfaction in the
knowledge that anti-Israel bias is not
unanimous in the press. Perhaps the
New Republic's plea for common sense
will strike more positive roots.