War On Hate

Online booksellers label antisemitic
forgery with disclaimer.

PETER EPHROSS

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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he war against hate on the
Internet is heating up.
Two major online book-
sellers-agreed this week to post
disclaimers about a 19th-century forgery
that claims there is an international
Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.
But an online civil liberties group is
questioning the moves by Amazon.com
and barnesandnoble.com regarding The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, calling
the addition of disclaimers an infringe-
ment on free speech.
The moves come amid increasing
controversy about how to deal with
hate speech on the Internet.
Earlier this year, the Internet portal
Yahoo! vowed to remove racist and
antisemitic clubs it is hosting online.
Also, eBay banned the sale of hate
material on its online auction site after
pressure from groups, including the
Simon Wiesenthal Museum of
Intolerance in Los Angeles.
The note on Amazon.com read:
"Please note that Amazon.com does
not endorse the views expressed in this
book or those in the publisher's book
description below."
"The book is considered a forgery,"
barnesandnoble.com spokesman Gus
Carlson was quoted as saying. "In a
situation where there is concern over
the legitimacy of the book, it is our
job to make certain facts clear."
In addition to their own dis-
claimers, the two companies are post-
ing a rebuttal to the book provided by
the Anti-Defamation League:

"The Protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion, circulated by the Czarist secret
police at the turn of the 20th century, is
plainly and simply a plagiarized forgery.
The Protocols has been a major weapon
in the arsenals of antisemites around the
world, republished and circulated by
individuals, hate groups and governments
to convince the gullible as well as the big-
oted that Jews have schemed and plotted
to take over the world."
ADL National Director Abraham
Foxman emphasized that his group
just wants potential customers to
know what the book really is about.
"We are not in the business of ban-
ning books, no matter how reprehen-

sible or indefensible they are," he said.
But Deborah Pierce, an attorney with
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said
the move "raises some flags.
She worries what would happen
with situations that are not as clear-
cut, referring to a hypothetical case
involving a how-to abortion book.
Marc Stern, co-director of the
American Jewish Congress' legal
department, said what distinguishes
this case is that by purporting to be
written by Jews, the Protocols is not
honest about its origins.
Contrary to popular belief, the ori-
gins can be traced to France, not Russia.
It was a collaborative effort of French
intellectual antisemites and Russian anti-
semites within the czarist secret police.
But the Protocols was never pub-
lished in France. Its debut actually
came in Russia, around 1903, and it
reportedly triggered a pogrom against
the Jews of Odessa.
In America, perhaps the prime pur-
veyor of the Protocols was auto mag-
nate Henry Ford. In 1920, his
Michigan newspaper, the Dearborn
Independent, published the Protocols
within a series titled, "The
International Jew: The World's
Foremost Problem."
The book form later sold half a
million copies. But in 1927, an
American judge forced Ford to
destroy the remainder.
Hitler cited the Protocols promi-
nently in his Mein Kampf and made it
a centerpiece of Nazi propaganda.
In recent decades, the Protocols
spread beyond Europe and America,
popping up in Japan, South America
and the Arab world. Today, Hamas ter-
rorists reportedly justify suicide missions
against Israelis by referring to the book.
Foxman of the ADL said the online
controversy began after someone
wrote on the World Wide Web that
they had found a copy of the Protocols
in the Judaica section of their local
Barnes and Noble bookstore.
This problem was quickly resolved
— the bookstore moved the Protocols
to its world history section — but the
online note spurred others to see how
the book could be ordered online.
When they found it available, they
wrote to the ADL — an "e-mail frenzy"
from 80-100 people, Foxman said. ❑

