The BIG Lie

Museum exhibit, film, book tackle Jewish conspiracy theories.

History Of Hate: Museum traces the story
of infamous Protocols.

Avi Mayer

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

rthur Berger remembers hosting
a group of foreign clerics in New
York in the mid-1990s when his
then employer, the American Jewish
Committee, had been asked by the State
Department to help convey to the guests
the American ethos of tolerance and
mutual understanding.
So it was a bit of a shock when one of
the visitors, a Muslim cleric from the
Middle East, mentioned over lunch that
he had picked up an "incredible book
about the Jews" at the Cairo Book Fair:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Berger now is director of communica-
tions at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum,lArhich is currently
hosting "Anti-Semitism: Protocols of the
Elders of Zion," an exhibition on one of
the most notorious forgeries in history.
The modest exhibit includes copies of
the book that Hitler looked to for inspira-
tion and Henry Ford disseminated for
general consumption.
Berger said that the book seems to have
"a new life
"It confounds people he said. "I can't
explain it."
The Protocols outline a plan for world
domination supposedly compiled by a
gathering of Jewish leaders held during
the First Zionist Conference in 1897. In
the account, the characters lay out a step-
by-step strategy to fool gentiles —
referred to as "goyim" — into doing their
bidding.
Plans range from the replacement of
the pope to the establishment of a global
Jewish government and the appointment
of a "king of the Jews." .
The exhibit includes copies of the
Protocols from Finland (1924), India
(1974) and Japan (2004). The 20 covers
are adorned by classic anti-Semitic

A

images, - including representations of
globes trapped in the clutches of massive
"Jewish" snakes; arachnids; tentacled,
squid-like creatures; and conniving,
hook-nosed faces.
A German-language copy from 1920
Berlin looks remarkably like a Jewish
prayer book or an early Zionist manual,
complete with a blue-and-white Star of
David flag and golden type reading,"All
Israel are responsible for one another" in
Hebrew.
The language that appears most promi-
nently among the artifacts is Arabic, with
numerous issues from Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia and Egypt.
Last year, Wal-Mart was found to be
selling an English-language edition of the
Protocols on its Web site. The company
made a "business decision" to remove the
book from the site after widespread criti-
cism.
According to Kenneth Jacobson, associ-
ate national director of the Anti-
Defamation League, the persistence of the
phenomenon is simple: The Protocols sat-
isfy virtually every manifestation of con-
temporary anti-Semitism. •
From Holocaust denial to conspiracy
theories surrounding Sept. 11 and the
Iraq war, the themes present in the
Protocols permeate modern Jew hatred.
"The Protocols are representative of the
pernicious and insidious nature of anti-
Semitism," he said. "They portray the
Jews as secretive, conspiratorial, alien, all-
powerful
Of particular note is the resurgence of
those themes in bookstores and television
screens around the Islamic world,
Jacobson said.
"The Protocols never died',' Jacobson
said. "They've never gone away. They're at
the core of historic anti-Semitism."

Meeting The Enemy: NYC documentary
tackles post-9/11 anti Semitism.

press time, is scheduled to open at the
Maple Theatre in Bloomfield Township
on Friday, Dec. 16, prior to its eventual
cable broadcast on HBO, is an anecdot-
t would be difficult to imagine a
al, first-person travelogue of passing
more frustrating viewing experi-
ence than Marc Levin's Protocols of interest and no lasting value. In the cat-
egory of missed opportunities, it gets
Zion.
four stars.
The title of this feature-length docu-
The book, for those who are
mentary prepares us for a
blissfully unaware, has been
scrupulous, full-frontal
Elm circulating in one form or
debunking of the infamous
REVI
.another for more than 100
anti-Semitic text, The
years and purports to contain
Protocols of the Elders of
the detailed, nefarious blue-
Zion. Such a film, done well,
print for Jewish control of the world.
would serve as a definitive reference
At least that's the way it's sold to an
guide that. could be used in schools for
decades to come.
Meeting The Enemy on page 65
Instead, Protocols of Zion, which, at

Michael Fox

Special to the Jewish News

I

Filmmaker Marc Levin, left, interviews anti-Semitic white supremacists, in photo,

as well as evangelical Christians, militant Islamists, Palestinian expatriates and

Protocols on page 64

bitter African-Americans in his documentary Protocols of Zion.

December 15 • 2005

63