B'nai B'rith Magazine Offers Chilling Look at One of the Biggest Frauds Perpetuated on the Jewish People - And Its Resurgence

WASHINGTON, July 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 70 years after the antisemitic tome the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was debunked by a Swiss judge as "ridiculous nonsense," it is gaining a new life, and a new following in some Muslim quarters. And the ramifications are unsettling.

Hamas and Iran are embracing the ideas in the discredited diatribe against Jews. Included in the Hamas Charter is a section on how "Zionists" are plotting to rule the world, and how they have detailed "their scheme" in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

From Johannesburg, South Africa, to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Moscow, trials have concluded the book that claims to describe a Jewish plot to take over the world is a fake. Yet Hamas quotes from the slanderous work. Iran, too, is on board, alluding to the Protocols in a diatribe on its United Nations delegation website.

The re-adoption of this dangerous text as fact is spelled out in the latest edition of B'nai B'rith Magazine, in a piece called, "Reviving The Protocols: Iran, Hamas Won't Let the Myth Die," by William Korey, Ph.D. The insightful and frightening article offers a revealing look at the resurgence of this dangerous lie.

The Nazis used the book as the basis for their murderous plans. Korey writes: "From the beginning of the Nazi movement in the 1920s, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler took the Protocols as a seminal source while planning their first military coup in Munich against the German Republic. Later, when in power after 1933, they made the Protocols required reading for the Hitler Youth."

And now, Iran and Hamas seem to be on the same path. Korey finds: "A perusal of the Iranian press is revealing ... As early as 1986, a new Iranian edition of the Protocols was published in Teheran and widely distributed in the country by the official 'Islamic Propagation Organization, International Relations Department'...Some eight years later, one of the wealthiest institutions in Iran, the Shrine of Imam Reza, financed the publication of another edition of the Protocols."

The re-emergence of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a stark reminder that virulent antisemitism is alive and well, and needs vigilant and engaged observers to keep it in check.

To read, go to: bnaibrith.org/magazine/2007SummerBBM/2007_summer_BBM_protocols-of-zion.html

B'nai B'rith International, the global voice of the Jewish community, is the oldest and most widely known Jewish humanitarian, human rights, and advocacy organization. Since 1843, BBI has worked for Jewish unity, security, continuity, and tolerance. Visit http://www.bnaibrith.org/.