• We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon.

• In Cairo's Tahrir Square there were placards of Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word "Jew" has become an accepted insult in the public square. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - a proven lie and forgery - is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. The Protocols was fabricated in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century, most of the text actually plagiarized from a French book published in 1865 by an opponent of Napoleon the Third.

• In a pearl of literature written by a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, as an allegory, Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu what tools can be effectively used to take over, to dominate his country and the world. This is a detailed plan that describes in 25 dialogues, step by step, how to take over the police force, how to take over the legal system, how to plant bombs - meant to awaken the French people to what was happening in their country. Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from this book. Chapters were added later to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the world.

• The Protocols is not just a libel; it is a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy. The Protocols was first used by the Russian czars and then by the communists. Later, it became a central theme in Nazi propaganda, and then it was handed to the Muslim world.

• There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world but there is an anti-Jewish conspiracy. It starts with the Jews but it does not end with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.

"Jew" Is an Insult in the Egyptian Public Square

We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon. Public opinion and public discourse have been polluted, and now the masses are standing up and trying to tell the leaders what to do.

If you paid careful attention to what happened in Cairo's Tahrir Square, you saw the placards of Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word "Jew" has become an accepted insult in the public square. A well-known preacher stood up and talked not about freedom but about the Jews, about what is going to happen to us when the masses take over. So we are rightfully worried.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Leaves a Long and Lasting Imprint

The democratic societies in the world have sinned for years by ignoring this phenomenon. After being a judge for many years, I retired to research The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After six years of research I wrote a book that has now appeared in ten languages, the most recent one in Arabic.

One of the anecdotes in my book is about a retired agent named Henri Rollin of the French Secret Service, who wrote books about European politics during the 1920s and the 1930s. He was well educated about Russia and, having been a secret agent, he had a lot of information that was not available to others. He had realized the importance of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - ­maintaining that everything that was happening in Europe, most importantly the infiltration of the Nazis into European politics, is influenced by The Protocols. He wrote an 800-page book entitled L'apocalypse de Notre Temps, all about how The Protocols had left its imprint on European politics.

The book was published in France on September 3, 1939, and you would think at the beginning of World War II the book would have been completely ignored. However, the Nazis did not ignore the book. When they conquered France they banned it, and so it vanished. Only in 1991 was Rollin's book republished by a small publisher in France. I see myself as following in Rollin's footsteps by following the history of The Protocols through the last decade and into the twenty-first century, and its impact on world politics.

Why is The Protocols - a proven lie and forgery - important today? Because it is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. These publications are financed by government money and distributed not only in Arabic-speaking countries, but also to Muslim minorities around the world.

New editions are necessary because the introductions are updated every year. The introductions say if you do not believe that the Jews are really planning to take over the world, look at what is happening in your country and region. Everything that is happening is rooted in The Protocols, an implementation of the "Jewish Conspiracy." If there is a financial crisis, an Aids or a flu epidemic, a terrorist attack, an upheaval or a catastrophe, one can always point to a chapter or page in The Protocols because it is such a devious document that everything is there. There is a whole detailed plan of how to take over the world.

The Protocols is not only a forgery, it is plagiarism. It was actually written in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century. During the preparation for the Russian Revolution, Russian Bolshevik cells could not operate openly in Russia, so they were active elsewhere in Europe including France. A special envoy of the Russian Secret Police was sent to France to uncover the Bolshevik cells. The Russian Secret Service and the Black Hundreds, an ultra-nationalist movement in Russia whose slogan was "Beat the Jews and Save Russia," were trying to convince the Czar that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution. The Czar was already convinced, but they needed proof.

More than 100 years ago, a French woman by the name of Juliette Adam had a salon. In those days women still did not have the right to vote or be elected, but important and educated women who wanted to make a difference established salons. Adam was a very educated woman - an historian, newspaper owner and author - and she had a political salon where many anti-Semites gathered. There is much evidence that the preparations for the Dreyfus trial, which occurred more or less at the same time (in which a French Jewish army officer was wrongly convicted of treason and later exonerated), took place in her salon.

Juliette Adam's husband was the Chief of Police in Paris, who collaborated with the Russian envoy sent by the Secret Police, Piotr Rachkowsky, because the French did not like Bolshevik terrorists preparing bombs in small Paris hotels. Rachowsky, who was looking for ways to implicate Jews, was invited to Adam's salon, where someone told him of a book, which was banned in France but which the salon possessed, that could be turned into something against the Jews.

During the 1860s a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, wanted to arouse the French people against the terrible dictatorial regime of Napoleon the Third. In his biography he tells how he decided to write a book to describe to the French people the danger they were in. He decided to write an allegory, which was a dialogue between two people in the after-world: Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Machiavelli would represent the ideas and practices of Napoleon the Third and his terrible regime, while Montesquieu would represent the liberal ideas of the writer. He published it in Brussels because the French would not publish it, and he was arrested, tried, and went to prison. His book was banned.

This book is a pearl of literature. Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu why the people are dumb and why a dictator is necessary and what tools he can use to take over, to dominate his country and the world. There are chapters in this book dedicated to each subject - how to take over the police force, how to take over the legal system, how to do away with all the lawyers, how to raise havoc in the labor field, and how to plant bombs in strategic locations. It is a manual on how to dominate the world. The voice of Montesquieu becomes weaker while the voice of Machiavelli becomes stronger, and at the end Montesquieu says, "Oh God, what have you allowed?" He was telling the French people that this was what was happening in France.

Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from this book. Chapters were added to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the world. The Protocols was first published in Russia in 1905 by a religious fanatic in a monastery. From there it went around the world. After the revolution, officers of the White Army, who fled Russia, carried The Protocols with them to convince the world that what happened to the Romanov Dynasty in Russia would happen to them. The Jewish plan was to topple all the monarchs and governments in Europe. Between 1919 and 1921, The Protocols was published in every language in the world. Six editions were published in Germany in one year, blaming the Jews for World War I. The Protocols was never translated into Hebrew because we ignored it, thinking it was a bad joke.

The Bern Trial of 1934

There was a major trial in Bern, Switzerland, in 1934 after a new Nazi organization started using The Protocols, distributing copies at a public rally. The local Jews, who realized what was happening across the border in Germany, decided to take the Swiss Nazis to trial.

In the introduction to my English book, Lord Chief Justice of England Harry Wolfe wrote that the Bern trial is probably the most important trial ever because in this trial, live witnesses testified in court and described the origins of The Protocols and the use made of this document. They included the head of the opposition to the Czar, historians, politicians and former agents who escaped the revolution and decided to bear witness to this forgery.

The Protocols is not just a libel, it is a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy to dominate the world, and almost the first leader outside Russia who picked it up was Adolph Hitler. As a strategic step, the Nazis decided to use The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a central part of their ideology, as we know from correspondence between Hitler and Goebbels. A German historian describes in his book how Hitler used The Protocols on the way to the Final Solution, but he had already mentioned it in Mein Kampf. The Nazis were masters of the "Big Lie" and their tactics have been adopted by the Muslim world. The theory is that the bigger the lie, the better success of brainwashing the public.

The Germans established what they called Weltdienst, a center located in Erfurt that spread Nazi ideology and propaganda around the world. The head of Weltdienst was Ulrich Fleischhauer, and Nazi branches or organizations with different names started springing up in every country, fed on Nazi ideology and tactics. At the 1934 Bern trial, the Swiss judge ordered both sides to appoint experts. The Swiss Nazi defendants could not find an expert to testify that The Protocols were an authentic document, so Ulrich Fleischhauer, the head of Weltdienst, came to Switzerland to be the expert. When the judge asked him if he was an expert on The Protocols, he said that he was not, but that he was an expert on the Jews.

The Protocols in the U.S.

The Protocols was also published in the United States, where its biggest promoter was Henry Ford, who published 97 excerpts in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. These terrible anti-Semitic articles were then collected in a book called The International Jew. Ford was sued in court by American Jews, and the trial went on for six years (1921-1927). In the end, Ford settled with the Jewish community. By the way, every trial against The Protocols before the Bern trial ended with a settlement, because the defendants could never prove the authenticity of The Protocols, but when the Nazis came into power they prohibited any settlement in a trial concerning the Protocols, deciding to use courtrooms as a forum to spread Nazi ideology.

In 1964, the United States Senate appointed a committee to study The Protocols. In a unanimous report nine senior senators called the Protocols the hoax of the century and a document endangering America.

Following in the footsteps of The Protocols one realizes that this fabricated document, first used by the Russian czars, was then used by the communists, later served as a central theme in Nazi propaganda, and then it was handed over to the Muslim world.

The Protocols in the Muslim World

The Protocols is a central issue in Arab and Muslim propaganda, even in what we call moderate countries, including countries that made peace with Israel. The Protocols is everywhere, in every Arabic book fair, more in Egypt, less in Jordan. It is in public discourse, in newspapers, and even in TV soap operas. It describes world history from beginning to end, including the French Revolution, as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Until the end of World War II, the problem was the Jews, but after the establishment of the State of Israel, the target has become Israel.

The Protocols are best sellers in all Muslim countries because this is what they have been told over and over again in their media and schoolbooks. When my book was translated into Arabic, the translator and publisher, both graduates of the Hebrew University, one a Christian Arab and the other a Muslim Arab, told me that until they read my book, they did not know that The Protocols is a forgery.

There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world but there is an anti-Jewish conspiracy. Using this book against the Jews for 100 years is part of a conspiracy and everybody who takes part in it is a conspirator against us. It starts with the Jews but it does not end with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.
 

Judge Hadassa Ben Itto, author of The Lie That Wouldn't Die, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005), served for 31 years as a judge in all levels of the Israeli courts, including as an acting justice of the Supreme Court. She has also served as an official representative of the State of Israel in various international forums, including UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly. She is currently the Honorary President of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.

This Jerusalem Issue Brief (JIB) is based on her presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) on February 24, 2011. The article is JIB Vol. 10, No. 38, April 27, 2011 and is archived at
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID= 111&LNGID=1&FID=380&PID=0&IID=6917

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