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The Syrian edition of "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", claims that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were orchestrated by a Zionist conspiracy. (AP/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
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The Syrian edition of the protocols predicts the eventual destruction of the State of Israel (AP/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,HO)
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| By Associated Press April 23, 2006 |
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A century-old forgery used to justify ill-treatment of Jews in Czarist Russia and widely circulated by the Nazis is distributed even today in many languages to stoke hatred of Israel, an exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum says.
Colorfully bound editions of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" have appeared recently in Mexico and in Japan, where there are few Jews, says exhibit historian Daniel Greene. High school texts in Syria, Lebanon and schools run by the Palestinian authority use the book as history, he says.
Its 24 chapters profess to record discussions by Jewish leaders of plans to take over the world. Historians have traced parallels in the text to a 19th century French book, directed against supporters of Emperor Napoleon III, which does not mention Jews.
"The Internet has about 500,000 sites where the book is discussed - about half and half for and against," Greene estimated.
The exhibit cites a quote from Joseph Goebbels, a decade before he became Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister:
"I believe that `The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' are a forgery. (However) I believe in the intrinsic but not in the factual truth of the `Protocols."'
In the United States, the exhibit points to the Rev. Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest whose popular radio sermons in the late 1930s opposed war with Nazi Germany. His periodical, "Social Justice" serialized the "Protocols" in 1938.
When Egyptian government-sponsored TV showed a series based on the `Protocols' in 2002, the State Department condemned it.
In 2005, a new edition of the book was published in Syria and shown at the Cairo International Book Fair. The edition suggests, the museum says, that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were organized by a Jewish conspiracy.
Last October, an Iranian bookseller exhibited an edition published by his country's Islamic Propaganda Organization at the annual book fair in Frankfurt, Germany. The Holocaust Museum exhibit said the display violated German law, which forbids libel against any religious group.
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On the Net:
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org
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