[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 136 (Tuesday, September 30, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1922-E1923]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   INFAMOUS ANNIVERSARY: A CENTURY OF THE ANTI-SEMITIC ``PROTOCOLS''

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 30, 2003

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, 100 years ago one of the most infamous and 
most outrageous forgeries in all of history first appeared--``The 
Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'' The outrage is not simply because 
this document was plagiarized or because it was absolutely and patently 
false. It is because this forgery was an important element in 
generating the vicious and mindless anti-Semitism that led to the 
Holocaust.
  Mr. Speaker, we in this House recently condemned and criticized the 
rising flood of anti-Semitism that has stained Europe in the last 
decade when we adopted House Concurrent Resolution 49. It is shocking 
and sickening that just 5 decades after 6 million innocent children, 
women and men were brutally murdered by the Nazi thugs, we are seeing a 
sharp escalation in anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Semitic violence. We 
have witnessed vicious racist propaganda and physical assaults, the 
burning of synagogues and the desecration of cemeteries.
  This outburst of anti-Semitic violence has its roots in anti-Semitic 
propaganda, and unfortunately the lies of the ``Protocols'' still 
continue to play a pernicious role in inciting vicious acts. The fact 
that this felonious and fallacious document is still cited and 
distributed even by governments which ought to know better is evidence 
of its evil influence and the ease with which hate, bigotry and racism 
are spread.
  Although scholars, historians, and anyone who would take the time to 
look seriously at the ``Protocols'' knows that the document is patently 
false, but there are still willing purveyors of this destructive 
drivel. It truly boggles the mind that Arab Radio and Television of 
Saudi Arabia just 2 years ago produced a 30-part series entitled 
``Horseman Without a Horse'' which portrays the ``Protocols'' as 
historical fact and the basis of Israeli government policies. 
Furthermore, that entire 30-part series was broadcast by a number of 
television stations in Egypt.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, a full century after the first appearance 
of the fraudulent ``Protocols,'' the forgery is alive and well. 
Recently, to mark this infamous anniversary, Forward (August 22, 2003) 
published an excellent article by my friend William Korey entitled 
``Century of Hatred: `Protocols' Live to Poison Yet Another 
Generation.''
  Bill Korey brings his extraordinary scholarly perspective to this 
issue, and he is uniquely qualified for the task as the former Director 
of International Policy and Research at B'nai B'rith. The forgery of 
the ``Protocols'' was perpetrated by the Czarist secret police, and 
Bill has an international reputation as a scholar of anti-Semitism in 
Russia. He is the author of The Soviet Cage: Antisemitism in Russia 
(Viking, 1973) and Russian Anti-Semitism, Pamyat and the Demonology of 
Zionism (Hebrew University/Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995).
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that Bill Korey's excellent article from Forward 
be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues to give it careful 
and thoughtful attention.

                     [From Forward, Aug. 22, 2003]

 Century of Hatred: ``Protocols'' Live To Poison Yet Another Generation

                           (By William Korey)

       History's most virulent antisemitic propaganda essay, ``The 
     Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' was first published 100 
     years ago this week. Though the Protocols turned out to be 
     both a notorious plagiarism and a shocking forgery, the essay 
     would exercise a powerful impact upon the modern era, 
     principally as a critical factor in generating the Holocaust.
       Despite its gross falsehood and the horrors it sparked, the 
     Protocols strikingly continues to be promoted today, most 
     alarmingly in such important institutional settings as the 
     United Nations and Middle Eastern governmental media.
       The first publication to print the Protocols was the St. 
     Petersburg newspaper Znamya--Russian for Banner--from August 
     26 to September 7, 1903. Pavel Krushevan, editor of the 
     paper, was known for his ultra-rightist antisemitic views and 
     found common cause with the so-called Black Hundreds, a group 
     active on behalf of extremist causes.
       Krushevan, however, was not the author of the Protocols. It 
     was drafted under the prodding and guidance of Piotr 
     Rachkovsky, director of the Paris branch of Okhrana, the 
     Russian secret police. Sinister and wily, he cultivated the 
     art of forging letters or documents in which Jews were 
     targeted as revolutionaries and anarchists striving for 
     democracy in czarist Russia. As early as 1891, he revealed 
     his intentions in a private letter.
       The published Protocols were said to be the secret 
     decisions reached at a gathering of Jewish leaders. That 
     gathering was initially held to be the First Zionist 
     Congress, which met in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. Later, the 
     source was attributed to B'nai B'rith.
       What was stunning about the Protocols, as later scholarly 
     investigation and research revealed, was that it was lifted 
     almost entirely from a forgotten political satire published 
     in Paris in 1864 and written by a well-known democrat, 
     Maurice Joly.
       Joly's pamphlet was designed to expose the repressive 
     character of Emperor Napoleon III's regime, which ruled 
     France at the time. Titled ``A Dialogue in Hell: 
     Conversations Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu About Power 
     and Rights,'' the pamphlet made no reference to the Jews.
       The creator of the Protocols simply plagiarized the Joly 
     work. Protocols 1 through 19 strikingly correspond with 
     Joly's first 17 dialogues. In nine cases, the borrowing 
     amounts to more than half of the Joly text; in some cases, 
     they constitute three-quarters of the test, and in one case, 
     Protocol 7, almost the entire text is plagiarized. Moreover, 
     the very order of the plagiarized passages remained the same 
     as in the Joly work. The main change in the shamelessly 
     forged Protocols, of course, was the insertion of antisemitic 
     content and language into the Joly dialogues.
       Nor was the creator of the Protocols original in the 
     inserted antisemitic language. The forgery rests on the 
     traditional trope of international Jewry, or alternatively 
     Zionism, aspiring to world domination based on the biblical 
     concept of the ``Chosen People''. This aspiration, the 
     Protocols purported, is to be achieved through guile, cunning 
     and conspiratorial devices, particularly through Jewish 
     control of the international banking system and press.
       The Protocols also played on the fear of Freemasons among 
     court circles, aristocracy and the church establishment. The 
     international fraternal order of Masons, which was identified 
     with liberalism and modernity, was presented in the Protocols 
     as having already been infiltrated and manipulated by the 
     Elders of Zion.
       In its manipulative conspiracy, the Elders were to focus on 
     both internal, domestic matters and interstate relations. 
     Within each state, they were to foster discontent and unrest, 
     especially among workers. By promoting liberal ideas, they 
     were to produce confusion while, at the same time, seizing 
     behind-the-scenes control of political parties. Drunkenness 
     and prostitution were said to be vigorously encouraged and 
     morality undermined.
       Interstate conflicts were to be stirred up through emphasis 
     upon national differences. Every effort was to be made by the 
     Elders of Zion to increase armament production and enhance 
     the likelihood of warfare. The end game of the Zionists, 
     according to the Protocols, was not victory for one side but 
     rather even greater chaos.
       The Elders of Zion's ultimate goal, perceived to be but a 
     century away, was the messianic age when the entire world 
     would be united under Judaism and dominated by a descendant 
     of the House of David. The emergent structure of a Kingdom of 
     Zion resembles the nightmare vision of George Orwell's 
     ``1984.''
       The only nightmare vision to result from the Protocols, of 
     course, was the near destruction of European Jewry during the 
     Holocaust. Both Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were deeply 
     impressed the Protocols and made it required reading for the 
     Hitler Youth.
       With the destruction of Nazism and the horrors that 
     antisemitism had wrought, one might have expected that the 
     Protocols would be thrown in the trash bin of history. The 
     forgery, though, found a welcome readership in Leonid 
     Brezhnev's Soviet Union. The extraordinary Soviet campaign 
     against Zionism reached a crescendo in 1977, with the Soviet 
     Academy of Science's release of the vehemently hateful 
     publication ``International Zionism: History and Politics.''
       Ironically, the Communists formally turned to Arab sources 
     for their anti-Zionist propaganda. One major center of hate 
     literature was based in Cairo, where Johannes von Leers, a 
     former employee of Joseph Goebbels's Nazi propaganda 
     ministry, was spreading antisemitism under his adopted Arabic 
     name, Omar Amin.
       The Protocols may have been nourished in Europe with its 
     ancient traditions of Jew-baiting, but it found new life in 
     Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. Egyptian President 
     Gamal Abdel Nasser endorsed the document in 1958. During the 
     1960s and 1970s at least nine different Arabic translations 
     were published, some by the Egyptian government press. In 
     June 2001, the Egyptian paper of record, Al Ahram, cited one 
     of the Protocols as specifying how Jews plan to ``control the 
     world'' by a combination of means, including the use of 
     Freemasons.
       A major milestone for the new drive to exploit the old 
     forgery came at the 2001 United Nations World Conference 
     Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa. A table at the 
     Durban forum for nongovernmental organizations displayed the 
     Protocols. The tract and similar racist publications so 
     shocked

[[Page E1923]]

     Congressman Tom Lantos of California, a key figure in the 
     American delegation and the only Holocaust survivor in 
     Congress, that he described it as ``the most sickening 
     display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.''
       A century after its first publication, ``The Protocols of 
     the Elders of Zion'' continues to nourish a vibrant message 
     of hate. One would have thought that with all that humanity 
     has learned during the past 100 years, the Protocols' appeal 
     to ignorance would have waned, if not disappeared entirely. 
     The sad truth is that as long as the forgery remains a best 
     seller, the ground remains fertile for antisemitism.

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