INTRODUCTION TO “LICENSE TO MURDER-THE ENDURING THREAT OF THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION” BY ALEX GROBMAN
License To Murder: The Enduring Threat of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion Dr. Alex Grobman
Introduction
“There are a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people’s, and they do not observe the king’s laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them.” Book of Esther 3:8.
“Among themselves they [Jews} are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies.” Tacitus, The Histories Book V
Antisemitism existed in one form or another throughout much of human history. This study examines some historical examples of this particular strain of hate, focusing especially on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most deceitful, dangerous and pernicious of the libels ever used to incite hatred and violence against the Jewish people.
The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world as advanced in the Protocols has been exposed by historians, journalists, politicians, police and religious leaders. In November 1937, the Court of Appeals in Berne, Switzerland, concluded: “This scurrilous work contains unheard of and unjustified attacks against Jews and must without reservation be judged to be immoral literature.”1
In the introduction to a 1964 report of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee investigating the Protocols, the senators stated: “Every age and country has had its share of fabricated ‘historic’ documents which have been foisted on an unsuspecting public for some malign purpose…One of the most notorious and most durable of these is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”2
Yet the Protocols continues to be published in practically every language, in hundreds of editions, in hundreds of millions of copies, and in very compelling videos on the Internet.
The potential danger of the Protocols in shaping public opinion should not be underestimated. When Jews are portrayed as manipulators who seek power over other people’s lives, they come to be perceived as dire threats. The Nazis recognized this phenomenon and exploited it, using the Protocols to rationalize the destruction of European Jewry. It is therefore, particularly disconcerting is that this false and harmful perception of the Jews is embraced even today by leaders of the Arab-Muslim world, where the Protocols continues to be published in vast quantities, and cited in the writings of mainstream academics, who lend credibility and legitimacy to this utter falsehood.
Failure to respond to the Protocols risks suggesting that there simply is no good response.
Hatred of Jews
Since the third century B.C., when the Hellenists first advanced the case against the Jewish people, 3 an underlying animosity toward Jews has stayed basically constant, no matter what the grievance. Pagans disliked Jews for being aloof, for refusing to worship their gods, for their practice of marital exclusivity, dietary restrictions and missionizing; Christians accused them of killing Jesus; Enlightenment theorists condemned them for Christianity; populists, who supported the right of the people to fight against the privileged elite, blamed them for modernity; and Islamists depicted and continued to depict them as being in the vanguard of Western ideas and values. 4
During the medieval period, Jews were blamed for causing the Black Death by poisoning Europe’s wells. They were accused of engaging in black magic, witchcraft, and profanation of the host (the Christian sacrament); of scheming to destroy of Christendom, and of committing ritual murder in order to obtain the blood of non-Jews for use in religious rituals.5 This latter accusation became so common that it earned a name of its own—the blood libel.
Blood Libels
Despite having originated among Christians, the blood libel began to appear in the Muslim world during the reign of Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (March 30, 1432 – May 3, 1481), and “almost certainly” emanating from the substantial Greek-Christian community that had fallen under the Ottoman regime. During the Byzantine Empire blood libel allegations were common. Under the Ottomans, blood libels were unusual. When they did arise, they were normally denounced by the Ottoman establishment. 6
In the 19th century, however, blood libels reached “epidemic proportions” and occasionally led to outbreaks of violence throughout the empire. The Damascus Affair in 1840 was most likely the first such accusation. It began on February 5, when Father Tomaso, a Capuchin monk, inexplicably disappeared along with his servant. After being falsely arrested and tortured, a Jewish barber pleaded guilty.7
The French consul, Ratti-Menton, persuaded Father Tomaso’s fellow monks to declare that the Jews had killed him in order to use his blood for their religious rituals. The consul also pressured governor Sharif Pasha to imprison a significant number of Jews including those who were influential. After being tortured, one Jewish leader died, another converted to Islam and still others confessed to various spurious charges.8
To justify this and other measures against Jews, the French consul launched a vigorous press campaign in France targeting Jews in Damascus and Jews in general. Only intervention by the British, with the support of other European governments and the U.S., convinced Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, to order the release of the surviving prisoners. The blood libel was ultimately denounced by the Ottoman sultan who condemned the accusation as unfounded and acknowledged the Ottoman’s determination to protect Jews and their property.9
During the remainder of the 19th century and into the 20th, blood libels were widespread. A few examples will illustrate the point: “Aleppo (1810, 1850,1875), Antioch (1826), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Tripoli (1834) Beirut (1862, 1874), Jerusalem (1874), Cairo (1844, 1848, 1890, 1901-1902), Port Said (1903, 1908), Istanbul (1870, 1874), and [even] more often in Balkan and Greek provinces.”10
Though extensive antagonism toward Jews existed in Iran and Morocco, blood libels there were almost nonexistent, probably because of the limited presence of Christians and the absence of European influence. This would come later. 11
Four points are important to understand. First, blood libels were invariably instigated by the Christian community, and frequently promoted in the Greek press. Second, these allegations were at times backed and even prompted by foreign diplomats, principally Greek and French representatives. Third, the Jews could generally rely on Ottoman officials to help them. Lastly, the British and sometimes Prussian and Austrian representatives could be counted on for their active assistance in defending against the libels.12
The libels did not remain within the Christian community. By the early 20th century, some Egyptian Muslim newspapers were using them in anti-Jewish campaigns. They became a frequent subject of Muslim anti-Jewish writings in the Middle East and in other parts of the world. 13
The myth of Jews using blood for sacred purposes distanced them from Christians. Blood libels had invariably emerged during times of anxiety. At the end of the 19th century, charges of ritual murders swept through Eastern Europe. Between the two world wars, there were no fewer than 12 trials involving allegations of ritual murder. Even as late as 1930, Jews in Czechoslovakia were accused of having murdered two children, aged 10 and 11, in Subcarpathian Ruthenia.14
The blood libel continued to endure primarily in the backward areas of Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire. The Russian government exploited this myth to incite pogroms but the accusations eventually lost their potency, especially in secular urban areas. In rural regions the legend persisted through the encouragement of the Catholic Church, whose local priests continued to attest to their veracity throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century.15
The Wandering Jew
Just as the blood libel led Christians to view the Jew as the “harbinger of evil,” the medieval myth of Ahasverus, the wandering Jew, represented to them the curse that Jesus had placed on the Jewish people. The legendary Ahasverus was said to have rushed Jesus to his crucifixion while denying him consolation or refuge, for which he was cursed to wander the rest of his life without a place to live, loathed and disowned. In Christian folklore, his presence portends horror and emptiness.
The myth of the “wicked Jew” became emblematic of the condemned destiny that Jews were supposed to inflict on themselves and all they encountered. The Jew is the eternal rootless foreigner who never finds his home or develops roots anywhere.
A living Jew was a much greater symbol of enduring Jewish treachery than a dead Judas Iscariot, who the New Testament claims, was one of the twelve Jesus apostles and who betrayed him. Responsibility for the Crucifixion was no longer viewed as personal and pardonable like Judas’s transgression; instead Ahasverus exemplified the collective responsibility intrinsic in the nomadic Jewish nation.
In the 19th century such images were readily acceptable to a culture that celebrated the romantic and the unusual, where the mythical Frankenstein and human vampires captured the imagination of those enthralled with horror tales in which humans were the foil.
The blood libel and concept of the wandering Jew provided convincing explanations for societal problems at a time of industrialization, confusing social change and general upheaval in the same way that they had been used in the past to account for plagues and natural catastrophes. 16
Racial Antisemitism
Racists viewed Jews as a satanic force and the source of practically all evil in the world. Jews were allegedly involved in an eternal conspiracy to control the world using any nefarious methods necessary. Communism and capitalism were said to have been created as a means to manipulate the world and dominate its people. Jews were accused of infiltrating modern society and using their skills to direct the government, the stock exchange, the press, the theater, and literature.17
Slave Trade
Jews also were and are still are accused of having been part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, of owning slaves, and being involved in creating the Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation, sharecropping, the labor movement, unions and general mistreatment of black people. 18 On an entirely different level, some feminists claim that Jews are responsible for patrimony and male domination, since they worship a male God and dethroned the Mother Goddess of the ancients.19
This canard of Jewish involvement in the slave trade has been debunked by a number of historians as well as the Council of the American Historical Association (AHA). Historian Seymour Drescher, a noted expert on slavery and antislavery movements, found “It is unlikely that more than a fraction of 1 percent of the twelve million enslaved and relayed Africans were purchased or sold by Jewish merchants even once…. At no point along the continuum of the slave trade were Jews numerous enough, rich enough, and powerful enough to affect significantly the structure and flow of the slave trade or to diminish the suffering of its African victims. “2
On January 5, 1995, the Council of the AHA passed a policy resolution relating to the alleged role of Jews in the slave trade. It read as follows:
“The AHA deplores any misuse of history that distorts the historical record to demonize or demean a particular racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural group. The Association therefore condemns as false any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the exploitation of slave labor or in the Atlantic slave trade.
The claims so misrepresent the historical record, however, that we believe them only to be part of a long anti-Semitic tradition that presents Jews as negative central actors in human history. In such scenarios, Jews are the secret force behind every major social development from capitalism to democracy, every major cataclysm from the Medieval Pandemic of the plague through the French and Russian Revolutions to the collapse of Communism, and now,
incredibly, appear for the first time, as the secret force behind slavery. Unfortunately, the media have given the latest charges wide currency, while failing to dismiss them as spurious. “21
Zionism Equals Racism
On November 10, 1975, the 37th anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism to be a form of racism and racial discrimination. The resolution was part of a carefully engineered worldwide campaign to undermine the basic legitimacy of the State of Israel, after her enemies tried and failed to have her expelled from the U.N.22
Branding Israel as a racist state portrays her falsely as a country that freely harms civilians, oppresses minorities and restricts immigration. Thus, Israel’s wars, its response to terrorism and the laws passed by the Knesset must be racist and thus illegitimate. A significant danger today is that this charge has become the new stereotype of Israel in popular culture, the media, literature and daily speech, tainting the Jewish state.23
Just prior to September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the United Nations held its World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa (August 31-September 7, 2001). Six thousand delegates from around the world attended what turned out to be an almost exclusively antisemitic and anti- Israel forum that singled out Israel for special reprimand for wrongdoings.24
What distinguished the Durban conference from other assaults on Israel by the U.N. is the particularly virulent language used and the underlying, but fundamental principle, that Israel should not only be censured, but also no longer allowed to exist. Governments that persecute their own citizens, including some that give sanctuary to international terrorists, sought a formal declaration to delegitimize the Jewish state, demonize her people, and initiate a world-wide movement against her right to remain a country at all. Acts of terror against Israel were rationalized, justified and even applauded.25
9/11–September 11, 2001
Not long after the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed close to 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, rumors began to circulate that 4,000 Jews and Israelis had been warned by the Mossad, Israel’s CIA, to stay home that day because of an impending attack the Mossad itself was about to launch.26
Many Muslims wondered whether the Mossad had infiltrated or even created Muslim terrorist cells to carry out the bombings.27 Less than a month after the attacks, Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, former leader of the Islamic Cultural Center on East 96th Street in New York, was quoted on an Arabic language website on October 4, that Zionists in control of the country’s air traffic system had aided the hijackers; that the Zionist-controlled media were tarnishing Muslims’ image; that Jews were spreading their corruption; and that Jewish doctors were poisoning Muslim children in American hospitals. 28
The idea of a Jewish 9/11 conspiracy and other theories about Jewish attempts to control world affairs generated an entire cottage industry of books, pamphlets, videotapes, websites and “expert” speakers on the subject. The charge that Jews were behind 9/11 revived, in modern form, the classic old lies about Jewish pursuit of world domination by any means necessary.29
The Israel and Arab Lobbies
In this environment and in view of the impending war in Iraq, that John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, began to examine the Israel lobby, its alleged “profound” influence on United States foreign policy and the contentious issue of dual loyalty.30
Mearsheimer and Walt further argued that the very significant level of American assistance to Israel, both of financial and diplomatic, was not justified on moral grounds or even by strategic need. Instead they theorized that the “largely unconditional” aid was granted primarily because of the “political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seek to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel.” 31
The professors argued that, beyond trying to persuade the United States to support Israel “more or less unconditionally, the groups and individuals in the lobby played key roles in shaping American foreign policy” with regard to the Arab/Israeli conflict, “the ill-fated” invasion of Iraq, and the “ongoing confrontations” with Iran and Syria. These policies were not only contrary to American interests but “in fact harmful to Israel’s long term interests as well.” 32
In a March 23, 2003 essay in the London Review of Books, Mearsheimer and Walt were careful to disavow any connection between their views and the Protocols: “[T]he Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better.” 33
Though Walt and Mearsheimer claim to uphold Israel’s right to exist, their biased assault on the Jewish state and their holding her to a higher standard of conduct, suggests they favor the country’s disappearance entirely. 34
Israel’s enemies have embraced this view because it conveniently corresponds to their own conspiratorial fantasies about American Jews controlling U.S. foreign policy.35 Josef Joffe, publisher and editor of the German weekly Der Zeit, calls this form of antisemitism “neo-antisemitism,” a variant lacking genocidal intent, but with historic themes of exploitation, manipulation, avarice, “worship of false gods” and absolute wickedness.
What is new about this form antisemitism? “It is the projection of old fantasies on new targets: Israel and America. The U.S. is an antisemitic fantasy come true, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in living color. ” Isn’t it true that Jews, who owe their primary allegiance to Israel, control the banks, the Pentagon, universities, the media and the Congress? The conspirator this time is not ‘World Jewry,” but Israel. 36
The charge that a small group of Jewish officials working in the American government were secretly responsible for engineering the invasion of Iraq in 2003 added weight to Mearsheimer and Walt’s assertions. Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, all working in senior Pentagon positions along with Jewish intellectuals and commentators outside the government, including William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kagan, were accused of subversively operating not for the benefit of the U.S., but for Israel and particularly Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Richard Perle, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, was also supposed to have been part of this cabal that conspired to dupe Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and President George W. Bush into attacking Iraq. On this basis, anyone wanting to discredit the Bush Doctrine could “expose” the Iraq invasion for what it really was –-a war initiated by the Jews and fought entirely for the benefit of Israel.
To shield themselves from being labeled antisemites, promoters of this theory use the term “neoconservative” as a euphemism for “Jew, which is what they really mean. Using a subterfuge like neoconservative does not hide the standard Protocols canard that Jews are disloyal citizens and always plotting clandestinely to manipulate the humankind for their own evil goals.
The very idea that seasoned politicians like Bush, Rice, Cheney, and Rumsfeld could be so easily deceived and manipulated into initiating action against their better judgment into starting a war in which the U.S. had no apparent interest is simply absurd.37
As political scientist Mitchell G. Bard revealed, it is the Arab lobby, especially Saudi Arabia, which is quantifiably the most potent influence on American foreign policy. Working behind the scenes, the lobby ensures that Arab interests—including oil sales to the U.S., military assistance—are given “disproportionate attention” by decision makers in order to influence American foreign policy and “manipulate” public opinion. 38
The Arab lobby, with its deep pockets, long reach and allegiance to theocratic despots, poses an actual danger to American democracy, Bard asserts:
“One of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the Arab lobby is that it has no popular support. While the Israeli lobby has hundreds of thousands of grass root members and public opinion polls consistently reveal a huge gap between support for Israel and the Arab nations/Palestinians, the Arab lobby has almost no foot soldiers or public sympathy. Its most powerful elements tend to be bureaucrats who represent only their personal views or what they believe are their institutional interests, and foreign governments that care only about their national interests, not those of the United States. What they lack in human capital in terms of American advocates, they make up for with almost unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on the merits of their arguments.” 39
Bard notes that in lobbying for Arab interests “the Saudis have taken a different tact from the Israeli lobby, focusing a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying.” He cites a proposal written for the Saudis by “hired gun” J. Crawford Cook: “’Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond.'” 40
The Arab Lobby represents the interests of repressive Arab regimes that frequently stand in opposition to America’s core values and undermine America’s security by supporting terrorism, distorting America’s understanding of the nature of radical Islam and the Middle East by infiltrating extremist viewpoints into the American educational system, and seeking to weaken support for the longstanding friendship between America and Israel. 41
War in Iraq
When the U.S. went to war against Iraq, a number of Americans believed this was because of the key political roles played by American neoconservatives i.e., Jews who instigated the conflict. Jews are also to blamed for past wars, and will be held responsible for future conflicts.42
When Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was asked on an African-American talk radio program about the Jews being responsible for the war, he offered a detailed refutation of the charge. Nothing he said persuaded the callers. Then he noted: “I see that the secretary of state is Colin Powell and the national security adviser is Condoleezza Rice. It seems to me that it is more of a black conspiracy.” The questions ceased.43
Hoenlein’s exchange illustrates the danger of Mearsheimer and Walt’s claims about Jewish political influence when seen against two thousand years of Jewish and anti-Jewish history. They have acknowledged that any claim appearing to impugn the Jews for policy failures is a highly sensitive issue reminiscent of the conspiracy theories found in the Protocols.44
Before Mearsheimer and Walt published their exposé of the the alleged Jewish Lobby, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz noted that this kind of allegations and criticism of excessive Jewish influence in American politics was usually the domain of hard left American academics such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein and hard rightists like Pat Buchanan and the late Robert Novak. The fact that Mearsheimer and Walt are mainstream American academics from the realist school of U.S. foreign policy, gives their thesis added authority and credibility in the academic and general community. 45
To counter the lie that Jews seek to control the world, we need to understand the historical context in which the Protocols were written, why they continue to be disseminated and why they still endure even after being so decisively and repeatedly debunked.
The virulent conspiratorial fantasies featured in the Protocols affect even people who aren’t aware that such a book exists due to the commonly held belief in the mythical power of the Jews. Those who have not read the Protocols, but know it exists, are easily convinced of its veracity since it shows everything abhorrent in the world to be simply “the result of an unspeakable Jewish plot.”46
The Protocols shape the way Jews, Israel and the West are viewed by the rest of the world. Given the danger Jews are thought to pose, the only way to combat this ruthless enemy, this “omnipresent Satan in human flesh,” determined to harm and enslave all non-Jews, is to destroy them by any means available—a clear warrant for genocide.47
In his book Warrant for Genocide, which exposes the Protocols for the myth it is, Norman Cohn concludes that this fabrication “is the story of how in twentieth century Europe a grossly delusional view of the world, based on infantile fears and hatreds, was able to find expression in murder and torture beyond all imagining. It is a case—history in collective psychopathology and its deepest implications reach far beyond antisemitism and the fate of the Jews.” 48
Cohn wonders whether it is naïve, “utopian,” to expect that the more the destructive and false nature of the Protocols is acknowledged, the greater a possibility there will be of “recognizing and limiting, perhaps even forestalling, similar aberrations in the future?” 49
This is the question we will try to answer as we begin our examination of the Protocols.
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