The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

God is the author of Klanism,” and Jesus Christ was the Klan’s “first real member.” So said the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in 1925.¹

“Just like Christ, I have a duty to my own people….What Christ began, I will complete.”² So said Adolf Hitler.

“Jesus Christ was a Palestinian.” So said Yasser Arafat on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem in 1995.

What do these three messages have in common? All invoke the name of Jesus Christ, yet none is in any way Christian.

The KKK has routinely used the name of Jesus to try to legitimize its racist code of beliefs. It was, and still is, actively anti-black and anti-Semitic. Hitler, chancellor of the Nazi Third Reich, saw himself as Germany’s messiah and manipulated the Bible to suit his grand delusion and that of his followers. Yet between 1933 and 1945, he presided over the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people. Arafat, the late Muslim-terrorist chieftain, incited jihad suicide-bombing attacks on innocent Jewish people in the name of religion.

These three belief systems—the KKK, Nazism, and Islam—rely on many resources for justification. However, one source common to all has been The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion, described even by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a “fraudulent document that served as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism in the early 20th century.” Though its original messengers are gone, the message remains. The book is still widely distributed today. Major bookstores sell it on their Web sites.

Originally written by French satirist Maurice Joly in 1864 to outline Napoleon’s desire for world domination, the document was later refashioned into the sinister Protocols by several revisions that, in part, involved substituting the word Jewish for French.

Protocols describes a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, luring readers with fabricated tales of secret meetings attended by elitist, rich Jews who control economies, thereby controlling nations. American automotive giant Henry Ford, a diehard anti-Semite, published excerpts in his newspaper, The Dearborn (Mich.) Independent. He apologized in 1927 but remained anti-Semitic to the bitter end.

Although the courts have proven the Protocols false and the overwhelming majority of American and European historians reject it, the book still flourishes today, particularly in Islamic countries where it is a runaway best seller endorsed, in some cases, by the governments themselves.

In Saudi Arabia
King Faisal, ruler from 1964 to 1975, avidly read Protocols and financed its distribution throughout the country and greater Arab world.³ In fact, the book plays extremely well there, and schools teach its content as fact. Saudi children learn that:

• Jewish people control the news media worldwide. (In truth, the majority of the secular press is hostile to the Jews and favors the Palestinians.)
• Zionism is the root of the world’s system today. (In truth, Zionism pertains only to the desire for a Jewish national home in the tiny land of Israel. It is Islam that overtly seeks world domination and currently controls 51 of the world’s 204 countries.)
• The Jewish people seek to eliminate nationalities and religions, especially the Christian nations.⁴ (In truth, it is the Muslims who use torture, jihad, and terrorism to force worldwide conversion to Islam.)

In Iran
Protocols has been printed in Persian every decade since 1978, when it was used to attack the shah, Israel, and the Jewish people.⁵

The Anti-Defamation League stated, “In 1985 a new edition of the Protocols, printed in Iran, was widely distributed by ‘the Islamic Propagation Organization, International Relations Department’ in Tehran.”⁶

The terrorist organization Hamas, dedicated to Israel’s destruction, states in its charter, “All Palestine is Islamic trust land, can never be surrendered to non-Muslims and is an integral part of the Muslim world.” Writer Ami Isseroff elaborated: “It cites the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as legitimate documents, declares that negotiations and international conferences are a waste of time, and blames ‘Zionists’ for the French and Russian revolutions.”⁷

Article 32 of the Hamas Covenant declares outright that “World Zionism” is “embodied” in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.⁸

The Palestinian Authority
Despite its attempt to present a politically correct exterior to the Western world, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is wholly anti-Israel, is anti-Jewish, and uses the Protocols to justify its position:

On February 20, 2005, the Mufti of Jerusalem Ikrima Sabri appeared on Al-Majd Saudi Arabian satellite TV to comment on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister. Sabri stated “Anyone who studies The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and specifically the Talmud will discover that one of the goals of these Protocols is to cause confusion in the world and to undermine security throughout the world.”⁹

PA Minister of Information Nabil Shaath even had an Arabic translation of Protocols available on his Web site. According to The New York Times, he removed it on May 19, 2005. ¹⁰

In Egypt
Part of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1979 was that neither party would incite its people against the other. Yet Egypt aired a “documentary” on Protocols, presenting it as truth on prime-time television. Millions of Egyptians sat glued to their sets, watching this series each week and believing it.

Protocols is a lie. It has been proven so time and time again. But that fact does not matter to anti-Semites because truth and integrity are not virtues they highly esteem. They will use whatever expediency requires to spread their venom—including invoking the name of a Jew named Jesus—God incarnate—who loves His people and came to save “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 10:6).

ENDNOTES

1. David A. Rausch, A Legacy of Hatred (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 95.
2. Erwin W. Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 62.
3. “Faisal of Saudi Arabia,” Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_of_Saudi_Arabia>.
4. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion>.
5. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—The Iranian Version (10)” <www.adl.org/css/proto-iran.asp>.
6. Ibid.
7. Ami Isseroff, “A History of the Hamas Movement” <www.mideastweb.org/hamashistory.htm>.
8. “The Avalon Project at Yale Law School,” Hamas Covenant 1988 <www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/hamas.htm>.
9. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
10. Ibid.