Group rebuts anti-Semitic book

If anti-Semitism is a rogue religion, its reigning bible is "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

"The Protocols," first issued in Russia a century ago, is a notoriously fraudulent manifesto. It purports to spell out a Jewish plot to control the world by secretly manipulating the financial markets, the media and other levers of power.

Though it was soon exposed as a paranoid hoax forged by the czar's secret police, "The Protocols" didn't vanish. In fact, its vitriol has never had wider circulation than today because of the Internet and the "New Anti-Semitism" that watchdog groups are chronicling, particularly in Europe and the Muslim world.

In response, specialists from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights group, have written a book that scholars say is the first item-by-item rebuttal of the undying "Protocols."

Titled "Dismantling the Big Lie," the new book tackles a grim task. "The Protocols" is a dense polemic, a supposed master plot written by Jewish "learned elders" who regard non-Jews as "a flock of sheep, and we are their wolves."

For instance, Protocol 7 ("A Prophecy of Worldwide War") declares that "we must create unrest, dissension, and mutual animosities throughout Europe and, with the help of her relationship, on other continents."

In their refutation, "Dismantling the Big Lie" authors Steven Jacobs and Mark Weitzman say such a goal "is the very antithesis of what both ancient Israelites and contemporary Jews regard as the ideal of societal harmony . . . of attaining "shalom, peace."

Jacobs and Weitzman cite moral-ethical examples from Jewish scripture, postbiblical Jewish societies and modern Jewish thought about the primacy of peace between Jews and neighbors.

By systematically challenging all 24 protocols in this way, the new book is unique, said Frederick Schweitzer, director of the Holocaust Research Center at Manhattan College, a Catholic school in New York, who reviewed the manuscript.

"Its point-by-point rebuttals, citing Talmudic and biblical texts and historic attitudes and examples, are without precedent," Schweitzer said in an interview.

"Dismantling the Big Lie" (Ktav, $18.95) was developed under the auspices of the Wiesenthal Center's Snider Social Action Institute, named for Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers chairman Ed Snider, who gave the center $5 million.

The book reprints eight "Protocols" book covers (all craven images of Jews) from various times and countries, and runs the complete, toxic text, translated into English.

"Three to five years ago, we would have had a serious debate about the merits of running the text, but we don't have that choice now," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center. "It's out there so much now, repackaged, online."