A MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR PRODUCTION
This is a particularly disturbing article. Saudi Arabia, one of America's closest allies, is broadcasting an anti-Semitic TV series in no fewer than 30 episodes.
This news has been ignored by the vast majority of newspapers in the western world. One of the very few exceptions is the National Post of Canada, the correspondent of whom (Matthew Kalman) is a subscriber to this email list.
-- Tom Gross
SAUDIS AIRING 30 PART DRAMATIZATION OF ANTI-SEMITIC "PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION"
Saudis airing anti-Semitic TV series for Ramadan
Based on Protocols of the Elders of Zion
By Matthew Kalman
The National Post (Canada)
December 7, 2001
A major Arabic TV channel has produced a 30-part dramatization of the notorious anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to be broadcast throughout the Arab world as a special program for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Horseman Without a Horse is a multi-million-dollar production starring leading Egyptian actor Muhammad Subhi in 14 different roles with a large international cast from Egypt, Syria and France. The program was made by Arab Radio and Television (ART) a popular satellite channel based in Jedda, Saudi Arabia.
Roz Al-Youssuf, an Egyptian weekly, said in an admiring preview that the series successfully debunks Jewish claims that the Protocols – the supposed minutes of the Jewish clique that controls the world – were a forgery invented by anti-Semitic propagandists in Tsarist Russia.
"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations and racism," the paper reported.
The Protocols, which first surfaced in Russia at the end of the 19th century, have fed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that suggest Jews seek to exercise world domination through control of the media, banking system and political movements.
They were popular in Nazi Germany and are required reading among neo-Nazi groups to this day. The Protocols have sold thousands of copies in several Arabic editions and are particularly popular in Egypt and Syria.
News of the ART production comes as Dubai TV continues its nightly broadcast of Terrorman – a Ramadan satire depicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, drinking the blood of Arab children.
Since Sept. 11, one often-repeated fantasy that has been pushed is that the Israeli Mossad was behind the World Trade Center attack – a gruesome twist on the Jewish conspiracy theory that finds its most potent statement in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The item (below) was posted subsequent to my dispatch by the website www.smartertimes.com, the editors of whom are subscribers to this dispatch list and are next year planning to launch a new New York daily newspaper, the New York Sun. I also attach an item from MEMRI.
-- Tom Gross
In his column on the op-ed page of today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes a memo from President Bush to Saudi Arabia's minister of Islamic affairs. "What encourages us is that you seem to understand that and are taking steps to curtail incitement in your mosques and media," Mr. Friedman writes.
Funny how these Times columnists get all worked up over Attorney General Ashcroft's supposed violations of civil liberties in America, but at the same time they are advocating "taking steps" to curtail the freedoms of press, speech and religion in other countries. Mr. Friedman's suggestion might make sense in the short-term context of Saudi Arabia's state-controlled press and broadcast outlets, but not in the context of the march of freedom.
Even in the short-term context, there isn't much to suggest that America should be encouraged that the Saudis "understand" or are "taking steps" to curtail incitement.
Consider this December 7, 2001, report by Matthew Kalman in Canada's National Post: "A major Arabic TV channel has produced a 30-part dramatization of the notorious anti-Semitic 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' to be broadcast throughout the Arab world as a special program for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.'Horseman Without a Horse' is a multi-million-dollar production starring leading Egyptian actor Muhammad Subhi in 14 different roles with a large international cast from Egypt, Syria and France. The program was made by Arab Radio and Television (ART) a popular satellite channel based in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. Roz Al-Youssuf, an Egyptian weekly, said in an admiring preview that the series successfully debunks Jewish claims that the Protocols – the supposed minutes of the Jewish clique that controls the world – were a forgery invented by anti-Semitic propagandists in Tsarist Russia. 'For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations and racism,' the paper reported."
Hard to see how Mr. Friedman, speaking in the voice of President Bush, can say that he is "encouraged" by such developments in Jedda.
Ramadan TV Special: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Special Dispatch – Arab Antisemitism
December 6, 2001
MEMRI
During the second half of Ramadan, a number of television stations, including Egyptian stations, will be screening the thirty-part series "Horseman Without a Horse," starring the well-known Egyptian actor Muhammad Subhi and a cast of 400 others from Egypt, Syria, and France. The series, whose budget ran six to eight million Egyptian pounds, was produced by Arab Radio and Television (ART), established in 1993, which broadcasts to the Middle East, North America, Latin America, Australia, and Africa. (1)
In a report on the series, the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Youssuf (2) described it as the "first of its kind" – both artistically, as it is the first time a single actor plays 14 different characters, and in the way in which it deals with the issues it raises. The following are excerpts from a report on the series:
"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations, and racism... The series' first scene is set in 1948, after the retreat of the four Arab armies and the Zionist invasion of the land of Palestine. From this point, there is a flashback to the mid-19th century."
The newspaper states that the idea of exposing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a drama series took shape in Subhi's mind as the result of two events. The first of these was the "London Convention" [sic], which he considered the greatest single calamity ever to affect the Arab region. This agreement, Subhi claimed, was the work of three Zionist rabbis, promoters of the Zionist idea, who concocted an elaborate plot according to which Palestine would be annexed to Egypt, and Britain would subsequently conquer Egypt and hand Palestine over to the Zionists.
Subhi stated that this is what sparked his desire to investigate the Zionist idea, which existed years before the "London Convention," but emerged only at the first Zionist conference in Basle Switzerland, at which the Jews began to appear as a Zionist organization; previously, they had been active only in associations and large institutions throughout the world.
Also motivating him, he said, was a book by the Egyptian author Abbas Mahmoud Al-'Aqqad on the Zionist movement. Al-'Aqqad said that, "[In order to examine] whether the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are an invention – as [the Jews] claim – all we have to do is to trace the [implementation of the] 24 protocols; if we find that some of them have come to pass, we must expect that the rest also will." Subhi followed Al-'Aqqad's advice, and found that 19 of the 24 protocols had [already] been put into practice. "By means of the series," Subhi adds, "I am exposing all the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that have been implemented to date, in a dramatic, comic, historic, national, tragic, and romantic manner."
The weekly also offered quotes from the Protocols that the series addresses:
"We will act to establish a state to be a superpower that will rule the world"; "[When we rule the world], we will damage its morality with pornography, prostitution, and drugs, and we will corrupt the world of the Gentiles"; "We must choose someone corrupt [for the presidency of the superpower] and when he resists us – we will expose him." In this context, Subhi noted, "We all remember what happened to President Clinton and to other presidents throughout history."
The series will also reveal "advice" reportedly taken from the Protocols, such as: "Feed a dog, [but] not a Muslim or a Christian" and "Kill a Muslim or a Christian and take his house as your house and his lands as your lands." He also raises such questions as, "How can a country like America collaborate with the Jews when it is familiar with the Protocols' directives against it [America]?"
Endnotes:
(1) Al-Alam Al-Youm (Egypt), October 4, 2001.
(2) Roz Al-Youssuf (Egypt), November 17, 2001.