The Algemeiner reports:
“The Palestinians and the Loss of the Forbidden,” by Imad Sayid Ahmad, was deemed an antisemitic text by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. |
“These stands become focal points for imams visiting with their Koranic school classes,” the organization said in a released statement. “These hateful titles can serve as a low-tech instrument for recruitment of youth to jihad.”
The Center gave authorities behind the Frankfurt Fair a list of 56 “merchants of hate” and which countries they are from. Twenty hailed from Egypt, 19 from Syria/Lebanon, nine from Jordan/Palestinian, five from Saudi Arabia, two from Kuwait, one from Morocco, and one Arab publisher was from the United Kingdom. The numbers were based on 251 antisemitic titles that the SWC monitored at book fairs around the world – 80 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 67 in Abu Dhabi; 53 in Muscat, Oman; 35 in Doha, Qatar; and 16 in Casablanca, Morocco.
The Center said the “Worst Offender” award goes to a publisher Dar-al-Kitab al-Arabi of Egypt, which published 78 of the 251 books identified as antisemitic.
“These, tip of the iceberg findings, are a minimal indication of the problem, as their stands become focal points for local and foreign Imams who bring their Madrassa school classes with them. These hateful titles, can serve as a low-tech recruitment instrument for youth to Jihad,” said SWC Director for International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels. “In Riyadh, some 420 titles were removed by the ‘Religious Police as contrary to Islam…’ yet the conspicuous number of volumes inciting to violence against Jews were left in place.”
“There is no doubt that many of them – and especially, Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi of Egypt – deny and trivialize the Holocaust, which is a crime under German law,” Samuels said. “This publisher has an obsession with Henry Ford’s International Jew The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler’s Mein Kampf – none of which can be excused as ‘anti-Israeli rather than anti-Jewish.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has been monitoring antisemitic texts at the Frankfurt Book Fair for 12 years and last year ranked antisemitic literature that was on display at the event, listing Qatar as “Worst Offender 2014.”
The Center also monitored the 2015 book fairs in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. In March they lamented U.S. support of the Muscat International Book Fair, which SWC described as a “hothouse of antisemitic hate,” and in April slammed Morocco’s culture minister for failing to stop the display of anti-Jewish texts at the 2015 Casablanca Book Fair.
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