Protests rage as Egyptian TV shows series based on infamous anti-Semitic text
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Your support makes all the difference.The protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic tract forged by the Tsarist secret police, floats around the Arab world like a monster. For years, you could buy an Arabic edition on the streets of Beirut (printed in Syria by one Mustafa Tlass, Minister of Defence).
Now the Egyptians have gone one worse. They are showing a 30-part series based around the vicious text – supposedly a record of rabbis meeting secretly to take over the world – on Egyptian state television throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The Americans and the Israelis, with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, have complained bitterly to President Hosni Mubarak, demanding he ban the series. During the fasting month of Ramadan, most Arabs spend evenings at home, so Horseman Without a Horse will have a viewership in the millions. Other Arab stations have also bought the series. And the Egyptian Information Minister, Safwat al-Sherif, is claiming the show "does not contain anything which might be considered anti-Semitic".
Egyptian television is not unknown for its scandals. Just over a week ago, the station's news director, Mohamed al-Wakil, was taken to court for allegedly accepting bribes. The police claimed he was caught in the act of receiving more than $2,000 from a doctor who wanted to appear on the popular daily show Good Morning Egypt. Mr al-Wakil says he has been framed in retaliation for new freedoms he gave his newsroom.But Horseman Without a Horse is exercising freedoms that seem to invite much deeper embarrassment for the station, not least because the principal actor and co-writer, Mohamed Sobhi, has been criticised in the past for his close relations with Saddam Hussein. Sobhi plays an Egyptian journalist who is trying to discover if the Protocols are true. He calls the series "an artistic work which only reveals the Zionist schemes to seize Palestine". In an interview with the Egyptian weekly Rose al-Yussef, Sobhi has said that "by means of the series, I am exposing all the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that have been implemented"; 19 of the 24 protocols for "Jewish domination", the actor says.
Historians long ago dismissed the Protocols as a forgery although Arabic editions have been around since 1949. Until recently, it could be bought in the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman, and the Palestinian Hamas movement has used passages from the fraud to "prove" that Zionism will take over the world. The Egyptians did put the series before a review board but concluded, incredibly, that it was not anti-Semitic. Mr al-Sherif then blandly announced: "Our official policy is to reject any programme which contains anti-religious material. We respect all religions on an equal footing."
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