Writing in the SA Jewish Report some years ago, journalist and talkshow host Jon Qwelane challenged the Jewish community to prove to him that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was, in fact, a forgery. Evidently, he had some doubts on that score at the time.

Happily for Qwelane, those doubts would now seem to have been cleared up. Responding to a caller on his show on Channel Islam International on 11 June this year, he endorsed the writings of Henry Ford, who believed the Protocols to be a genuine document and based his book The International Jew on it.

Said Qwelane: “The Zionists were so embarrassed when [the Protocols] came to light, they denied, they tried this, they tried that. Then you had Zionist controlled-courts in Switzerland and somewhere else declaring the book a fake. And outlawing it. But Henry Ford would take none of that nonsense”.

Well, there you have it. There really does exist a diabolical Jewish plot to control the world, as outlined in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and any court case or academic expose claiming otherwise can be safely discounted since, as it demonstrates, Jews secretly control everything. Qwelane is to be thanked for enlightening us all about this very serious matter. Forewarned, after all, is forearmed!

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion remains a banned publication in South Africa, which means it is illegal to sell, own or quote from it. Today, of course, the ban is of little more than symbolic value since the full text is readily available on the Internet.

The Swiss court case referred to by Qwelane (the one whose outcome he says came about through behind-the-scenes Zionist manipulation) took place in Berne in 1934-5 when Alfred Zander, a Swiss Nazi, was sued for a series of articles he published representing the Protocols as fact. The verdict declared the Protocols to be forgeries, plagiarisms, and obscene literature, “nothing but laughable nonsense” in the words of presiding Judge Walter Meyer.

The Protocols, concocted by the Tsarist secret police inter alia through adapting a 19th Century French satire of Louis Napoleon, had already long-since been debunked in numerous newspaper articles and academic studies. However, this was the first high profile court ruling declaring it to be a forgery.

Interestingly, prior to the Berne case, there had been another court case in which the Protocols hoax was exposed, and it took place in South Africa. In 1934 Reverend A. Levy of Port Elizabeth, with the backing of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, brought an action for damages on the grounds of defamation against three leaders of the SA Christian National Socialist Movement, a local version of the Nazi Party in Germany, more usually referred to as the Greyshirts.

The action was based on the dissemination of a document purportedly written by Levy that outlined a supposed Jewish plot to destroy the Christian religion and overthrow the existing system of civilisation. The document was said to have been stolen from Port Elizabeth’s Western Road Synagogue by Harry Victor Inch, leader of the Greyshirts in the Eastern Cape. Its contents were read out in public meetings by Johannes von Strauss von Moltke, leader of the SA Gentile Socialists, who also arranged for its publication in the official organ of the Greyshirt movement. The following extract provides an idea of its contents:

We are confident in our success. We who boast of our survival over all empires. We the Chosen of the Almighty, who guides and approves of our every action. Our cult of Gold. We who control, financially and even politically behind the scenes, yea, the chosen, who were promised all these things. Earthly pomp, Splendour, Imperialism, and everlasting sovereignty over the ANOMALS [sic] of the earth.

The document was clearly a paraphrase of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, hence the authenticity or otherwise of the latter received considerable attention during the trial. Providentially Nahum Sokolow, leader of the World Zionist movement, was in South Africa at the time. He had been present at the inaugural Zionist Conference in Basle in 1897, where the Protocols had supposedly first been promulgated, and was able to testify that no such document had surfaced on that occasion. He further provided details of how the Protocols’ fraudulent origins had subsequently come to light.

The court concluded that the Protocols was “an impudent forgery, obviously published for the purpose of anti-Jewish propaganda”. It found the defendants guilty of fabricating a variation of it and then falsely claiming Reverend Levy to have been its author. Hefty damages were imposed.

Von Moltke’s subsequent career survived the debacle, as well as his wartime pro-Nazi activities. He was completely rehabilitated by the triumphant National Party after 1948 and served as Nationalist MP for Karas, one of the newly-created South-West African constituencies, from 1950 until his retirement from politics in 1966. A few years prior to that, he claimed that Inch had tricked him into publishing the forged documents.

“I have paid for my mistake but up to this day I have never squealed nor have I ever blamed the Jews for what they have done to me” he said.

Jon Qwelane and Channel Islam International must be gratified to find themselves in such illustrious company!

Author

  • David Saks has worked for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) since April 1997, and is currently its associate director. Over the years, he has written extensively on aspects of South African history, Judaism and the Middle East for local and international newspapers and journals. David has an MA in history from Rhodes University. Prior to joining the SAJBD, he was curator -- history at MuseumAfrica in Johannesburg. He is editor of the journal Jewish Affairs, appears regularly on local radio discussing Jewish and Middle East subjects and is a contributor to various Jewish publications.

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David Saks

David Saks has worked for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) since April 1997, and is currently its associate director. Over the years, he has written extensively on aspects of South African...

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