LOS ANGELES, (Reuters):
BOWING TO a barrage of complaints from Jewish groups, retail giant Wal-Mart Inc. on Thursday stopped selling "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," an infamous anti-Semitic tract long exposed as fake.
Jewish leaders had complained that the book, which purports to tell of an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, was being sold on Walmart.com with a description that suggested it might be genuine instead of a forgery concocted by the Czarist secret police in the early 20th Century.
The description, now withdrawn from the Wal-Mart Website, said, "If ... The Protocols are genuine (which can never be proven conclusively), it might cause some of us to keep a wary eye on world affairs. We neither support nor deny its message. We simply make it available for those who wish a copy."
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
In a statement emailed to Reuters, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said, "Based on significant customer feedback regarding the book titled The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, we have made a business decision to remove this book ... from our site at www.walmart.com."
Wal-Mart had no immediate response to questions on whether the company wrote the description of the book on the Web site or if it came from the publisher.
Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, assistant dean of international Jewish human rights group The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, wrote to Wal-Mart President Lee Scott expressing their astonishment that the book was on sale without a disclaimer.
HATEFUL TEXT
"We are, quite frankly, astounded that a reputable company would even
give consideration to marketing this
flagrantly hateful text, which libels the Jewish religion and perpetuates the bizarre notion of a Jewish plot to take over the world," Cooper said in his letter to Scott.
"This forgery, first penned by members of the Czarist secret police, the Okhrana, has been used by tyrants throughout the last 100 years to justify the persecution of Jews, including Adolf Hitler. Its hideous intent is so apparent, that it has been dubbed 'a warrant for genocide.'"
STRONG DISCLAIMERS
Both Barnes & Nobel and Amazon.com sell The Protocols online but with strong disclaimers.
Foxman told Reuters that while he did not think he should tell Wal-Mart what it should sell, the company should have made it clear that the book was "a hateful anti-Semitic forgery. It was projected as a legitimate historic book. If it was going to be sold, it should be sold responsibly."
