WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- A U.S. Islamic civil rights and advocacy group Friday supported calls for an apology from the Arab Voice newspaper in New Jersey that published excerpts from an anti-Semitic tract.
"Just as we ask others to condemn anti-Muslim rhetoric by right-wing, evangelical or pro-Israel commentators, we must challenge those who would fan the flames of anti-Semitism," said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Earlier, the leader of New Jersey's branch of the Anti-Defamation League demanded an apology today from the publishers of a local Arab-American newspaper that printed excerpts from a century-old anti-Semitic tract that purportedly outlines a plan for a global takeover by Jews.
The newspaper, The Arab Voice, based in Paterson, N.J., printed a passage from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an apocryphal document dating from czarist Russia in the late 19th century that has long been used to buttress anti-Semitic hatred.
"The Protocols," a series of 24 documents supposedly written by Jewish leaders that sketched out a plan for worldwide domination, has long been dismissed by historians as a fiction manufactured by the czarist secret police to justify persecution of Jews. It was frequently invoked in Nazi Germany, and in the decades since has often been cited by neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups.
CAIR has in the past called on elected officials and religious leaders to repudiate attacks on Islam by "Muslim-bashers" such as Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell.
