Wiesenthal Centre to Saudi Culture Minister: "We are Distressed to Discover Vicious Antisemitic Conspiracy Texts on Display at the Riyadh Book Fair"

March 24, 2018

"A publisher's display at the Fair was closed down for selling Muslim Brotherhood books, considered to incite to violence and terrorism...Indeed, the Fair supervisor warned that, 'any publisher who breaks the rules of the Fair will be banned from participating in it forever'..."The Centre urged the Minister to treat antisemitic publishers in the same manner."


Paris, 24 March 2018

In a letter to Saudi Culture Minister, Dr. Awad bin Saleh Al Awad, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, noted that, "we monitor book fairs as arenas for the propagation of hatred, including six in the Arab world. Our findings are then shared with the Frankfurt Book Fair, where delinquent publishers may be blacklisted for violating the terms of their contract with the Fair".

The letter added, "Mr. Minister, we are delighted at the initiatives of Saudi Arabia towards Muslim reconciliation with the Jewish people and even contacts with the State of Israel...We are therefore distressed to discover vicious conspiracy texts on display, at the Riyadh Book Fair, that counter-productively inflame antisemitism among the visitors and readers."

Samuels stressed that, "we understand that a publisher's display at the Riyadh International Book Fair was closed down for selling Muslim Brotherhood books, considered to incite to violence and terrorism...Indeed, the Fair supervisor, Abdul Rahman Al Asem, warned that, 'any publisher who breaks the rules of the Book Fair will be banned from participating in it forever'."

"As your Fair closes today," the Centre urged Minister Awad,"to treat such publishers next year in the same fashion as your measures against the Muslim Brotherhood...Any publisher of antisemitism should likewise be treated as breaking the rules of the Book Fair and “banned from participating in it forever.”

The volumes exposed at this year’s Fair are:

- Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, Publisher Bissan, Lebanon
Distributed through the Palestine Authority from Ramallah, the Arabic translator Luiz Al-Haj, in his introduction wrote: “Hitler the soldier left behind not only a legend stained by tragedy itself, the tragedy of a state whose dreams were shattered, a regime whose pillars were torn down, and a political party that was crushed...”
<www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/mein-kampf-in-east-jerusalem-and-the-pa>

- The Freemasonry – Religion or Heresy? By Eskandar Shahin, Publisher Bissan, Lebanon
Claimed as a Jewish conspiracy

- The Secret Truth about the Freemasonry, by Gabriel Antoine Jakord Baji, Publisher Bissan, Lebanon
Claimed as a Jewish conspiracy

- The Jewish Question – the Story of the Judeo-Christian Conflict, by Eng. Ghassan Samih al Din, Publisher Bissan, Lebanon

- The Jewish Role from Arthashastra to Balfour, by Dr. Fahd Hijazi, Publisher Dar al Farabi, Lebanon
Arthashastra is translated as "the Hindu science of politics"

- The Israelites between their Great Supremacy and their Final Collapse, by Muawiya Shaqiq al Huza’ei, Publisher Dar Al Ma’mun, Baghdad, Iraq

"Mr. Minister, Bigotry is indivisible, whether against Arab or Jew!" concluded Samuels.


For more information, contact Shimon Samuels at +33 609 770 158, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).