The Bay Area Jewish and interfaith communities are decrying a virulently anti-Semitic television series currently airing on Egyptian state-run television and in other parts of the Arab world.
They fear the 41-part series “Horseman Without a Horse,” based on the anti-Jewish book “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” will cause incitement against the Jews during already volatile times in the Middle East.
It first aired Nov. 6, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
“One might expect such vitriolic examples of anti-Semitic filth from the most extreme elements of the Arab world,” said Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “But for a country that has been ostensibly at peace with Israel to perpetuate these myths is indeed outrageous and disturbing.”
What’s more, said Kahn, there seems to be “an explosion of state-endorsed anti-Semitic propaganda and anti-Semitic material spreading at an alarming rate in these countries that are so-called moderate countries.”
The Rev. Paul Chaffee, executive director of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio added that the biased use of “the tools of the arts and culture, such as film, to magnify hate” must be discouraged.
“We’re caught in traditions that don’t always tell the truth — that do nasty things in the name of God,” said Chaffee. “It’s that kind of racist trash…we must work on silencing.”
In two separate letters sent earlier this month to Afaf Elmazariki, San Francisco’s consul general of Egypt, representatives from four Jewish agencies and eight interfaith agencies condemned the series harshly. They asked the emissary to urge his government to reconsider its decision to air it.
“Egypt has, over the past two decades, played a key role of peacemaker in the region,” the JCRC, the Board of Rabbis of Northern California, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League wrote in a Nov. 1 letter. “We fail to see how the airing of this blatantly anti-Semitic program could help turn the region away from confrontation.”
A Nov. 6 letter to the Egyptian consul general said: It is “our profound hope the decision will be reconsidered before great damage is done both to our Jewish brothers and sisters and to the international image of Egypt.” The letter was signed by interfaith community leaders, including Chaffee and the Rev. Alan Jones, executive director of the San Francisco United Methodist Mission.
Neither letter received a response.
Kahn, who also requested a meeting with Elmazariki, said he “cannot recall the last time [the JCRC] did not receive the courtesy of a response when we’ve communicated with other consulates. It does not speak well of their community relations.”
He said the Jewish community is currently in the process of deciding what additional action to take.
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” written in the early 20th century, was cited and propagated by Nazi Germany as a pretext for the murder of millions of Jews and has been called a “warrant for genocide,” according to the letter from the Jewish agencies.
“It’s one of the most notoriously known anti-Semitic frauds of all time,” said Kahn.
In screening “A Horseman Without a Horse” — a film that promotes “Protocols” — the Egyptian television network “is passing on a blatantly anti-Semitic work whose whole purpose is to incite ignorance about the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Lavey Derby, president of the Board of Rabbis and spiritual leader at Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon. “That’s the worst kind of libel.”
Kahn said the JCRC received multiple calls of concern from the community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, about the screening of “Horseman Without a Horse.” This issue, he said, “sparked a great deal of response and condemnation.”
Kahn also said he was “heartened by the outpouring of concern from members of the interfaith community who sent out a letter.”
Rita Semel, who chairs several interfaith councils, including the Global Council of the United Religions Initiative and is the former executive director of the JCRC, said the interfaith community’s response was “immediate and unhesitating.”
The Bay Area Jewish community is “very fortunate” to have such strong support “from so many people of good will, willing to put their name to a document concerned with inequities against one group by another,” she said.