ADL protests anti-Semitic titles at Qatar book fair

“This high-profile, government-sponsored book fair is being used to promote blatantly anti-Semitic books,” the ADL’s CEO stated.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

Six months after its much-heralded outreach effort to U.S. Jewish leaders petered out, the Gulf emirate of Qatar’s official book fair, which opened this week, is displaying books that carry blatantly anti-Semitic titles.

A report on Tuesday from the Anti-Defamation League noted that books titled Lies Spread by the Jews and The Myth of the Nazi Gas Chambers were available on the book fair’s website.

In addition, the ADL reported on the inclusion of an Arabic version of former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke’s anti-Semitic tract, Awakening to Jewish Influence in the United States of America, as well as Henry Ford’s The International Jew, a discredited work of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that was based in turn on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a work fabricated by the Tsarist secret police in Russia more than a century ago.

Other books available at the Doha fair include Talmud of Secrets: Facts Exposing the Jewish Schemes to Control the World and The History of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the History of the Corruption of the Jews and the Demise of their Entity.

The ADL asserted that in “the last few years, the Doha International Book Fair has a record of promoting blatantly anti-Semitic content in addition to other titles.”

“Once again, this high-profile, government-sponsored book fair is being used to promote blatantly anti-Semitic books that deny the Holocaust and accuse Jews of controlling the world and trying to undermine Islam,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO and national director. “We call on the U.S. embassy to make clear to Qatar’s government that this hate is unacceptable.”

The ADL said that it had written to William Grant, the U.S. chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Qatar, “asking that he leverage the embassy’s participation in the book fair to urge the Qatari government to stop promoting such hateful content.”

The 2018 book fair in the Qatari capital was opened on Dec. 1 in the presence of the emirate’s prime minister and minister of interior, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani. Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, visited the book fair on Tuesday.