ADL requests Oman to remove antisemitic titles from state-run book fair
The state-run book fair has provided a "platform for antisemitic texts in past years as well," according to the ADL.
By ZACHARY KEYSERSultan of Oman Qaboos bin Said al-Said sits during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (not pictured) at the Beit Al Baraka Royal Palace in Muscat, Oman January 14, 2019(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has requested the Sultanate of Oman to remove a list of "antisemitic" titles from being promoted at its annual state-run book fair.The ADL wrote a letter to Oman's Ambassador to the United States Hunaina Al-Mughairy in order to resolve the issue.The list includes titles widely-classified as antisemitic such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as a dozen copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Henry Ford’s The International Jew and The Heads of Evil: Ten Engineers of the Zionist American Plot to Fracture our Arab World and Ignite Revolutions. The list also includes titles "intolerant to adherents of other religions, including Shi’ite Islam and the Yazidi and Baha’i faiths."The state-run book fair has provided a "platform for antisemitic texts in past years as well," according to the ADL.“At a time when antisemitism is surging in the Middle East and around the world, it is deeply troubling that Oman’s government-sanctioned book fair is providing a platform for some of the worst conspiratorial anti-Semitic titles of the 20th century,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO and National Director. “The Sultanate of Oman needs to ensure that such intolerant books are swiftly removed and that this event does not provide a platform to those who would promote antisemitism in future years.”This is not the first time the ADL has spoken up against antisemitism being shared at state-run book fairs being held in Arabic speaking countries.In December 2018, through an open letter to William Grant, the US Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires at the US embassy in Qatar, the ADL blasted the Doha International Book Fair for its inclusion of antisemitic texts.These included books like, Lies Spread by the Jews, The Myth of the Nazi Gas Chambers, and Talmud of Secrets: Facts Exposing the Jewish Schemes to Control the World.The fair also promoted David Duke’s seminal antisemitic text on Jewish influence in the US and Henry Ford’s The International Jew, which builds on the arguments laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The ADL, as they have done in the past, will be calling on the Sultanate of Oman to remove the titles from their website and to make sure that these titles are not disseminated at the book fair and are removed from circulation completely.
