H.M. King Mohammed VI
Rabat, MOROCCO
Your Majesty,
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is an international Jewish human rights organization with a worldwide constituency of over 400,000 members. It applies the lessons of the Holocaust to counterantisemitism and other contemporary forms of discrimination and hate.
0ne of our major projects is to monitor incitement to hatred and violence on the shelves of international book fairs. The findings are then shared with the authorities of the Frankfurt Book Fair,where, accordingly those publishers identified in contravention of their contract - which prohibits incitement - are duly blacklisted.
Your Majesty’s patronage of the SIEL Casablanca Book Fair ensures the banning of any text insulting to Islam.
Yet, in our seven years of monitoring the SIEL, there has been no such vetting of texts on the Casablanca shelves that offend the Jewish religion and people.
These are replete with the classics of antisemitism: the Tsarist forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Henry Ford’s “International Jew” and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”... and more contemporaryversions of Jew-hating conspiracy theories, considered as “warrants for genocide” and certainly murderous intent.
Your Majesty, it is indeed ironic that among all Muslim countries, only your grandfather - whose name you carry - H.M. Mohammed V, protected Moroccan Jewry from deportation by the VichyNazi collaborators.
Globally, Jews of Moroccan ancestry bless his name and continue to feel an affinity with your country.
Yet, our request to your successive Minsters of Culture in regard to antisemitism at the Book Fair have fallen on deaf ears.
Below are only the tip of the iceberg examples of such antisemitism at the 2019 Casablanca Fair. Most are from Egyptian publishers Dar Al Basheer (stand C34) and Dar al Rislan (stand A76).
Your Majesty, we urge you to ensure that the 2020 Fair be hate-free, whether directed against Islam, Judaism or Christianity.
EXAMPLES:
- “Blood for the Matzos of Zion,” by Naguib El Kilany, published by Dar El Basheer (Egypt) (see 2010 MEMRI report on Dr. Sallah Sultan of the American Centre for Islamic Research in Columbus,Ohio, on Hamas AL-Aqsa Television)
https://www.memri.org/reports/blood-libel-hamas-al-aqsa-tv-%E2%80%93-american-center-islamic-research-president-dr-sallah-sultan
- “Secrets of the Racist Jews,” by Yuri Mukhin, translated by Mohammed Abdelaziz, published by Dar Ala el Deen (Aladdin) and displayed by Dar Al Rislan, Syria.
Mukhin is a Russian agitator who claims “Nazism was a response to Zionism and the Zionists were responsible for the Holocaust” (see link to Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Mukhin_(activist)
Your Majesty, such screeds sully the good name of Morocco and abuse your Patronage of the SIEL Book Fair.
Most respectfully,
Dr. Shimon Samuels
Director for International Relations
Simon Wiesenthal Centre
