What is called The Damascus Affair was the disappearance and suspected murder in 1840 of a Christian Priest, said to have been killed while in the Jewish Quarter for his blood to be used in the approaching Passover celebration. The accused men were declared innocent after a delegation of high-level European Jews, headed by Sir Moses Montefiore, traveled to the capital of the Ottoman Empire  to negotiate with the Pasha.  Following this major “blood libel” event, international-minded Jews considered how to organize for the protection of the Jewish reputation world-wide. One result was the Alliance Israelite Universelle, founded in 1860 by Adolphe Cremieux who was also a member of the above-mentioned delegation. This new sense of, and felt-need for, solidarity gave rise to the modern Jewish Press, a mass of new institutions and organizations all aimed at serving the “Jewish community,” and the emergence of a written plan, a version of which we know as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Image: Symbol of the Alliance Israelite Universelle on door of “Mikveh Israel’ school. The hands clasping indicate the “helping hand” that Jews should offer to one another, no matter where they are.

Is it possible that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion were written before the Geneva Dialogues, and thus the latter were “plagiarized” from the former? Yes, says Carolyn, and proceeds to lay out the case for such a supposition.

• Maurice Joly, author of the 1864 Geneva Dialogues, from which the Protocols were allegedly plagiarized, was associated with:
• Adolphe Cremieux (pictured right), illustrious French Jewish legal mind and leading member of the esoteric Mizraim Lodge in Paris from whence a copy of the Protocols was allegedly stolen in 1884;
• Both men hated Louis Napoleon, with Joly being aided by Cremieux to write a devastating satire pointing to Napoleon III as a Machiavellian despot;
• Cremieux had the status and the opportunity to write or upgrade the Protocols prior to 1860;
• A big question comes from the absence of effort to conceal the similarity between the Protocols and the Geneva Dialogues;
• Jacob Venedey, a German-Jewish communist and friend of Karl Marx, and also Cremieux, wrote  a book Machiavelli,  Montesquieu, Rousseau in 1848, from which Joly likely took some ideas;
• Venedy showed Machiavelli and Rousseau as triumphant Communism, while Joly showed Machiavellism as Reaction and Imperialism;
• The London Times 1921 “exposure” of the “forgery” lacks convincing detail and uses the arguments always used to divert criticism from Jews:  antisemitism.
  
  

Carolyn wades into the controversy that so many want to bury once and for all — whether the Protocols of the Elders of Zion should be taken seriously or thrown into the trashcan of literary forgeries.

• A search through the Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieufor the alleged parallel passages found in the Protocols leaves much to be desired;
• Only the first two of the three similar passages shown on Wikipedia can be found;
• The narrative of  how the forgery occurred published in The Times is not believable (kind of like the narrative of the ‘Holocaust’);
• More believable is the story of Mlle. Glinka and Alexis Sukhotin, and the Jewish traitor Joseph Schorst;
• The relationship between Maurice Joly (author of “Dialogue”) and Adolphe Cremieux (Grand Master of the Mizraim Lodge and a founder of the Alliance Israelite Universelle);
• The Berne, Switzerland trial as a typical legal travesty that Jews always resort to;
• Layers of disinformation and confusion make the trail to the truth about the Protocols difficult, but investigation should be undertaken;
• Fear of Jewish retribution is a big reason Whites stay away from the topic, or are satisfied with a non-committal stand.

Image: The original article “exposing the forgery” in The Times of London from August 1921.