Contemporary imprints of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Past endorsements of The Protocols from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Iraqi President Arif, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, among other political and intellectual leaders of the Arab world, are echoed by 21st century endorsements from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, and Hamas, to the education ministry of Saudi Arabia.

[1] As popular opposition to Israel spread across the Middle East in the years following its creation in 1948, many Arab governments funded new printings of the Protocols and taught them in their schools as historical fact.

Iranian writer and researcher Ali Baqeri, who researched the Protocols, finds their plan for world domination to be merely part of an even more grandiose scheme, saying in Sobh in 1999: "The ultimate goal of the Jews ... after conquering the globe ... is to extract from the hands of the Lord many stars and galaxies".In April 2004, the Iranian television station Al-Alam broadcast Al-Sameri wa Al-Saher, a series that reported as fact several conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, Jewish control of Hollywood, and the Protocols.

[10] On the other hand, Iranian author Abdollah Shahbazi, known for his historical reports of several important events of Iran's history, has denied the authenticity of the Protocols officially on his website and has referred to several international investigations as the basis of his claim.

For example, on January 25, 2001, the official PNA daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida cited the Protocols on its Political National Education page to explain Israel's policies: Disinformation has been one of the bases of moral and psychological manipulation among the Israelis ...

Later that year the same newspaper wrote: "The purpose of the military policy is to impose this situation on the residents and force them to leave their homes, and this is done in the framework of the Protocols of Zion..."[12][13][14] The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri appeared on the Saudi satellite channel Al-Majd on February 20, 2005, commenting on the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

[16] The New York Times reported that Palestinian Authority Minister of Information Nabil Shaath removed an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from his ministry's website.

[17] In August 2012, the Conference of European Rabbis appealed to Apple Inc to stop selling an Arabic-language version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was being sold via iTunes.

[19] The Protocols have had a tumultuous history in the United States ever since Henry Ford began publishing extracts and commentaries of them in The Dearborn Independent's column The International Jew.

[26] Despite stipulations against fomenting hatred based on ethnic or religious grounds (Article 282 of Russia Penal Code), the Protocols have enjoyed numerous reprints in the nationalist press after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 2003, one century after the first publication of the Protocols, an article[27] in the most popular Russian weekly Argumenty i Fakty referred to it as a "peculiar bible of Zionism" and showed a photo of the First Zionist Congress of 1897.

[28][29] On January 27, 2006, members of the Public Chamber of Russia and human rights activists proposed to establish a list of extremist literature whose dissemination should be formally banned for uses other than scientific research.

According to conclusions of the experts, Protocols has a critical historical-educational and political-educational focus and that "there is no information in the book that encourages action against other nationalities, social and religious groups or individuals as its representatives.

In May 2011, Evgeny Velikhov, head of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, wrote a letter to Prosecutor-General of Russia Yury Chaika, demanding the labelling of the Protocols as extremist, in order to get it banned from publication.

[32][33] In November 2012, the Protocols was added to the Federal List of Extremist Materials under the entry number 1496 by the decision of the Leninsky City District Court of Orenburg.

[37][38] To a great degree, the text is still accepted as truthful in the Middle East, South America, and Asia, especially in Japan where variations on the Protocols have frequently made the bestseller lists.