COMMENT: Before turn­ing to events in the Mid­dle East, we exam­ine a “sign of the times.” That bas­tion of knowl­edge, inno­va­tion and enlightenment–Apple Computer–has an “app” for its ITunes pro­gram which per­mits users to down­load The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion. 

Resilient­ly present in the Arab and Mus­lim worlds (large­ly as a result of Nazi influ­ence in those coun­tries), the Pro­to­cols is also find­ing new audi­ences with New Age fas­cist doc­u­ments like the recent Zeit­geist and Thrive films.

The lat­ter have res­onat­ed with younger audi­ences on the Inter­net, giv­ing new life to the “Inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish Bank­ing Con­spir­a­cy” canard.

Whether Apple’s Pro­to­cols app is intend­ed to reach those naifs or the Arab and Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions, per­mit­ting such mur­der­ous pro­pa­gan­da to become part of “the New Media” can only have harm­ful con­se­quences.

Firms such as Apple may ratio­nal­ize their offer­ing of such mate­r­i­al as cater­ing to “niche mar­kets” and there­fore con­sis­tent with con­tem­po­rary busi­ness ethics.

Recent­ly, a white-suprema­cist musi­cian appears to have tar­get­ed a Sikh tem­ple in Wis­con­sin in a lethal­ly suc­cess­ful attack, exem­pli­fy­ing what the con­se­quences that can accrue from pan­der­ing to prac­ti­tion­ers of hate and turn­ing an amoral eye toward “The Plan­et of the Apps.”

“Rab­bis Call for Apple to Drop ‘Elders of Zion’ App from ITunes” (AP); Times of Israel; 8/14/2012.

Euro­pean rab­bis said Tues­day that they were lob­by­ing Apple Inc. to pull a mobile app ver­sion of “The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion,” a noto­ri­ous anti-Semit­ic forgery.

The Con­fer­ence of Euro­pean Rab­bis, which rep­re­sents Ortho­dox Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tions across the con­ti­nent, says it wants the iPhone man­u­fac­tur­er to stop sell­ing an Ara­bic-lan­guage ver­sion of “The Pro­to­cols” being offered through its iTunes ser­vice. The group says car­ry­ing “The Pro­to­cols” in app form made it much more like­ly that it would be used by big­ots and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists.

“‘The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion’ can and should be avail­able for aca­d­e­mics to study in its prop­er con­text, (but) to dis­sem­i­nate such hate­ful invec­tive as a mobile app is dan­ger­ous and inex­cus­able,” con­fer­ence pres­i­dent Rab­bi Pin­chas Gold­schmidt said in a state­ment.

“The Pro­to­cols,” which began cir­cu­lat­ing in Europe at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, pur­ports to lift the lid on a secret Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy to take over the world. The pub­li­ca­tion has been thor­ough­ly and repeat­ed­ly debunked, but it endures as a sta­ple of anti-Semit­ic rhetoric among neo-Nazis and oth­er anti-Jew­ish extrem­ists. . . .