c. 2004 Religion News Service
Under Pressure From Jewish Groups, Wal-Mart Pulls Anti-Semitic Book
(RNS) Retail giant Wal-Mart has agreed to stop selling the anti-Semitic book “The Protocols on the Learned Elders of Zion” after receiving complaints from Jewish groups.
Wal-Mart said in a statement Friday (Sept. 24) that “we have made a business decision to remove this book” based on “significant customer feedback.”
Wal-Mart had been selling the book, a discredited tale of a world Jewish conspiracy, on its Web site.
In early September, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, sent a letter to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott after one of the Jewish human rights group’s supporters alerted Cooper’s office.
“One of our members sent us a link to the site,” said Cooper in an interview.
The “Protocols” has been widely dismissed for years as a forgery created by Russia’s pre-Soviet czarist police, yet the book is read and believed today in anti-Semitic circles and was a part of the founding of the Islamic militant group Hamas.
“Hamas quotes directly from the `Protocols’ in its 1988 charter,” Cooper said. “It’s part and parcel of its founding documents. They invoke it.”
The Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble Web sites also sell the book but with content warnings that were lacking on the Wal-Mart site. Cooper said he did not think Wal-Mart intentionally was trying to “make a buck” off the “Protocols” but speculated that the book somehow found its way into the retailer’s extensive online selling bin without proper scrutiny.
“I have no doubt that there was no conscious decision at all by Wal-Mart,” said Cooper.
Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman said Wal-Mart’s decision to drop the book made sense.
“I would guess that part of their thinking was, `This is another headache we don’t need,”’ said Foxman. “The (online) description of it sounded like it was a regular nonfiction book. But it’s a notorious forgery that continues to be part of the anti-Semitic arsenal.”
Foxman had advocated that Wal-Mart carry a “Protocols” disclaimer similar to those on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites. Cooper suggested the book itself be removed and then replaced online with one or several of the annotated deconstructions of the “Protocols,” which include chapter-by-chapter refutations.
“This is a white-hot, third-rail, alive hate tract,” said Cooper.
_ David Finnigan
Florida Supreme Court Strikes Down Law on Brain-Damaged Woman
(RNS) Reaction has been mixed but pointed to a Florida Supreme Court decision striking down a law that kept a brain-damaged woman linked to a feeding tube.
The state’s high court ruled Thursday (Sept. 23) that the law the state Legislature passed quickly to keep Terry Schiavo alive violated the separation of powers between the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government, the Associated Press reported.
Conservative Christian groups criticized the decision.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and a representative of Schiavo’s parents in the legal fight, said he was disappointed.
“It is both disturbing and tragic that the state’s highest court would declare unconstitutional the only measure keeping Terri alive,” he said in a statement.
James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based ministry, also was dissatisfied.
“I am appalled that the Florida Supreme Court has chosen to override the will of the people of Florida and their elected representatives, who passed `Terri’s Law’ last fall,” Dobson said in a statement.
“This decision is nothing less than a death sentence for Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been denied every chance of recovery from her brain injury for the past 14 years by her husband.”
But Scott Blaine Johnson, executive director of the Death With Dignity National Center, applauded the ruling.
“It is the right decision,” he said in an interview. “It was an abuse of power that needed to be struck down.”
He called the quickly passed law “a miscarriage of justice and of the legislative process.”
Johnson’s organization, with offices in Washington and Portland, Ore., advocated for Oregon’s assisted suicide law and defends patients’ management of the end of their lives.
He declined to speculate on whether the ruling means that Schiavo’s tube will be removed.
Michael Schiavo, the woman’s husband, had won lower court rulings to remove the feeding tube from his 40-year-old wife, but the state Legislature’s law overruled the courts. Gov. Jeb Bush used the law to order the reinsertion of the tube.
“It is without question an invasion of the authority of the judicial branch for the legislature to pass a law that allows the executive branch to interfere with the final judicial determination in a case,” Chief Justice Barbara Pariente wrote for the court. “That is precisely what occurred here.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
BBC to Drop `Popetown’ Cartoon Series Offensive to Catholics
LONDON (RNS) The BBC has announced it will not broadcast “Popetown,” a cartoon series set in the Vatican featuring sinister cardinals and a childish pope.
The Thursday (Sept. 23) decision was welcomed by Roman Catholic officials.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, archbishop of Westminster, said: “I raised this issue with the BBC. I am very happy they have heeded my wishes and the concerns of Roman Catholics.”
Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth, chairman of the bishops’ strategic communications committee, also expressed relief.
“It was obviously going to be a controversial program which would have caused offense, not least among the Catholic community who hold the person of the Holy Father in the highest regard and affection,” said Hollis.
“Any attempt to belittle or diminish his status as the leader of the Catholic Church is totally unacceptable, and not only to Catholics.”
According to the BBC’s publicity material, issued when the series was first announced two years ago, in Popetown “cardinals are sinister, corrupt and mysteriously wealthy, and the pope is an infuriatingly childish 77-year-old whose every fickle whim must be indulged.”
The series would have been shown this year on BBC 3, one of the BBC’s new digital channels which has a potential audience of about 6.5 million.
_ Robert Nowell
Bush Appoints Commissioners for Religious Freedom
(RNS) President Bush has appointed a Roman Catholic archbishop and an evangelical leader to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver and Michael Cromartie of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center will serve two-year terms on the commission, which makes recommendations to the president, Congress and secretary of state.
Chaput will be serving his second term on the commission. Cromartie succeeds Dr. Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The commission was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor international religious freedom as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nine voting commissioners and a non-voting ambassador at large serve on the commission. The president appoints three of the commissioners.
Chaput became the first Native American archbishop in 1997. Cromartie, an evangelical Christian, is vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
_ Wangui Njuguna
First Wicca Wedding Recognized in Scotland
(RNS) Scotland’s first officially recognized pagan wedding, using Wicca rites, has taken place in an underground vault in Edinburgh’s Old Town.
Two Canadians, 37-year-old Paul Cameron Rickards and 42-year-old Laurie Schedler, wed Tuesday (Sept. 21), saying they chose the ceremony because of its Old World beauty.
The 30-minute wedding was carried out by George Cameron, high priest of the Source Coven of the Blue Dragon, assisted by the coven’s high priestess, Lady Felina. It involved the couple jumping over a broomstick and having their hands tied together with red cord.
Wiccans said it was Scotland’s first such wedding.
“This is the most important event to have happened in the religion for over the past 50 years,” said Cameron.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles
(RNS) “Personally for me it’s been a time of great spiritual renewal. I know the priests, when I talk to them sometimes, a lot of priests say, `I wish it would all go away.’ … And I said, `That’s where you’re missing it. This is our ministry now. Our ministry is to heal victims and heal the church.”’
_ Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, reflecting on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
MO/PH END
