Eyes Tightly Shut

Hamburg-based author Matthias Küntzel, wandering round the Frankfurt Book Fair, came across the Iranian stand (via):

[I]t is well known that the Iranian leadership is dedicated to wiping out the existence of a state member of the United Nations, namely Israel. And it is also well known that to this end, Tehran exports a crude anti-Semitism throughout the world.

Nonetheless, I was astonished how openly this occurred at the Book Fair.

I am not talking about the some hundreds of meters of shelves of Iranian literature that were set up in Hall 5. I am talking about the brochures that Iran presented here in English – not in order to promote the country’s own literature, but rather to disseminate anti-Semitism of European and American provenance.

There was, for instance, under the heading “Jewish Conspiracy”, the text that influenced Hitler’s anti-Semitism like no other work: The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, here in an edition published by the “Islamic Propagation Organization” of the Islamic Republic of Iran….

A second notorious classic of anti-Semitic literature was also available. A 200-page abridgment of Henry Ford’s The International Jew:The World’s Foremost Problem was presented and sold in Hall 5 of the Frankfurt Book Fair “in the name of Allah the Beneficent, the Merciful”. The publisher of the edition is the “Department of Translation and Publication, Islamic Culture and Relations Organization” of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the preface, the editor writes:

The grip of the Jewish parasitic influence has been growing stronger and stronger ever since [Henry Ford’s time]. The Jewish danger – now called Zionism – is not only threatening one nation. As a matter of fact, it is directed against the entire humanity. […]

Could it really be the case that nobody else caught sight of these brochures, which could hardly be missed on even just a cursory visit to the Book Fair? What about the employees of the Deutsche Welle or of the German Foreign Office, for instance, who also had stands in Hall 5? They were just a few steps from the Iranian exhibitors. At the Book fair, the Deutsche Welle offered itself as a “bridge to the Islamic World”. The Foreign Office distributed its “Dialogue with the Islamic World” pamphlet, in which one can read: “Peace-building, too, may require dialogue with extremists”.

Did anybody speak with the Iranian exhibitors about their presentation of this Nazi-style anti-Semitism? Or did one – yet again – keep both eyes tightly shut?