Antisemitic titles rife at world's largest book fair, monitoring group says
‘Worst Offender 2016’ at Frankfurt Book Fair is Iran, ‘Runner Up’ is Egypt, Simon Wiesenthal Center says
The world's largest book fair was awash with antisemitic titles from around the world, according to an annual report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center monitoring group.
The non-governmental organization regularly monitors antisemitic hate and incitement to violence on the stands of the Frankfurt Book Fair, (FBF), which has over 7,000 exhibitors from more than 100 countries, it said in a statement.
In terms of countries that presented books with the most antisemitic sentiments, the Center's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels noted that “The Wiesenthal's Center's ‘Worst Offender Award 2016’” was awarded to Iran, while the runner up prize went to Egypt.
“As we warned in last year's report, German and other Jihadist teachers are known to bring their students to the Fair, seeking inflammatory materials, which can result in potentially dangerous consequences,” Samuels said, according to a statement.
In cooperation with the Wiesenthal Center, authorities from the book fair made a sweep, confiscating several clearly antisemitic titles from stands identified as violating their exhibitors’ contractual commitment against incitement to hate or violence, the statement said.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that at this year’s event there were 23 stands from Iran, all bustling with European and Asian publishers and literary agents.
According to Samuels, who asked a stand official whether there were not Israelis and Palestinians who wanted an end to the conflict, he was met with the response: “the Zionist state must be destroyed and Iran will stop any peace agreement by Palestinians who would betray Islam.”
Some of the most offensive books, according to the monitoring group, were at the Egyptian stand, and included the reprinted classic “In Hidden Corners: Revealing Secrets of the Jews”, published by the Egyptian National Library and Archives (Dar Al-Kitab) in 2014.
Another title was “Marionette” (2014) by the author Rida Suleiman, who claims that the Egyptian (and Arab) revolutions were just steps in a greater plot to destabilize those countries for the security of Israel and relocate the Palestinians in Gaza to Sinai.
According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, earlier this month the Egyptian Ministry of Culture honored novelist Dr. Sherif Shaban for "his effort to enrich the cultural life in Egypt through his novel ‘Daughter of Zion’, the first Egyptian novel describing the weakness of the Israeli society".
The Simon Wiesenthal Center describes itself as "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time" that aims to foster tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action.
The Frankfurt fair dates as far back as the Middle Ages with the invention of the Gutenberg press just down the road.
As with every year, internationally renowned writers come to Frankfurt to promote their latest works.
The show is an occasion for the struggling book publishing industry -- with an estimated total value of 114 billion euros ($129 billion) worldwide -- to look for new ideas as younger generations turn their eyes increasingly online.