Today is the 100th birthday of one of the most popular Arab writers in history.
I'm talking about Egyptian writer Mohammed Khalifa Tunisi, allegedly the first translator of the perennial Arab best seller, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
Tunisi said "Jews seeking to demolish the governments in all countries, and replace them with authoritarian Jewish governments ...They say that they alone are 'God's chosen people' and they act in ways that are dictated them the Torah and the Talmud and rabbis and leaders."
The article notes that some people believe that the work is not authentic and that there is "controversy" over the issue, but the rest of it assumes that it is accurate.
The Protocols have been reported to be bestsellers in many Arab countries. Saudi textbooks quote them as authentic. Smash TV series have been created in the Arab world based on that book.
The US Holocaust Museum says that there was an Arabic translation in the 1920s, so it appears that Tunisi wasn't the first translator of the antisemitic forgery, but perhaps his translation was the most popular.