MEMRI, January 31, 2002

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent,
non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East.

An antisemitic Nazi forgery targeting American Jews was reproduced recently
by an Egyptian government weekly. An article by Salah Al-Din Hilmi, titled “The
Jews are Bloodsuckers and Will Yet Conquer America,” appeared in the
Egyptian government weekly Akher Sa’a (1) and included a photocopy of a
forged document that Hilmi claimed is kept at the Franklin Institute in
Philadelphia [the chief librarian of the Franklin Institute refuted this claim and
stated the Institute does not posses any such document]. (2)

The forged document appeared in a 1935 volume of the German antisemitic
book “A Handbook on the Jewish Question.”

It alleges that Benjamin Franklin made comments against Jewish
immigration to the United States during a recess in the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia in 1789 [the convention was actually held two years
earlier]. Following are excerpts from the Nazi forgery which appeared in Akher
Sa’a:

“A great danger threatens the United States of America. This great danger is
the Jew…”

“For more than 1,700 years they have lamented their sorrowful state, namely
that they have been driven out of their motherland, but, gentlemen, if the
civilized world today should give them back Palestine, and their property, they
would immediately find pressing reasons why they could not return there.

Why? Because they are vampires, and vampires cannot live on other
vampires… They must live among Christians and others who do not belong to
their race.”

“If they are not excluded from the United States by the Constitution, within at
least 100 years, they shall stream into this country in such numbers that they
shall rule and destroy us and change our form of government for which we
Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our lives, property, and personal
freedom.”

“If the Jews are not excluded within 200 years, our children will be working in
the fields to feed the Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully
rubbing their hands…”

Endnotes:

(1) Akher Sa’a (Egypt), January 9, 2002.

(2) In a phone conversation on 1/30/02, the chief librarian of the Franklin
Institute confirmed that the Institute does not possess any such document.