The Hamas Charter, citing the Protocols
Hamas’s founding covenant of 1988 did more than echo the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Its Article 22 reproduces the forgery’s conspiracy architecture as settled fact, and Article 32 names the Protocols directly as the Jews’ master plan. Here that catalogue of secret power is set beside the Tsarist forgery it inherits.
One sentence — Hamas Covenant, Article 32
“Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
The Charter does not merely echo the forgery. Article 32 names it outright as the enemy’s master plan. Read it in the original ↗
Control of the press and media
Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control. Even now this is already attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.
open Protocol 12 in the original ↗With their money they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.
open Article 22 in the original ↗The Protocols’ fantasy of total command over every news item, restated in Article 22 as an accomplished fact.
Identified by Meir Litvak, Jeffrey Herf
Money as the master lever
In our hands is the greatest power of our day—gold: in two days we can procure from our storehouses any quantity we may please. Surely there is no need to seek further proof that our rule is predestined by God?
open Protocol 22 in the original ↗They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream.
open Article 22 in the original ↗Both make money the master instrument. The Protocols’ boast that gold is “the greatest power of our day” is the same premise Article 22 opens on — wealth “devoted to the realisation of their dream,” the engine for everything that follows.
Identified by Meir Litvak, Jeffrey Herf
Engineering the revolutions
Remember the French Revolution, to which it was we who gave the name of “Great”: the secrets of its preparations are well known to us for it was wholly the work of our hands.
open Protocol 3 in the original ↗With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there.
open Article 22 in the original ↗The Protocols claim the French Revolution outright — “wholly the work of our hands.” Article 22 hardens that into a charge sheet and, writing after 1917, adds “the Communist revolution” the 1903 forgery could not yet name.
Identified by Meir Litvak, Jeffrey Herf
Behind the world wars
We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbours of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbours should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.
open Protocol 7 in the original ↗They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state.
open Article 22 in the original ↗In the Protocols, war is an instrument the cabal can unleash at will — up to “a universal war.” Article 22 reads that structural claim onto the actual world wars; the specifics it adds — the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations, the destruction of the Caliphate, profiteering by “trading in armaments” — are its own 20th-century overlay, not found in the 1903 forgery.
Identified by Meir Litvak, Jeffrey Herf
Secret societies as the hidden hand
Until we come into our kingdom, we shall act in the contrary way: we shall create and multiply free masonic lodges in all the countries of the world, absorb into them all who may become or who are prominent in public activity, for in these lodges we shall find our principal intelligence office and means of influence.
open Protocol 15 in the original ↗With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.
open Article 22 in the original ↗The Protocols already cast Freemasonry as the conspiracy’s own creation and intelligence network — lodges it vows to “create and multiply” to absorb prominent men. Article 22 restates that as accomplished fact and extends the roster to modern fraternal bodies — the Rotary and the Lions — that postdate the forgery.
Identified by Meir Litvak, Jeffrey Herf
Scholarship
- Meir Litvak, “The Anti-Semitism of Hamas,” Palestine–Israel Journal (2005)
- Jeffrey Herf, “Why They Fight: Hamas’ Too-Little-Known Fascist Charter,” The American Interest (1 Aug 2014); Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale, 2009)
- USHMM, Holocaust Encyclopedia: the Protocols “has been used by … Hamas to justify calls for the annihilation” of Jews and the State of Israel.
- Esther Webman (ed.), The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth (Routledge, 2011)
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a proven forgery. It is reproduced here only to document, for criticism and education, how its conspiracy structure was recycled.