Israel Snags Royalty Rights To ‘Protocols’

They will thus gain immensely from the burgeoning sales of the book among those who wish the nation ill.

Jerusalem, February 11 – Treasury officials gathered in the Israeli capital today to celebrate the country’s most recent achievement, a secret deal that will allow the Jewish state to profit from each sale of the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a book that has proved especially popular in the Arab and Muslim world.

Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon assembled his senior staff to mark the completion of a royalties arrangement binding on all publishing houses worldwide, an agreement that removes the book from the public domain and secures its publication, translation, and distribution rights for the Government of Israel in perpetuity. For each copy of the work sold, Israel will earn fifteen percent of the cover price, and will thus gain immensely from the burgeoning sales of the book among those who wish the nation ill.

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, published in the late nineteenth century in Russia, purports to document a world-spanning Jewish conspiracy to control economies and governments. Antisemites have seized on it as a pretext for their prejudices, and it is extensively taken as factual in societies where hatred of Jews and Israel is commonplace, such as the Islamic world. An Egyptian publisher recently issued yet another edition, as it proves perennially popular; it is even required reading in many schools.

Now, however, those who buy into the conspiracy theory will face the tough choice of enlightening themselves with the nefarious designs of the Jews as depicted in the Protocols, thereby empowering the Jewish cabal with even more cash, and remaining in the dark as to the specifics of those designs by declining to purchase the book. Publishers, especially, face a Hobson’s choice, given that they stand to lose from any popular movement to obtain the text by other means.

“It’s darkly brilliant, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from the Elders of Zion,” said a bitter Fourj Ehry of the Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi publishing house in Cairo. “We’re here chasing our own tails, and they’re laughing all the way to the bank. The only surprise here is that it took them more than a hundred years to think of this.”

“But that’s just it!” cried his colleague Fakir Fakir, slapping his head. “They’ve actually held the rights all this time, and we’ve been funding them all along, thinking we’re so brilliant and smart for knowing and exposing this conspiracy – but that’s exactly what they want! We’ve swallowed the bait!”

The two concluded that the only way to freedom was to disregard the Elders of Zion conspiracy theory, but acknowledged that the financial benefits of Protocols sales made that an unwise economic move.