Hadassa Ben-Itto - The Lie That Wouldn't Die

The Lie That Wouldn't Die

Ben-Itto began to research The Protocols of the Elders of Zion during her years on the bench, using her free time and court vacations to peruse the topic in footnoted academic studies. She found that not only was the subject little-known by Jews at large, but that historical and modern-day antisemitism draws from the Protocols. Desiring to write a book for the general public, she took early retirement in 1991 and spent six years writing The Lie That Wouldn't Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The book was published in Hebrew in 1998 and has since been translated into nine languages, including German, Russian, Dutch, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Spanish, and English.

With a flair for courtroom drama, Ben-Itto's book centers around the 1934 trial in Bern, Switzerland, where the local Jewish community took the local Nazi party to court for publishing the Protocols. While the lower court judge ruled that the Protocols was a work of plagiarism and constituted indecent literature, an appeals court threw out the claim of obscenity while agreeing with the lower court that the Protocols was "absolutely unjustified and outrageous insults and defamation". Ben-Itto then shows how the Protocols is still read and quoted today as a political treatise, even though various courts have declared it a forgery.