From the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially after the 1942 Biltmore Conference, Zionist leaders focused most of their propaganda efforts on the United States. In that year, future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion chose to move the Zionist Congress from Europe to the United States, in an effort to situate the movement within the framework of the “free world,” even while Israel was being successfully sold to the Soviet Union as a socialist experiment.

The trend continued. After Gamal Abdel Nasser assumed power in Egypt in 1952, Israel calculated that this charismatic and popular pan-Arab leader would be its most formidable foe. There were massive efforts at convincing Western audiences that Nasser was the second coming of Hitler.

But Nasser was a very frustrating target. He was a secular who was always careful in his rhetoric. He never maligned Jews, and always expressed his belief that Arabs should not harbor any ill will toward Jews qua Jews. Nevertheless, Zionists went to work. But they could only find a lone interview with an Indian journalist in which Nasser, allegedly, made a reference to the grotesque forgery that is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.