Remember Tolstoy and the Protocols of Zion?

I posted Nikolai Tolstoys silly letter last week.

Here's a response:

The ‘Protocols’

Sir, – I presume that Nikolai Tolstoy cannot be serious in his bizarre suggestion (Letters, November 28) that the idea of tsarist secret police sponsorship of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originates with my review in your pages. Should he care to consult only Chapters Four and Five of Warrant for Genocide by the late Professor Norman Cohn, an exhaustive study of the question which was first published in 1966, he will at least be obliged to remove the look of affected astonishment from his features.

Perhaps the recent and rather belated counter-attack by Charles Ruud and Sergei Stepanov will justify Tolstoy’s confidence, but I must say that anyone who can go on to describe the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt as “enthusiastically” pro-Israeli has risked the forfeit of his credibility on any subject.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
2022 Columbia Road NW, Washington, DC 20009.