The World - News from July 17, 1986

Canada, joining the United States in sharp criticism of an anti-Semitic book attributed to a Syrian official, has called for consultation among the Western allies on a joint response to the publication, a U.S. Jewish leader said. Canadian External Affairs Minister Joe Clark, in a message to the Canadian representative of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, called the book “utterly unacceptable,” according to Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the center. The book, “The Matzo of Zion,” purports to be written by Mustafa Talas, Syria’s defense minister. It repeats the ancient “blood libel” that Jews murder Christians and use their blood to make ritual bread.