Lebanon's Jew-bashing disposition

In 1983, in the wake of the Lebanon war, Syrian Defense Minister Field Marshal Mustafa Tlas revived the most vicious anti-Semitic canard in a book entitled The Matza of Zion. Tlas told Der Spiegel, that the accusation was valid and that his book is "an historical study ... based on documents from France, Vienna and the American University in Beirut." The American ambassador in Damascus tried to meet with Tlas to protest the publication of the book, but was rebuffed. During a three day congress to combat "religious intolerance," held in Geneva in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate regaled the audience with a diatribe filled with references to the 1840 Damascus blood libel.