Franklin Prophecy
"The Franklin Prophecy", sometimes called "The Franklin Forgery", is an antisemitic speech falsely attributed to Benjamin Franklin, warning of the supposed dangers of admitting Jews to the nascent United States. The speech was purportedly transcribed by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but was unknown before its appearance in 1934 in the pages of William Dudley Pelley's Silver Legion pro-Nazi magazine "Liberation". No evidence exists for the document's authenticity, and some of Pelley's claims have actively been disproven. Speech. The setting for the speech is a dinner table discussion purportedly recorded  by Pinckney during the convention of the Continental Congress. Primarily, it is a polemic arguing against admitting Jewish immigration into the newly formed United States. The text is as follows: Lack of authenticity. According to Pelley, Pinckney wrote that he had kept a journal of the Convention. This journal has never been found, and no evidence exists for Pelley's claim that it was printed privately. The Franklin Institute has rejected Pelley's claims that it owns a manuscript copy of the speech. The U.S. Congress report "Anti-Semitism in Europe: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on European Affairs of the  Committee on Foreign Relations" (2004) states: The Franklin "Prophecy" is a classic anti-Semitic canard that falsely claims that American statesman Benjamin Franklin made anti-Jewish statements during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It has found widening acceptance in Muslim and Arab media, where it has been used to criticize Israel and Jews... Franklin was a friend to the Jews of 18th-century America, and contributed toward the building of Philadelphia's first permanent synagogue. The Anti-Defamation League noted that the reference to the civilized world giving Palestine back to the Jews was an anachronism, since the modern Zionist  movement did not arise until nearly a century after Franklin's death. Similar antisemitic quotations have been attributed to George Washington and have been disproven. In 1790, in a marked sign of religious tolerance, Washington sent a letter to the Jewish community in Rhode Island, writing "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid." Usage. Despite having been repeatedly discredited since its  first appearance, the "Prophecy" has proved a remarkably durable antisemitic canard. It has appeared most recently as a popular Internet hoax promulgated on Usenet groups and antisemitic websites, where it is presented as authentic. On February 18, 1998, a member of the Fatah Central Committee revived this myth, while mistakenly referring to Franklin as a former President of the United States. Osama Bin Laden used this canard briefly in his October 2002 "Letter to the American People."