Politics to go: Jeff Dunetz

Resurrection of the blood libel: Why now?

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This Passover was marred by the anti-Semitic shooting in Overland Park, Kansas, and the distribution of leaflets in Donetsk, Ukraine, calling for Jews over age 16 to register as Jews. There is no surprise these incidents happened now, because Passover is a season for Jew hatred: Passover is blood libel season.

Blood libel, a term with a specific and terrible history, refers to the scurrilous accusation that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children to use their blood to prepare Passover matzo. Charges of blood libel have spurred massacres of Jews throughout the centuries; the myth was revived by Hitler, and persists today in Russia, the Muslim world, and even in the United States.

Josephus recounts that even in Roman times, the Greeks spread rumors that the Jews slaughtered a Greek in the Temple in Jerusalem and ate his intestines as part of our rites.

The story of William of Norwich (d. 1144) is often cited as the first known accusation of European blood libel against Jews. The Jews of Norwich, England, were accused of murder after a Christian boy, William, was found dead. It was claimed that the Jews had tortured and crucified their victim. The Jews of the town were murdered.

The British blood libel spread throughout Europe. France’s first blood libel took place in Blois in 1171; 31 Jews were burned at the stake as Passover approached.​

In 1840, an elderly Italian monk-priest, Padre Tommaso, and his servant, disappeared in Damascus, Syria, after having visited the city’s Jewish quarter. A French consul to the Ottoman Empire, Ratti-Menton, promoted a groundless theory of ritual murder of Tommaso that the local Muslim government largely accepted.

Jewish leaders were arrested and tortured; 60 of their children were held hostage and starved to pressure their parents into confessing. One source said that four adults died from the mistreatment; another states that two died and some were permanently disabled. Most of the rest confessed involvement in a ritual murder. The consul then requested permission from the Syrian government to kill the rest of his suspects.

That event is credited with introducing the blood libel myth to the Arab world, where it still circulates.

The blood libel is particularly disgusting since the Torah expressly forbids the ingestion of blood. In Vayikra 17:10-14: “And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eateth any manner of blood, I will set My face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.”

Sometimes the blood libel story changes a bit. “Horrible Israeli soldiers deliberately killing children” is usually accepted by the mainstream and spread by the media without question even though it is false. One such blood libel, the al Durah hoax, involving a young child supposedly shot by Israeli forces, was picked up by the world media and helped to incite a wave of Palestinian violence causing the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians and Israeli citizens. A Palestinian cameraman who worked for one of the French TV Networks staged the entire thing.

Pamphlets distributed in Novosibirsk, Russia, recently warned: “Beware Russian parents. Keep watch over your children before the coming of April 2008, the Jewish holiday of Passover. These disgusting people still engage in ritual practice to their gods. They kidnap small children and remove some of their blood and use it to prepare their holy food (matzo). They throw the bodies (of the children) out in garbage dumps.”

In a March 2010 speech on Al-Aqsa TV, Salah Eldeen Sultan, founder of the American Center for Islamic Research and the Islamic American University, stated:

“The Zionists kidnap several non-Muslims — Christians and others … this happened in a Jewish neighborhood in Damascus. They killed the French doctor, Toma, who used to treat the Jews and others for free, in order to spread Christianity. Even though he was their friend and they benefited from him the most, they took him on one of these holidays and slaughtered him, along with the nurse. Then they kneaded the matzos with the blood of Dr. Toma and his nurse. They do this every year. The world must know these facts about the Zionist entity and its terrible corrupt creed.”

In the United States the blood libel is the language of the progressive left. The Daily Kos, the largest progressive website/social community whose annual convention, called Netroots Nation, has been addressed by former Secretary of State Clinton and her husband; Nancy Pelosi; Harry Reid, and President Obama, even though Kos often portrays Jews as blood-thirsty Nazis.

One political cartoon posted on the site shows a bloodstained Israeli flag with the “Jewish Star” morphed into a swastika.

The illustration for another Kos post, “Zionism was and remains a racist ideology” (since removed), shows Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman as Adolf Hitler. It includes the word Zionism in blood, and tattooed on his hand is a skull with a Star of David.

An article published two weeks ago in the Egyptian magazine Elkebar, “Jewish Vampires at Easter [Passover],” proves again that the anti-Semitic blood libel is alive and well. The article claims that Jews kill non-Jews during this holiday in order to use their blood in preparing matzos. The writer quotes “researchers” who describe this alleged Jewish custom, and lists the 1840 Damascus blood libel. It adds that to coverup their “crime,” Jews wrote stories and made films about vampires, or blamed their crimes on deranged individuals. The murders “committed” as part of their Passover rituals, the writer said, are “a drop in the ocean compared to the Jewish crimes that no one knows about” and thousands of missing children and adults around the world were likely victims of Jewish rituals.

Near the end of the Seder, Jews open the door to the outside; the purpose of which most people say is to symbolically invite the Prophet Elijah to join the meal. But others believe the reason has more to do with the prayer that comes next:

“Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not, and upon kingdoms that did not call upon Thy name. For they have consumed Jacob, and laid waste his habitation. Pour out Thy rage upon them, and let Thy fury overtake them. Pursue them in anger and destroy them, from under the heavens of the Lord.”

Passover is the celebration of our freedom as a people. Perhaps the reason to open the door and make that prayer is a show to the haters like the slime who killed three in Kansas, or those who read the daily Kos, or even politicians who accept hatred in the name of votes, that as a free people we will not stand for their hatred.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com