Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The new blood libel

The new blood libel
Jan. 26, 2009
ELI KAVON , THE JERUSALEM POST
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1232643755758&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
On February 5, 1840, a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished without a
trace. The missing friar's fellow monks spread a rumor that, with the
approach of the Passover holiday, Jews ritually murdered the Christian
and siphoned off the man's blood to bake matzah. Under pressure from
the French Consul in the city, the Muslim rulers of Damascus arrested
several Jews for the brutal crime. Under torture, one of the Jews
confessed to the ritual murder of the monk. Alarmed by the Muslim
adoption of the medieval Christian charge of ritual murder against the
Jews, world Jewish notables united to protest the death of one of the
Jews in Damascus under torture. Even US President Martin Van Buren
protested the injustice of this "blood libel."
In the end, the Muslim authorities released the surviving Jews and
dropped the heinous charges. Thus, what became known as "The Damascus
Affair," passed into history as just one of many libels against the
Jews that repeat themselves-in a somewhat different guise-in today's
world.
In the 21st century, the charge of the "blood libel" against the Jews
is no longer solely a European phenomenon. In a disturbing
transformation, Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East are breathing new
life into this charge of ritual murder against the Jews. The popular
media in Arab and Islamic lands often accuse Jews of using the blood
of slain non-Jewish children for filling hamentashen on Purim and for
baking matzah on Passover. But there is also another version of the
blood libel in the Middle East that is far more complex and more
insidious than the medieval Christian accusation of ritual murder
against Jews.
That is the "New Blood Libel' - the charge that the modern Jewish
State murders Palestinian civilians, especially children, in the name
of Zionism. At rallies around the world organized by Muslims
protesting Israel's recent invasion of Gaza, the chants of "baby
killers" and "Israelis are Nazis!" were repeated again and again by
the protestors. These sickening accusations have been picked up by
Western media outlets and flashed on television and computer screens
all over the world. The time has come for Jews and non-Jews-defenders
of democracy and Israel's right to exist as a sovereign Jewish State-
to respond to the haters of Israel and expose their new charge of
blood libel to be as destructive and utterly untruthful as the
medieval accusation.
Is a Gaza City in partial ruins due to Israel's response to repeated
Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, indeed, a "concentration camp," as was
the description recently put forth by a Vatican representative? Any of
us not trapped in an Orwellian world of "Newspeak" know that Gaza City
is not a post-modern version of the Warsaw Ghetto. The equation of the
Israeli army with the Nazi SS is absurd. German mobile killing units
murdered more than a million Jews in Russia, shooting men, women, and
children into mass graves. Nazi Germany transported European Jewry to
death camps in Poland where the victims were gassed and cremated. The
Nazi Final Solution was a systematic program to destroy the Jews of
Europe and, eventually, Jews throughout the world. There are no
Israeli mobile killing units today in Gaza. There are no gas chambers
or crematoria in Nablus. There has never been a systematic program by
the Jews of Israel to destroy Palestinians. Blockades and checkpoints
are not mass murder. They are safeguards to protect Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem from suicide bombers. They are repressive - but they would
not exist if the Palestinians truly wanted to live in peace with
Israel.
The death of civilians in war is always a tragedy. The Israeli army in
Gaza attempted to root out Hamas terrorists. They did not target
civilians for mass execution. During World War II, German civilians
were killed in Allied bombing raids on the cities of the Reich. Does
that mean that the Americans and the British were war criminals? The
Germans started the war and the Allies wanted to end the conflict as
soon as possible through the bombing of German cities. The Palestinian
civilians killed in Gaza died because the leaders they chose provoked
Israel into invading territory that Israel abandoned years ago. That
these facts need to be pointed out to those who accuse Jews of being
Nazis is quite sad. The rhetoric of those who make these accusations
does not spring from intelligent thought. They propagate this modern
blood libel because they hate Jews.
The enemies of Israel libel the Jews of Israel as heirs of the Nazis
for one reason: they want to rob Israel of its legitimacy and ensure
that, one day in the near future, the Jewish State will be wiped off
the map. They equate the threat Israel poses today with the threat
Nazi Germany posed to the world more than sixty years ago. If the
Nazis posed a peril to the world and, therefore needed to be defeated
and destroyed, the same goes for Israel. In a tragic distortion of
history and the truth, these haters of Israel create the rationale for
the destruction of the State of Israel. If Jews in Israel are racists
and imperialists, the modern blood libel posits that Israel has no
legitimate reason to exist. If the Independence War of 1948 is an
example of Jewish ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians - although we
all know that it was a war in which the Jews had to fight off Arab
armies in battles of self-defense - then the basis of Israel's
existence is in doubt. If Gaza City is the Warsaw Ghetto, as the
libelers claim, then Hamas is a group of freedom fighters, heroes of
the free world. How absurd are these claims! If only the Jews of the
Warsaw Ghetto would have had sophisticated weaponry and rockets rather
than just the pistols and homemade bombs with which they fought the
Germans. If only the world would have protested the slaughter of Jews
with the same vigor in which they have accused Israel of war crimes in
Gaza.
How pathetic it is that the Damascus Blood Libel is still alive. The
new libel is as disgusting and untrue as its medieval predecessor. To
combat the new accusations we must arm ourselves with the facts and
counter the lies with truth. Perhaps, one day, the world will move
beyond outright lies and come to know the truth.
---
"E invece no. Nessuno osa" (Luca Logi / rodewalder / Golda Meir,
febbraio 2008)
http://raionim.blogspot.com/2009/01/certo-che-i-qassam-sono-pericolosi_05.html

 the protestors. 
E magari fosse solo un affare di integralisti islamici.
La nuova calunnia del sangue è una grande hit rossobruna, e da qualche
tempo anche vaticana, e anche di cattolici molto di base, molto
impegnati, molto democratici, molto oratoriali, che capita di vedere
all'opera su usenet.
Aldilà di tutto, il razzismo (magari sterminazionista) umanitario è una
mutazione decisamente sconcertante. Ti dice che alla fantasia mimetica
non c'è veramente un limite.
Tb