    Bloodcurdling Libel (a Summer Story)
    By Israel Shamir

    Summer heat presents a great challenge to the non-air-conditioned world.
    When thermometers soar into the roaring forties (or into triple digits
    for Fahrenheit adepts), mankind slows down and seeks salvation in watery
    and shady places. Families with children depart for seashore, and
    elegant couples perambulate to the mountains. But the most sophisticated
    defence against sticky sweat and discomfort was discovered by the
    inventive Japanese. On the hottest summer nights, they gather around and
    tell bloodcurdling horror stories, chilling spines and sending goose
    pimples to their silky smooth skin. In July, all Tokyo cinemas screen
    favourite horror movies, from Kwaidan with its host of ghosts to
    Godzilla meting out vengeance on New York. After such films, the
    Japanese bravely face the suffocating heat.

    This summer, the Japanese example was emulated by David Aaronovitch in
    the British weekly, The Observer. In order to chill blood of his English
    readers, he turned to “Blood Libel”, recurring story of Jews kidnapping
    Christian children, killing them and “using their blood in arcane
    rituals. We had a spate of these tales in England in the twelfth and
    thirteenth centuries, and many Jews lost their lives as a result”, he
    wrote. “So what on earth is the blood libel doing in a column in the
    respected Egyptian mass daily paper Al-Ahram, in a book by the Syrian
    defence minister and in broadcast sermons from various Palestinian
    mosques?” asks Aaronovitch. He explains that “the libel in question is
    the 1840 Damascus case, in which several Jews (including a David Harari)
    'confessed' to the Ottoman authorities - under torture - to kidnapping a
    priest and stealing his blood.” The priest murdered in Damascus was
    hardly a child, but it does not stop Aaronovitch. He knows nothing of
    the case, but it does not stop him either. He just KNOWS a Jew has to be
    innocent. Aaronovitch is not alone. Jackie Yakubowsky in Sweden and a
    plethora of his brethren from New York to Moscow remind their readers
    the sins of Damascus. If you ran an internet search, you would find this
    expression used extensively whenever a Jewish scribe is unhappy with an
    accusation levelled at a Jew: be it Marc Rich escaping with his billions
    from the tax authorities, George Soros impoverishing Malaysia, Ariel
    Sharon accused of mass murder before a Belgian court, or Muhammad
    ad-Durra shot in the eyesight of millions of TV spectators, it is always
    a case of Blood Libel. It does not have to be connected to children and
    blood anymore. Whatever Jews do not like is ‘antisemitism’. But if a
    truly unpleasant accusation is aired, the best defence is to roll your
    eyes to heaven and proclaim, ‘It is Blood Libel’, as Shimon Peres did
    when the world condemned the Jenin Massacre.

    ‘Blood Libel’ is the Jewish battle cry, on a par with the ‘Montjoie St
    Denis’ of the French chevaliers and ‘St. George for merry England’, of
    the English knights. And whenever it is used, Jews are mobilised into
    action, and Gentiles are horrified by the accusation and silenced.

    When the toll of murdered Palestinian children rose into the hundreds
    and began to attract attention of international organisations, the
    spirit of the blood libel was promptly ushered forth as the ultimate
    defence for the killers. It helped, even though the head of Shabak, the
    Israeli Secret Service, wondered in a prime-time TV interview why so
    many children were being gratuitously murdered by Israeli soldiers.

    The scaring expression can be used against disobedient Jews as well.
    When Edward Herman, the author of [1]Manufacturing Consent , wrote of
    “the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States, which advances
    Israeli interests by pushing for U.S. aid and protection to Israel, and,
    currently, by pressing for a war against Iraq, which again will serve
    Israeli interests. This lobby has not only helped control media debate
    and made congress into `Israeli occupied territory’, it has seen to it
    that numerous officials with ‘dual loyalties’ occupy strategic
    decision-making positions in the Bush administration…”, a Jewish
    American filmmaker David Rubinson wrote to me and called Herman’s words
    ‘the ultimate blood libel’. My own reference to murdered Palestinian
    children was described as ‘blood libel’ by The Jerusalem Post, the
    far-right daily published by Conrad Black

    The frequent and tendentious use of the horrifying label (together with
    ‘antisemitism’ and ‘protocols of the Elders of Zion’) brought a certain
    depreciation of its value, but it is still going strong. You can’t
    ever-ever consider that there might be some truth to the Blood Libel,
    the accusation of ritual murder of children. Or can you? The Blood Libel
    was recently aired by the Observer, the weekly that published
    Aaronovitch, and nothing happened. Here is the press clipping:

    {story about black 'torso boy' floating in thames}

    Now you have recovered your breath. Now you are relaxed. It’s Blacks who
    commit ritual murders, not Jews. Who cares? In Raymond Chandler’s
    Farewell, My Lovely, a news-hawk enters the scene of a crime literally
    awash in blood, learns from a policeman that the carve-up was done by
    Harlem dwellers, exclaims: ‘aw, hell, shines’, and drives away. For some
    reason an accusation of ritual murder by Blacks is not called ‘Blood
    Libel’, just as genocide of Blacks or Armenians is no ‘Holocaust’.

    "If Palestinians were black, Israel would be a pariah state subject to
    economic sanctions led by the United States," The Observer editorialized
    after the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Oh no, if Palestinians were
    black (and only some are), slavery would be re-established in the United
    States, and the great Jewish sage Maimonides’ maxim [2] ‘Blacks are less
    than human’ would be embossed in gold on the US dollar. Indeed,
    Afro-American ‘Israel’, Liberia, for 160 years of its existence received
    less US aid than the Jewish ‘Liberia’, Israel, in a month.

    Why accusation of Blacks in ritual murder is taken so easily, while
    accusation of a Jew creates waves in the conscience? Can we deal with
    the accusation of Jews in the same straightforward, unattached and
    businesslike manner The Observer and the Scotland Yard dealt with
    similar accusation of Blacks? For if not, our self-declared anti-racism
    is not worth a penny.

    Jews do not mind some blood-libelling. Palestinian parents are
    habitually blamed by Jewish scribes of ritually sacrificing their own
    children by exposing them to the justifiable fury of Israeli soldiers.
    In an article called Child Sacrifice, Palestinian Style a Reuven Koret
    (Capitalism Magazine, November 13, 2002) marks: [3] “the Palestinians
    started sacrificing their own sons and daughters as a matter of policy,
    as a sacred ritual” The Jerusalem Post wrote of Palestinian [4] “parents
    and leaders who proudly send children to die in attacks against Israel
    and resort to targeting Israeli children as well” , while the singularly
    malicious Cynthia Ozick wrote: ‘But the most ingeniously barbarous
    Palestinian societal invention, surpassing any other in imaginative
    novelty, is the recruiting of children to blow themselves up with the
    aim of destroying as many Jews as possible in the most crowded sites
    accessible’

    For some reasons, practically none of the Jewish readers [5] wrote to
    these publications and protested ‘blood libel’ or ‘wholesale accusation
    of the entire community nefariously used to spread hatred and inflame
    racial animosity to the point of murder and massacre’, as David Rubinson
    protested both Herman’s essays and mine. Apparently it is OK to accuse a
    whole community as long as it is not a Jewish community. Blood Libel is
    also OK as long as Jews are the accusers, not the accused.

    However, it is the belief in Jewish (not Palestinian) ritual child
    murders that was widespread and persistent. The old Jewish
    Encyclopaedia, Vol. III, 266, lists the following cases, beginning with
    William of Norwich: 5 other cases given for the twelfth century, 15 for
    the thirteenth, 10 for the fourteenth, 16 for the fifteenth, 13 for the
    sixteenth, 8 for the seventeenth, 15 for the eighteenth, and 39 for the
    nineteenth, going right up to the year 1900 (total 113). There have been
    more cases in the [6] 20th century . What is the reason for this belief?
    Was there a world-wide and centuries-spanning conspiracy to implicate
    innocent Jews in heinous crime or is there a crime behind accusations?

    II

    This question was tackled by fearless Professor Israel Yuval of Hebrew
    University in Jerusalem in his seminal [7] book , available in Hebrew.
    Its English translation was supposed to appear a few years ago in
    California University Press, but for variety of reasons this has not
    happened yet. It is certainly sheer coincidence that some American
    Jewish scholars objected to this book being published and called to
    ‘erase it from public conscience’

    Yuval discovered actual irrefutable child murder beyond the Blood Libel.
    During the First Crusade, impatient folk tried to forcibly baptise Jews
    of Rein Valley in order to save their souls from the satanic cult of
    hate, as they saw it. Their refusal to be baptised was seen as stubborn
    adherence to Satan: for the pre-modern people, our present religious
    indifference was unacceptable. They saw a direct connection between
    faith and behaviour, and felt the need for communal worship, for
    unifying communion. A Jew permanently residing in a Christian land
    created a complicated situation: he was free from duty of brotherly love
    and could (and often did) act in anti-social way, for instance he
    practiced usury and sorcery. The Christians were particularly worried by
    the well-attended Jewish custom of cursing Gentiles. Every day Jews
    asked God to kill, destroy, humiliate, exterminate, defame, starve,
    impale Christians, to usher in Divine Vengeance and to cover God’s
    mantle with blood of goyim. Israel Yuval’s book offers its reader a good
    selection of bloodcurdling curses.

    The Crusaders were non-racists. They did not think the Jews were
    irredeemably evil, but they rejected the ideology of hate and vengeance
    expressed in the curses. They also feared the curses, as much as Jews
    did. (In modern Israel, cursing is a criminal offence punishable by
    prison). Indeed, for Jews and for Christians of that time the curses
    were not just silly offensive words, but potent magic weapon. They
    offered Jews expulsion or conversion, this old-style equivalent of our
    modern psychological treatment meted out to adepts of totalitarian
    sects. At that time, the Slavs and the Scandinavians were also forcibly
    baptised, and it made eminent sense to baptise the Jews living in the
    Christian lands as well.

    However, the Jews did not take the attempt to bring them into New Israel
    lightly. Whenever the ‘danger’ of baptism became imminent, many of them
    murdered their own children and committed suicide. It is not deniable:
    Jewish and Christian chroniclers of the period describe these events at
    length, with Jews glorifying this Waco-like behaviour, and Christians
    condemning it. Did they murder the children in order to save them from
    Christ? Well, not exactly. That would be bad, but the reality was worse.
    The murder was performed as ritual slaughter followed by victim’s blood
    libation, for the Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has
    a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the
    Gentiles. Others used the victim’s blood for atonement. In Mainz,
    Yitzhak b. David, the community leader, brought his small children into
    the synagogue, slaughtered them and poured their blood on the Arc,
    proclaiming ‘Let this blood of innocent lamb be my atonement for my
    sins’. It happened two days after the confrontation with Christians,
    when the danger passed by.

    The picture of Jews slaughtering children for cultic reasons exerted
    huge impact on the Christian peoples of Europe. This behaviour was not
    comparable to Christian martyrdom. While Christian martyrs allowed
    others to kill them for their faith, they never committed suicide, and
    certainly never murdered their (or anybody else’s) children for such
    purpose. It enforced an image of Jewish cruelty and ruthlessness. Over
    the years, the actual circumstances of the child murders were forgotten,
    but the picture of a Jew slaughtering children remained imprinted in the
    European matrix. (Yuval uses the thesis of Robert Graves, who explained
    many traditions of the Church by its misreading of old images.) This was
    the source of the idea that Jews murder Christian children, while in
    fact, Jews murdered their own children, writes Professor Yuval.

    Indeed, Blood Libel accusations appeared soon after the murder of
    children in Germany. Yuval speaks with horror about these accusations,
    completely missing the point: a ritual murder of a child is a ritual
    murder of a child. If some Jews committed this heinous crime in Mainz
    and Worms, and other Jews exalted this crime as exemplary behaviour even
    in Israeli historical books written in 1950s, is there any place left
    for indignation and horror concerning similar accusations in Norwich or
    Blois, or indeed in Damascus or Kiev? If Yuval thinks that a Jew can use
    only Jewish blood for libation to wake up af Adonai (the fury of
    Yahweh), in some cases, the kidnapped child was circumcised before being
    murdered, i.e. ‘made a Jewish child’. And for atonement, even lamb’s
    blood will do.

    Numerous medieval stories about Jews killing their children for visiting
    a church or for considering baptism do not surprise. Parents and
    relatives of converts went into full mourning for converts. Even in the
    20th century, gentle Tevye the Milkman, an ideal hero of Sholem
    Aleichem’s Fiddler on the Roof, mourned his baptised daughter. The
    mourning rite for a person alive is a traditional magic means to kill
    the person. Greater believers in the power of magic probably died of it,
    as Frazer tells us in his enormous collection of lore. If you try to
    kill somebody by magic means why restrain yourself from more mundane
    killing?

    Over a period of eight hundred years Jews were convicted in more than
    hundred cases of ritual murder and blood sacrifice Jews were found
    guilty of. It is a reasonable amount if we think in terms of religious
    maniacs. Probably any religious community of similar size would produce
    similar amount of deviants like [the 15th-century marshal of France]
    Gilles de Rais or Comorre the Cursed [a 6th-century Breton chief]. It
    would be strange if all the cases were ‘libel’. The concept of the magic
    powers of blood was embedded in the Jewish thinking. Blood was used for
    atonement libation. Yes, it was lamb’s blood, but in the Mainz case, it
    was children’s blood that served in its place. In the Christian world,
    there were people who practiced black magic and human sacrifices in a
    perverted ‘Christian’ ritual. They would substitute human blood for wine
    of communion that is the blood of Christ that is the blood of Paschal
    Lamb. Is it reasonable to think that the Jews never ever produced
    magicians and sorcerers who would use human blood to wash off sins or to
    hasten Salvation?

    III

    On the other hand, it is possible that the connection of blood
    sacrifices and matzo of Passover or homentash of Purim is but a popular
    belief. The mystic idea of libation could be misunderstood by simple
    people. Yuval explains it by a combination of different traditions and
    their misinterpretation.

    Jews hated Christianity with all their hearts and had many magic
    ceremonies at the time of Easter, Purim and Passover, directed against
    Christ and Christianity. They made dolls attached to a cross and burned
    them or defamed them in various ways; they desecrated host and parodied
    communion. The custom of ‘leaven eradication’ on the Passover morning
    was also meant to symbolise and to lead magically to the eradication of
    goyim, writes Yuval. Occasionally they killed priests and nuns. Prayers
    of Passover were full of anti-Christian references, some of which have
    survived to the present day, namely Shepoch Hamatha, a prayer demanding
    God’s vengeance upon goyim, and Aleinu Leshabeyach, a prayer describing
    Christ and His Mother in most blasphemous terms.

    The Christians mentally bridged these phenomena, writes Yuval. If Jews
    hate Christ and Christians, desecrate host and were seen murdering their
    own children in a ritual way, probably they murder others’ children in
    connection with Easter or Passover, as well, thought the Christians
    according to Yuval. But in his opinion, though the basic facts were
    right, the conclusion was not. Jews did not use blood for matzo, he
    writes.

    However, the belief of Jewish usage of blood for matzo can be explained
    better than by general hatred to Christians. In Jewish Passover rites, a
    small piece of unleavened bread, afikoman was the symbol of the Paschal
    Lamb. It was hidden at the beginning of the Passover Seder. One can
    imagine a mystic who would give a direct literal meaning to the metaphor
    of Afikoman as the Paschal Lamb. It was claimed by many Jews who left
    the fold and joined the Church, and they also noted that afikoman was
    baked secretly and separately. Some of them explained that blood was not
    added directly into dough, but burned and its ashes are used in a ritual
    reminiscent of the Red Heifer purification.

    For Israel Yuval, a believing Jew, any evidence given by a convert is
    ‘suspicious’ and ‘doubtful’, but it is part of longstanding Jewish
    tradition to discredit non-Jewish evidence. Likewise, the Israeli ‘New
    Historians’ have just confirmed the data obtained by their Palestinian
    colleagues, but their confirmation of 1948’ horrors made a big impact in
    the West, as non-Jewish research was considered ‘suspicious’ and
    ‘doubtful’ in the Jewish-dominated discourse. For non-racists, there is
    no reason to doubt evidence given by non-Jews or ex-Jews. For if the
    objection to converts is based on rejection of renegades per se, one
    should object to evidence of the authors of Darkness at Noon (Arthur
    Koestler) and Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell), or even David
    Aaronovitch, for they gave up their communist faith for another one.

    The converts knew what they said, and Yuval confirms it. For instance, a
    convert in Norwich explained that ‘Jews believe that without human blood
    shed they can’t regain their land and their freedom’. It is, according
    to Yuval, a correct interpretation of the Ashkenazi idea of Vengeance as
    the path to Salvation. “Jews actually believed that their Salvation
    depends on Extermination of Gentiles”, he writes. Yes, they hoped God
    and/or their Messiah will do the work, but does this caveat amounts to
    an alibi?

    If I hope and pray that John will kill my enemy Harry, and Harry is
    indeed found dead, don’t my hopes and prayers serve as a strong reason
    for suspicion against me, rather than a full alibi? ‘Oh no, he hoped
    John would do it, so surely he could not have done it himself?’

    This recalls an immortal line by [8] Raymond Chandler . His private eye
    Marlowe discovers a handkerchief with fitting initials on the scene of
    murder. The suspect, a well-bred young lady on intimate terms with the
    victim, indignantly rejects his suspicion. Marlowe ironically calls out:
    “This hanky bears your initials, and it was found under victim’s pillow,
    but this rag stinks of cheap synthetic sandalwood, and you wouldn’t use
    a cheap scent. And you just never keep your hankies under a man’s
    pillow. Therefore this has nothing to do with you! Isn’t it too
    elaborate?”

    IV

    The last public discussion of blood sacrifice took place less than a
    hundred years ago. In 1911, in Kiev (now the capital of Ukraine, then a
    major city of the Russian Empire) Andrew, a 12-year old student of a
    church school was brutally and unusually murdered. There were 47 wounds
    on his body; his blood was drained off while his mouth was gagged. It
    appears the murder had a ritual character, as did the murder of the
    Torso boy in England of our days. It could have been done by a Satanist,
    by a fanatic, or another obsessed person. Could such a person be of
    Jewish origin? Yes. Could the murderer have been driven by some peculiar
    misconceptions of the Jewish faith? We have seen that the answer is
    ‘yes’.

    However, 400 Rabbis wrote a letter to the authorities and to the court
    denying the very possibility of such a miscreant. In a mass paroxysm of
    hysteria, Russia was divided between believers and disbelievers in the
    ritual murders. The Liberal media accepted philosemitic thesis: Jews
    can’t kill. Certainly not in a ritual way. The Tsar wisely enquired how
    somebody can be as sure as the 400 Rabbis. He touched the most important
    point.

    There is no crime that Russians, English, Americans, French or Chinese,
    or alternatively, Christians, Muslims, or Buddhists would say that their
    fellow countrymen or co-religionists were unable to commit. We know that
    humans are capable of both to highest inspiration and to basest cruelty.
    Human sacrifices were known to all nations, even to the Greeks
    (Iphigenia) and Hebrews (Jephtah). However, the Jews, whose religion
    contains the religious duty of genocide (Amalek), the religious duty to
    curse Gentiles, who actually practiced ritual murder of children (albeit
    their own), were ready to vouch for co-members of Israel: Jews could not
    do it. This extraordinary degree of tribal solidarity positioned Jews in
    a separate category. Not a nation, not a religion, but a mutual
    protection syndicate.

    ‘It is an accusation of the entire Jewish people’, the Rabbis wrote. It
    was a lie: only one man was accused, and later found innocent. But their
    approach was tactically useful: masses of Jews from New York to Moscow
    were mobilised to defend Beyliss. Liberal public opinion in Russia,
    Europe and America supported them.

    Only one man of note, [9] Vasili Rosanov , a brilliant maverick, poet,
    writer and religious thinker, once forgotten but now rather popular in
    post-Soviet Russia, was convinced that Andrew was martyred by Jews,
    though not necessarily by Beyliss. (The Russian intelligentsia
    ostracised him) Previously an extreme philosemite (he had planned to
    convert into Judaism) he was touched by dreadful fate of young Andrew
    and upset that none of Beyliss defenders cared about the cruelly
    murdered child. He wrote an interesting [10] memoir , trying to prove
    that Jews actually practiced human sacrifices.

    He dabbed with Cabbala, drew diagrams of Andrew’s wounds worthy of his
    contemporary Alistair Crawley, and quoted many verses from the Old
    Testament, Talmud and even New Testament dealing with blood. In his
    conclusions he referred to the Jewish custom of sucking the blood of a
    circumcised member, and to rather cruel Jewish [animal] slaughter rules
    (now banned in some European countries). His most interesting insight
    was quite surprising even for a lapsed Christian he was: he considered
    that Old Biblical Judaism, the forerunner of Christianity, knew and
    practiced human sacrifices; as otherwise, (he reasoned) Christ would not
    offer Himself as a supreme sacrifice. Rosanov saw in Isaiah, 53 (he was
    pierced for our transgressions etc) – not a prophecy of Christ’s
    Passion, but description of actual human sacrifice at the Jerusalem
    Temple. The worship in the Jerusalem temple of Yahweh was extremely
    bloody indeed, and Mishna tells of rivers of blood pouring forth from
    under its altar. It was condemned by prophets and made the Temple a
    living anachronism by the time of its destruction. It was probably a
    reason why the temple was not rebuilt, but Rosanov’s insights, whether
    true or false, have no direct bearing on the question of human
    sacrifices in 20th century.

    Have no doubt: one can find many quotes in the Bible, Talmud and later
    Cabbalistic books in support of human sacrifices. Dahl, the 19th century
    Danish author of a short treatise on the murders, referred to Numbers
    23:24 (‘drinks the blood of his victims’) and to many other verses. We
    are better equipped for such research than the contemporaries of William
    of Norwich or Andrew of Kiev, for we have better texts. For instance, in
    1913 the experts would not have been able to find such a quote from [11]
    Talmud : “It is good to pierce a goy even on Yom Kippur if it falls on
    Sabbath day. Why ‘pierce’, instead of 'slaughter'? Because slaughter
    demands blessing, while one can pierce without blessing.” Now we have it
    in print in new editions published in Israel. It is usual to view such
    quotes as a sign of the exaggerated hatred of Talmudic sages towards
    ordinary people. But there could appear a mystic, a black magician, who
    would see it as the instruction for Yom Kippur sacrifice, kapparoth.

    However this is not a proof that such cases were numerous, or that this
    tradition was widely spread. Moreover, the scholars who have studied the
    phenomenon and came to accept it for a fact, concluded that such cases
    were rare, and remained unknown to vast majority of Jews.

    Rosanov was as wrong as the Rabbis. They had no business to deny a
    priori a possibility of the crime being committed by a Jew. They were
    wrong in claiming that ‘all Jews’ were accused. Rosanov could not be as
    sure as they were, either. He did not have to turn blood sacrifices into
    the cornerstone of Judaism. However, while facing the united
    philosemitic front, he allowed his pugilist nature to take over his
    better self. We shall reject his attitude as unfair and prejudiced.
    Indeed, the idea of human sacrifice and of blood as atonement is well
    known to Christians and Jews; thus the ritual murder of Andrew could
    have been done by persons of Jewish or non-Jewish background. At best,
    Rosanov’s book might convince a Jewish mystic to try his hand at ritual
    murder and blood libation.

    But the Jews took up the case as the case against all Jews. The Beyliss
    defence team tried to frame one of the key trial witnesses, Vera
    Cheberiak. She was offered a huge bribe by an advocate who admitted that
    he had met her at his initiative in dubious circumstances. Her own
    children were killed ‘by persons unknown’. In 1919, after the Bolshevik
    victory, she was arrested and roughly mistreated by the Jewish
    commissars of Kiev Cheka. She refused to retract her statements,
    insisted that she had spoken the truth and was executed after a
    40-minute [12] ‘trial’

    In the same year 1919, the Soviet Department of Education convened a
    commission to find the final truth about the blood sacrifices. It
    consisted of four Jews and four Christians. Simon Dubnov, a Jewish
    historian, participated in the commission, and in his memoirs he wrote:
    ‘the Russian members did not exclude possibility that there could be a
    secret Jewish sect practising ritual violence. The Jewish members of the
    commission were certain it could not happen at all.’

    Alexander Etkind, our contemporary, a Russian Jewish scholar of
    religions, and an author of authoritative book on Russian sects, wrote
    in his [13] review : “We can be more open nowadays. I do not consider it
    is impossible that among Jews there were a cruel and secretive sect. I
    studied the Russian sects, some of them can be described as bloody,
    vicious, murderous. I am not aware of similar Jewish sects, but I can
    not exclude their existence a priori. Apparently, my feelings are more
    close to that of the Russian members of the commission than to the
    Jewish ones’.

    In the long history of Blood Libel studies, this was the wisest remark
    ever made. Alexander Etkind was right, while David Aaronovitch was
    wrong. A well known Jewish cabbalist and mystic Yitzhak Ginzburg, the
    head of an Israeli Yeshiva Od Yosef Hai, actually confirmed it when he
    recently told the American newspapers, ‘a Jew is entitled to extract
    liver from a goy if he needs it, for life of a Jew is more valuable than
    the life of a goy, likewise life of a goy is more valuable than the life
    of an animal’. Such people won’t see a difference between animal and
    human sacrifice.

    V

    The question of ritual murders divides mankind, but it is not a division
    of Jews versus Gentiles. The real division is equally sharp: on one
    side, philosemites, Jews and Gentiles who a priori exclude a possibility
    of a Jewish guilt. If they find a dead body and a Jew with knife next to
    it, they would exclaim, ‘Not another blood libel!’ On the other hand,
    normal people, Jews and Gentiles who are ready to consider all
    circumstances of each case, without prejudice, as proposed by Alexander
    Etkind. A philosemite a priori excludes a possibility that a cruel or
    ritual murder was committed by a Jew; he is a naïve racist, at best. Mr
    Aaronovitch has no knowledge of the Damascus case. The murder occurred
    in 1840, a long time ago. He just presumes a Jew can’t be guilty, full
    stop.

    The Damascus suspects were tortured, and therefore their confession is
    invalid, writes Aaronovitch. Torture is evil, but in Israel, suspects of
    ‘terrorist crimes’ are invariably tortured. According to Amnesty
    International and other Human Rights Watch bodies, tens of thousands of
    Palestinians, including children, have been tortured in the cellars of
    Shabak. However, Aaronovitch never tried to doubt any Israeli
    conclusions achieved by torture.

    The murder victim was a priest, and it pushes Aaronovitch to classify
    the case as ‘antisemitic blood libel’. But priests, nuns and monks were
    killed by Jews. Hundreds were slaughtered in Antioch in 610, and
    thousands in Jerusalem in 614. Monks and priests are being killed even
    now in Israel. For instance, a few years ago, a settler Asher Rabo
    killed a few monks with an axe and splashed their blood on the walls. He
    was apprehended by a monk from the Jacob’s Well monastery, and was found
    insane by an Israeli court. Later, two Russian nuns were murdered with
    an axe in the St John the Baptist monastery. Practically all murderers
    of priests and desecrators of churches and mosques were found insane by
    Israeli judges, but there was a system to their insanity.

    Aaronovitch presents the Damascus case as ‘libel against all Jews’. But
    it was just one person who was accused of the murder. At the same time,
    Farhi, a Jew of Damascus, had ‘more money than the Bank of England’,
    (wrote a travelling Englishman) and managed the treasury of St Jean
    d’Acre. If an accusation against one Jew is an accusation against all
    Jews, there is no way to correct small errors by small measures.

    Indeed, the philosemites of Aaronovitch ilk brought incredible
    calamities to mankind and to Jews. They excluded a priori the possible
    guilt of Captain Dreyfus or Beyliss. Instead of standing aside and
    allowing the justice to take its due course, they created mass hysteria
    in France and Russia, thus obtaining acquittals but also undermining
    popular belief in the judicial system. After Dreyfus and Beyliss trials,
    Jews rose above the law. This caused the backlash of the 1930s, and the
    back-backlash of our days, and will probably cause a back-back-backlash
    of tomorrow.

    In a better world, Dreyfusards and Beylissists would be sentenced for
    contempt of court; for their unspoken axiom was ‘a Gentile may not judge
    a Jew’. One should not believe or disbelieve ritual murders. The ability
    of men to commit crimes is well known, and there can be monsters like Dr
    Hannibal Lector of The Silence of the Lambs. Some of them are led by
    their peculiar interpretation of the Holy Bible. In our days the
    president of a superpower sent his shock troops to attack a small and
    weak country and killed thousands of men, women and children for he
    believed God wants it. (Yes, this God was Mammon, as the witty Polish
    [14] philosopher noted.) He would have done better to quietly sip the
    blood of babies.

    Jews of our days rarely know they are supposed to eat matzo on Passover,
    let alone afikoman. They are blissfully unaware of the troublesome
    legacy of medieval Jewry. But a few things have survived from those
    times.

    The thought to write this essay came to me as I watched the body count
    of massacred Palestinian children grow daily. Since the start of the
    Second Intifada on September 29, 2000, 2,237 Palestinians have lost
    their lives. This total includes 430 children who were killed; 228 kids
    were under age 15, and 202 others between 15 and 17 years old. This is
    more than all the children that Jews were accused of murdering since
    William of Norwich. Why should one think of the old accusations, when
    there is a fresh new and incontrovertible crime?

    Because the new murderers enjoyed the traditional cover-up. The system
    of cover-up was not created yesterday, it was inherited from the Middle
    Ages, when the Jewish communities were ruled by the omerta code of
    loyalty. A criminal is not supposed ever to surrender a fellow criminal
    to justice. This approach was integrated into the inner life of Jewish
    communities. They even adopted a criminal label ‘moser’ (an informer),
    one who informs non-Jewish authorities of crimes perpetuated by Jews
    against non-Jews. Such a moser is ‘ben mavet’: he may be and should be
    killed by any [15] Jew , preferably on Purim or Passover, but Yom Kippur
    is also a suitable day. For instance, a Jew who learnt of a raving
    fanatic who committed ritual murders was not allowed under pain of death
    to inform the Gentile authorities of the crime. This medieval attitude
    is still with us, as it found its new life in the philosemitic concept
    of a priori innocence of Jews.

    In other words, a philosemite who rejects the very idea of a crime
    committed by a Jew is a potential accessory to murder. Let us look again
    at the cutting from the Observer. Why did it cause no spurts of
    indignation? Does it mean 'we can't compare Jews and Schwartzes'? Or
    does it mean the Blacks have no sick and depraved need to stand up for
    every other [16] Black regardless of the gravity of the crime?

    And now it is the time to disclose the real crime behind the
    allegations, for this crime is still with us. Hundreds of Jews knew of
    the satanic plan by the ‘Avengers’ led by Abba Kovner to poison millions
    of innocent German civilians, men, women and children – and not even one
    reported it to the police, let alone tried to stop it. On a minor note,
    just today the leader of the German Jewish community expressed his
    ‘wholehearted support’ for repulsive Michael Friedman, ‘the man who
    turned his Jewishness into useful tool’, in the words of Haaretz’ [17]
    Benny Zipper and was found sniffing coke in the company of Ukrainian
    whores. This inner quasi-criminal solidarity of Jews - standing up for
    Sharon, standing up for Mark Rich, standing up for Michael Friedman, and
    harbouring every evildoer if he happens to be a Jew or to be good for
    Jews, - that is the real crime behind the Blood Libel, for it has caused
    the murder of hundreds of Palestinian children, with the silent approval
    of philosemites.

    VI

    Paradoxically, Jews tend to harbour criminals because their world view
    is so different from the Christian one. The deepest chasm between
    Christianity and Judaism is not located in the murky area of sacrifices.
    Jews believe in collective salvation, guilt and innocence, Christians –
    in individual salvation, guilt and innocence. That is why a sin
    committed by a Christian has no bearing for the rest of Christians. A
    Christian is free of guilt by virtue of Christ’s incarnation, death and
    resurrection, by virtue of his own baptism and communion. But Jews also
    bear no collective guilt in Christian eyes.

    For a Jew, the admitted guilt of one Jew would turn all Jews into guilty
    ones. That is why for Jews, all Christians (or all Germans, all
    Palestinians etc) are guilty for an offence committed by some of them.
    That is why non-Jews are always guilty in Jewish eyes. Americans are
    guilty because their fathers did not collect all the Jews to their bosom
    in 1930s. Christians are guilty because their ancestors did not like to
    be cursed and occasionally mistreated the cursers. Germans and
    Palestinians, Russians and French – everybody is guilty towards Jews in
    Jewish eyes.

    This Jewish idea of collective responsibility spreads nowadays into
    Christendom. The Germans are obsessed by their feeling of guilt, and in
    masochistic apotheosis buy the Goldhagen’s spew. The Catholic Church
    even asked forgiveness of the Jews. It is good for a wrongdoer to ask
    forgiveness from a wronged person. But acceptance of the Jewish paradigm
    of collective guilt is an error of judgement, as well as a theological
    error. We are free from guilt. The Church is free from guilt. And Jews –
    modern Jews – are free from guilt for whatever their ancestors did. Even
    if medieval Jews harboured a murderous child-killing sect, Jews - our
    contemporaries – are free of guilt.

    Now, when the talk of the Blood Libel is used to induce guilt feelings
    in modern Europeans, one has to admit: the Christians were rather
    wonderful to this hateful group of my ancestors: they were always ready
    to receive them as equals, as beloved brothers and sisters. Just think
    of it: the Jews daily wished the Christians to drop dead, while the
    Christians wanted the Jews to join them and be saved. The generosity of
    the Church was fabulous - even Jews who committed cruel murder could
    save themselves through baptism.

    I think of it when I read Goldhagen’s attacks on the Church, or other
    Jewish writing condemning the Church for its ‘antisemitism leading to
    the holocaust’. Gratitude is not a strong point within the system of
    Jewish moral values. In 1916 Weitzman promised to the British the
    eternal gratitude of the Jews, and they sent their soldiers to die in
    Gaza, Beersheba, Jerusalem and Megiddo for the Jewish national home. By
    1940 the eternity was over, and Jews began to hunt and kill British
    soldiers. In the World War Two, the Russians took in all Jewish
    refugees, lost millions of their soldiers and saved the Jews. Instead of
    gratitude, they compared Stalin to Hitler, spoke of Russian pogroms, and
    demanded (successfully) to introduce sanctions against Russia. Lebanese
    Maronites allied themselves with Israel, only to be dropped like a hot
    brick at the time of withdrawal. But ingratitude to the Church was the
    most extreme case.

    Christians perceived the Jews as people possessed by a demon, and they
    were indeed possessed by a demon of hate. It was not racial, but an
    ideological and theological group, and by giving up the ideas of hate a
    Jew could join mankind. The Jews were treated like Neo-Nazis in modern
    society: repulsive and hateful creatures to be kept at arm’s length but
    to be fully forgiven if they forsook their errors. Many Jews were
    received in the Church, and some became saints, like St Teresa, and some
    became bishops, and some became nobles, and some became teachers and
    scholars. But the most important thing they received from the Church was
    full release from the spirit of hate. They were released from doubt that
    people love them and they went on to love people – not only the chosen
    ones, but everybody.

    VII

    However, we can offer another and more important reading of the ‘blood
    libel’. The pre-modern people were naturally Jungian: they used myth in
    order to convey their thoughts. Medieval Jews were harbingers of
    capitalism and globalisation, the tendencies that were to prove perilous
    for children and for the future of ordinary men. They were usurers, and
    usurers ‘suck the lifeblood’ of their debtors even in modern usage.
    Thus, an accusation of blood sacrifice was a powerful ‘scarecrow’, a
    metaphoric warning to potential borrowers to stay away from the usurers,
    and to be suspicious of burgeoning capitalism.

    We use metaphoric scarecrows now, too. The government could say ‘do not
    use marijuana, for we are heavily invested in wine and liquors, and
    besides, we want you to relax by shopping and not by smoking pot’. But
    they scare the public with pictures of heroin addiction: destitute
    families, health hazards and social consequences. Marijuana is not
    heroin, but without frighteners people won’t heed the warning, the
    campaigners think.

    Poor people of the pre-modern days had no teachings of Marx, and they
    used the language of myth. Indeed, all victims of ritual murder belonged
    to the working classes, and belief in the Jewish ritual murder was
    widespread among the poor who were the first to suffer from the advent
    of capitalism. On the other hand, the royalty and upper classes were
    usually supportive of Jews and punished those who complained of ritual
    murders. In some countries, the complainers were punished by death,
    while in Russia, the Tsar forbade even considering the possibility of
    ritual murder by a Statute of 1817 [18]. Indeed, the ruling classes were
    not afraid of capitalism and usury.

    However, this warning scheme worked until Christians succumbed to the
    temptation of usury in the age of religious tolerance and
    ‘blood-sucking’ stopped being an exclusively Jewish occupation. Mme
    Bovary, this charming and all-too-human character of Flaubert, was
    ruined by a French usurer who trapped her by allaying her fears with
    soothing ‘I am not a Jew’. Then, the old frightening myth was put in
    abeyance for it ceased to be relevant.

    The world became civilised, whole communities and countries became
    indebted, while citizens have gotten trapped into mortgage repayments
    and consumer credit. With the victory of capitalism and spread of
    globalisation, the chances for ordinary children of growing up, finding
    good satisfying work and living peacefully in their own home and
    community as their parents did, took a nosedive. The great danger to our
    children is not a marginal Jew on the fringes of society, but the very
    structure of society; and it calls for an altogether different
    cautioning myth.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    [1] Co-authored with Noam Chomsky
    [2] More Nevochim, or Guide to Perplexed, 3:51 “Chinese and Blacks are less than human but above monkeys”.
    [3] http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2110
    [4] http://www.aish.com/Israel/articles/Targeting_Children.asp
    [5] Here and elsewhere we shall bear in mind an important exclusion of our wonderful comrades, Jews supporting the cause of equality in Palestine.
    [6] See Medieval Sourcebook http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html for details. It offers the following list of saints and martyrs: William of Norwich, d. 1144, Richard of Pontoise or of Paris, d. 1179, Herbert of Huntingdon, d. 1180 -, Dominic of Val, 1250, Hugh of Lincoln, d. 1255, Werner of Oberwesel, d. 1287, Rudolf of Berne, d. 1294, Conrad of Weissensee, d. 1303 , Louis or Ludwig of Ravensburg d. 1429, Anderl of Rinn, d. 1462, Simon of Trent, d. 1475, Lorenzino Sossio, d. 1485
    [7] Two Nations in Thy Womb, or Perceptions of Jews and Christians, Tel Aviv, Am Oved 2000
    [8] The Lady in the Lake
    [9] http://www.reec.uiuc.edu/srl/Rozanov/rozanov_program.htm
    [10] Jewish attitude to smell and touch of blood, reprinted Moscow 1998
    [11] Hesronot Shas, Pesahim mem tet 13 bet, Omar R Eliezer, am haaretz mutar lenochro byom kipurim shehal lihiot beshabat. Omru lo talmidav, Rabbi, emor "leshohto"! Omar lahen ze taun bracha, uze ein taun bracha.
    [12] Memoirs of Chekist, Prague 1925, quoted from Solzhenitsyn, 200 years I:451 M 2002
    [13] Kololol Nr 1, London – Moscow 2002
    [14] Marek Glogoczowski
    [15] See extensive study in Israel Shahak and Norton Medvinsky book , Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. Hastily written and under-edited (for instance it refers to the Arc as ‘holy cupboard’!), it still provides much of valuable material.
    [16] Save OJ
    [17] Haaretz, 11 July 2003
    [18] Beyliss case took place after reforms of 1905 which voided the old statutes and made the trial possible