By David Harsanyi, dENVER pOST
Wasn’t it moving to see progressive tweetdom and punditry unite in the defense of Jewry — in the Middle Ages? As a member of this most oppressed minority, I personally want to thank you.
After all, how dare she? The media are so sick and tired of Sarah Palin’s shtick (that’s one of the words we use in private) that they created a stampede to Wikipedia to quickly figure out just how divisive this “blood libel” thing, whatever it means, could be to American discourse.
Now, just for the record, we Jews haven’t been using the blood of gentile kids for our baking needs in at least a couple of decades, but in historical terms, blood libel refers to false accusations that Jews were murdering children to use their blood in religious rituals — and an excuse for anti-Semitism. It was heavily utilized in the Middle Ages by some Christians and, with a few modifications, is a regular smear in the Muslim world today.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of Israel antagonists at J Street (an outfit that USA Today accidentally referred to as “a political organization for Jews and supporters of Israel”), spoke for hundreds when he claimed that “the term ‘blood libel’ brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds” and demanded that Palin “retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words.”
Really? Memory? Inflammatory? Painful echoes?
Jews, well, we can be offended like it’s 1257.
If blood libel is really a distasteful parallel, it is only because we have intimately familiarized ourselves with the idea through a History channel documentary about the crusades. And if our institutional memories make us so thin-skinned, there are far more tangible reminders of genocide when we hop into our fancy German cars (which we do a lot, because we’re in charge of everything). Or it is certainly as offensive as the heinous deeds of Sarah Palin, which include, among many other transgressions, talking.
And as Jim Geraghty of National Review helpfully noted, the term “blood libel” has been used many times by pundits and journalists from both sides of the ideological divide, including the esteemed Frank Rich of The New York Times, over the years.
Liberal Alan Dershowitz, as sensitive as they come to anti-Semitism (both real and imagined), said in a statement that “there is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.”
Now, feel free to be annoyed or enraged by Palin or her views. Feel free to question whether she had any idea what a blood libel was before this week. But this kind of indignation over an analogy is infantilizing what were once serious sensitivities.
Perhaps if self-proclaimed spokespeople for Jews everywhere like J Street focused on genuine anti-Semitism around the world, their little partisan cabaret would be more plausible.
Blood libel is the fiction-laden, anti-Israel Goldstone Report. Blood libel is the flotilla incident near Gaza. Blood libel is the Egyptian state media’s peddling the idea that shark attacks were the handiwork of Jews and other state-run Arab media’s blaming AIDS on Zionists.
There are plenty of genuine things to get offended about in the world if you’re Jewish.
So did you. 😉
But he did a better job than Baker.
Diplomatic and Legal Aspects
of the Settlement Issue
There is not much that is correct in this essay and having been a very active participant in much of the history he relates to I say he doesn’t know what he is talking about.
yamit82,
“Did you read my link to the article in Ha’aretz?”
I read the article but it appears to have been written by Zvi Bar’el, not you.
It is his point of view only.
For the legalities of the matter please read;
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-16.htm
Mickey
Did you read my link to the article in Ha’aretz?
I am not saying or even debating upholding the Law as long as it applied equally, without bias and prejudice and not to a specific and singled out group as is the case with settlements and Jewish settlers ovrer the Green Line.
yamit82,
I don’t have a clue what you are trying to say.
However, I’ll give you the benefit of my doubt.
Mickey
Here is a real example of Blood Libel!
Settlers no longer look to Israel, or its laws
There, beyond the Green Line, there are norms taking root that render Israeli courts impotent. Over there, the new real estate laws and symbols of the State of Israel are being created. Judea and Samaria, as we have been taught, is here.
I always get a good laugh when I read someone commenting on an issue and quoting something Jstreet espouses as “mainstream Jewish opinion”. Its like a nice red flag that the person either hasn’t a clue or is a liberal ‘tard that chooses to create his/her own reality.
J Street aren’t Jews.
I’m with Mickey. Palin hasn’t pissed off anyone as Dan says. She has been unfairly maligned. Her weakness in the polls has to do with the enormous effort of the left to mischaracterize her and not with any deficiency in her character or platform.
I don’t count her out yet.
Mickey Oberman
Palin is all of the above and a lot more. But Mickey today she could not be elected game warden of Alaska or any other jurisdiction. In a very short period of time she has managed to piss off just about every segment of American society, and now the Jews.
Unless we want to ensure an Obama victory, we must find another candidate-Palin does not cut it.
In all my years of political activism, years of listening to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter,….I have never heard of any liberal or leftist singled out for persecution the way Sarah Palin has.
Sarah Palin is clever and capable and honest and forthright and moral and genuine.
Because of these admirable qualities she has become a target of the far less endowed.
Unfortunately she will always be in the scope sights of those who can never hope to achieve her fine qualities.
I am sure she is wise enough to realize the origins of such slurs and takes them for the mindless trash they are.
As a Jew, I know exactly the meaning of “blood libel”. She used the term quite correctly.
I tried killing a little Christian kid. I took his blood, mixed it with flour and water, and guess what?
RED MATZOH’s. In all of these centuries of bullshit, didn’t anyone ever think: “Duh…..who ever in the
world has seen a red matzoh”? Surely no Jew, no Catholic, No Methodist, No Muslim. NOBODY. That’s just
about as stupid as a cabal of hooknosed Jews hunched over a conference table directing the movements of
governments and armies around the world. People have to be pretty stupid to have believed these lies for
so many years. There must be a whole lot of stupid people continuously breeding more and more stupid people
around this world.
It’s ironic that J Street, which receives funding and collaborates with genuine anti-Semites would pretend to be offended by Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel”.
Delusional loser putz (Denver) stands up for Sarah Palin. That’s news?