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Tales of Infanticide Have Stoked Hatred of Jews for Centuries. They Echo Still Today
(Observer-UK) Howard Jacobson - In 1955, the Church of England put up a plaque in Lincoln Cathedral, apologizing for the harm it had done by falsely accusing Jews of the ritual slaughter of Little Hugh in 1255. That Jews habitually murdered gentile children for blood with which to make Passover matzoh was a popular superstition throughout Britain and Europe in the Middle Ages. The "blood libel," as it became known, set the Jews apart from the entire human family; depraved, accomplices of the devil - and, of course, justified hunting them down and massacring them. There could hardly have been a more unlikely crime to charge Jews with, given the strict taboo on blood sacrifice and the extreme laws against blood contact and consumption laid down in the Torah. It is hateful to be accused of what you haven't done, but more hateful still to be accused of what you would never dream of doing. Night after night, our televisions have told the story of the war in Gaza through the death of Palestinian children and a recital of the numbers dead. Here we were again, the same merciless infanticides inscribed in the imaginations of medieval Christians. Even when there are other explanations for the devastation, no one really believes them. Reporters whose reports are proved wrong see no reason to apologize. What is there to apologize for? It could have been true. Ask how Israel is able to target innocent children with such deadly accuracy and no one can tell you. Ask why they would want to target innocent children and no one can tell you that either. Hate on this scale seeks no rational explanation. Hate feeds off the superstitions that fed it last time round. Compare reporting from Gaza with reporting from Ukraine. Bombs have fallen there, too, but how often is the burial of Ukrainian children the lead story?