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Blood Libel Goes Mainstream

[Rubin Report] Barry Rubin - On Aug. 18, Aftonbladet, Sweden's largest newspaper with close ties to the Swedish Social Democratic Party, published an article saying that Israel's army deliberately kidnaps Palestinian civilians and then murders them so it can cut out and sell their organs to sick people needing transplants. The Swedish story is based on Palestinian sources - like so many slanders of Israel which are widely purveyed. At least the competing newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, blasted the article which it says is an anti-Semitic blood libel without a shred of evidence. What does this incident tell us? That there is no limit to the insanity of how Israel is treated nowadays in so many supposedly responsible intellectual circles. It also tells us that anyone of decency and good intentions should start re-examining right now their credulity in accepting anti-Israel slanders. All this bashing and chipping away at Israel's reputation; this unfair blaming; this blindness toward the goals, behavior, and ideology of radical Islamist forces and Palestinian intransigence is promoting an anti-Semitism beyond anything seen in the Western world since 1945. The time has come to realize that anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, absurd misrepresentation of Israel and the effort to wipe it off the map are all tightly intertwined. We have seen the rise of a systematic industry in wild anti-Israel claims by Palestinians which are repeated without evidence by the Western news media. Palestinians make up charges, tell them to sympathetic reporters or academics or "human rights'" officials who don't demand evidence, and then are widely spread through other willing executioners of truth whose low degree of professionalism and high level of politicization make them conducive to becoming collaborators in the enterprise. The fact that none of these accusations is ever ultimately proven correct seems to have no effect on the industry. The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
2009-08-24 08:00:00
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