If you are unclear on the term Blood Libel...as I was...

[lilyrl]

I have not ever heard the term. Here is a good description for those who also were unaware of the historical significance of the words.

http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/blood_libel.htm

Blood Libel - The blood libel is a false accusation that Jews sacrifice Christian children either to use the blood for various "medicinal" purposes or to prepare Passover Matzoth (unleavened bread) or for vengeance and mock crucifixions. It is one of the central fables of Anti-Semitism of the older (middle ages) type. The blood libel is a phenomenon of medieval and modern Christian anti-Semitism, but spread to the Middle East as early as 1775, when there was a blood libel in Hebron. A second blood libel occurred in Damascus in 1840 and one occurred in Cyprus in the same year. As the blood libel was the subject of folk ballads and literature, it was not simply a religious superstition in Europe, but a staple of popular culture, like most anti-Semitic prejudices.

Blood libels in the both the West and the East were generally occasions for large-scale persecution and judicial murders of Jews, as well as the basis for expulsions and pogroms. There have been about 150 cases of blood libel that were actually tried by Catholic authorities, and many other rumored cases that never came to trial.

The enduring nature of the blood libel is one of its most remarkable features. It was an invention of the pagans. It was revived and exploited in medieval Christian superstition, later promoted deliberately by the counter-reformation and the Inquisition, By the 19th century, much of the "old" anti-Semitism of the medieval period had passed from the world, but the libel persisted. It has been transplanted to the United States and the belief flourishes in Muslim countries as well. Investigations, instigations and enforcement had been transferred in part from the Roman Catholic Church to lay authorities: Tsarist police, Polish police and even New York State Troopers.

Various immediate political or other motivations are often attached to the accusations, such as desire to obtain Jewish property, but the libel could not succeed if large numbers of people did not believe it, and they do. The blood libel is not a thing of the past. The idea that ritual sacrifice is practiced by Jews is held by supposedly learned professors, one of whom asked complains that:

More at the link above....

[me b zola]

1. K&R

[RainDog]

2. it was an integral part of the persecution of Jews in the middle ages in Europe

when European nations were theocracies that roused their populations to crusades.

The use of the term is associated with forced conversion of Jews to Christianity - which is, creepily, restated in fundamentalist apocalytic eschatology - the fundies think Jews will convert en masse to Christianity in the end times or die - this is also where Coulter's repulsive "perfected Jews" slur derives from.

[lilyrl]

4. Thanks

I took a History of the Holocaust class in college a long while ago, but I just didn't recall the term.

I wish I could say I am shocked by Sarah Palin's continued inflammatory hate speech, but I am not.

[RainDog]

6. Christians blamed Jews for killing their own children

this is where it gets really repulsive on Palin's part.

part of the hysteria used to justify acts of terror against members of their own nations had to do with claims that those Jews who refused to convert would kill themselves and their children.

so Palin is saying that she is being accused of killing a nine-year-old in the same way that Jews were accused of killing their own children.

she is trying to identify herself with victims who were persecuted because of what the medieval Christian propaganda against them stated - when she was the one who was using loaded and violent political rhetoric and supporting Giffords' opponent who had an ad soliciting money by shooting an M-16 as a way to "target Giffords."

I mean, Palin couldn't be more lowdown if she tried, considering Giffords is Jewish and Palin associates with apocalyptic endtimers among the fundie right wing.

It's the sort of twisted logic that also blamed Jews for being bankers in the middle ages when those who were members of the church were not allowed to be bankers - blaming them for taking the few jobs that were available to them at the time, then harassing them for taking those jobs.

[RainDog]

12. Matthew 27 is the origin of the propaganda - from the crucifixion story

15 Now it was the governor’s custom at the festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. 16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas.

17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

18 For he knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.

19 ...While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”

20 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.

21 “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor.

“Barabbas,” they answered.

22 “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked.

They all answered, “Crucify him!”

23 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”

24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

25 All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”

26 Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

This was the biblical (Medieval) "justification" for saying that Jews were cursed - because they accepted a curse that said the blood of Jesus their guilty choice.

Nazis used this bible story as a way to justify persecution of the Jews by saying that they had brought down punishment on themselves for this choice. They actually published such justifications in magazines aimed at children.

Hitler made this comment to German Bishops at a conference in 1933:

"I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions."

[steve2470]

3. great article, thank you ! nt

[Jack Rabbit]

5. The Prioress' Tale form The Canterbury Tales by Geoffry Chaucer

This is perhaps the best known example of the blood libel in print. The Canterbury Tales was published shortly after Chaucer's death in 1400.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in the link below are those of the Prioress and not necessary those of your humble hare, who in fact roundly condemns them.

Please click http://www.litrix.com/canterby/cante015.htm">here.

[RainDog]

7. GREAT link - some context of the time n/t

[mmonk]

14. Yep.

I remember studying it in English Lit.

[mzmolly]

8. Was she calling liberals, Nazi's again?

sigh

[EFerrari]

10. She was telling her followers, look what the Jewish owned media did to me, imo.

She's a vile, vile, person.

[mzmolly]

11. What a twisted

woman she is.

She's accusing her critics of blood libel, less than a week after people were gunned down in a bloody massacre. A hideous choice of words, on so many levels.

[LeftinOH]

9. I wasn't, either -and for that reason I (personally) would not have used it. n/t

[MindPilot]

13. I had not heard the term until today

Thank you for that information.