Generally when I want to see what the antisemites of the right are doing, I check out Stormfront. When I want to see what the antisemites of the left are doing, I check out Gilad Atzmon.
As it happens, at the moment they're both leaping in glee over the same story -- a story, it turns out, that has almost a thousand years of history behind it.
So let's take a look. Along the way we'll bump into Geoffrey Chaucer, UK folk rock, the Syrian Minister of Defense, and -- oh by the way -- about a couple thousand stolen organs.
Meet Little Hugh of Lincoln
First, though, a musical interlude.
That's Steeleye Span, a UK folk rock group, doing their version of a medieval ballad "Little Sir Hugh."
You won't know from the sanitized Steeleye Span version, but it's actually a centuries-old song about blood libel. In particular, it's about the fact that in 1255 the body of a nine-year-old boy was found dead in a well. Being proper medieval Christians, the city's response was to threaten the nearest Jew with torture (which, when you strip away the legal euphemism, means threatened with more torture) unless he confessed the horrid truth: turns out the Jews of were bound by Jewish law to kill -- by crucifixion, natch -- one Christian child a year. By the time the accusation orgy was over, ninety Jews were in the Tower of London, eighteen of them later hanged, and the antisemitic lie of the blood libel was still gaining steam.
The blood libel -- the idea that the Jews conspire to ritually kill gentiles for blood to drink -- was so ingrained in European culture that Geoffrey Chaucer included an example in "The Canterbury Tales." In "The Prioress' Tale" a Christian boy is kidnapped and has his throat slit by the e-e-e-eevil Jews, and the story of Hugh is mentioned in passing:
O younge Hugh of Lincoln! slain also
With cursed Jewes, -- as it is notable,
For it is but a little while ago, --
Little Hugh of Lincoln was, I should mention, sainted.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Stephen Dedalus sings the tune to Leopold Bloom in the "Ithaka" chapter of Ulysses, sheet music and all, which shouldn't surprise anyone because every damn thing in the world is in that damn book.
On Through the Centuries
The case of Little Hugh wasn't the first blood libel (that honor apparently goes to William of Norwich a century before), and it wasn't the last; it was only the most musical. The blood libel formed a central stream of antisemitic discourse through not only medieval Europe but reaching far beyond the middle ages. The last guy I know of to officially be charged with ritually killing a gentile boy for his blood was less than a century ago.
And here's Snopes on the leading Saudi daily's apologies for having published the blood libel in 2002.
And here's something from Russia just last year.
In short: a lie that wouldn't die -- although all the Jews murdered through history for it could die well enough.
And Now For Something Not At All Completely Different
It's a sad truism now that the standard memes of antisemitic rhetoric are continually being given fresh blood (so to speak) by those who would apply them to "the Zionists." And the blood libel is no exception:
Read it and weep:
On Oct. 28, 2001 the largest circulation Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, published an article titled "A Jewish Matzah Made from Arab Blood." It summarized The Matzah of Zion [an antisemitic book pushing the blood libel, written in 1986 by Mustafa Tlass, the Defense Minister of Syria], concluding thus: "The bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared being found, torn to pieces without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be kneaded into the dough of extremist Jews to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover."
Oh, hey, never would have seen that one coming. Never in 900 years.
But wait! They were talking about the Zionists, not the Jews. That makes it all, all better, all hunkydory and peachy and kosher, doesn't it? I mean, smearing the Zionists with an antisemitic meme instantly cures it of being antisemitic, right, because you're not talking about the Jews?
Only if you're either very stupid or very willing to wave away history you find inconvenient.
The Swedish National Enquirer Steps Up
Imagine the National Enquirer -- except more irresponsible, and published daily in Swedish. That's Aftonbladet. Up until this year, they were best known for having hounded Ingmar Bergman out of Sweden.
Then they took it to a new level.
While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.
On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestininan families in the West Bank and Gaza – meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed.
Got that? It's definitely a "kill 'em for their organs" accusation.
What does Boström have to say now?
At the media conference in Dimona, where Bolstrom was frequently interrupted by hecklers, the Swedish journalist admitted he had no proof beyond the allegations of the families of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.
So, hey, what could possibly be wrong with rehashing a 900-year-old libel dressed up in new fancy duds without the benefits of actual, you know, evidence?
Organ Stealing Documented
Here is a full description of an organized program of organ stealing. You'll remember the international flurry of condemnation.
And a summary: a couple thousand stolen organs.
You do remember the outcry, right? Or maybe you won't. Because there wasn't one.
Why didn't this story make it into the world stage with the same degree of breathlessness as the Aftonbladet one? Could it be because Geoffrey Chaucer didn't write about British ritual murder but Jewish ones? That therefore the accusation wasn't twisted into the "we're killing them for their organs" Robin-Cook-"Coma" style because that ground hadn't been prepared and fertilized by almost a millenium of lies? So that even those who aren't in general antisemites find themselves culturally more willing to accept the idea of Zionist ritual murder -- and that is after all what we're talking about -- because of the long, sad history of the lie of Jewish ritual murder?