generalspeaking

Blood Libel

In Medieval Christendom the blood libel held that Jews murdered Christian children to drain their blood to make matzoh for Passover. The old Medieval legends of Christian children being abducted and murdered by Jews, to illustrate how blood-thirsty and evilly dangerous Jews were to society were a mainstay, serving to vilify, slander and isolate Jews. And to ensure that whatever treatment was meted out to Jews could be seen as justified, a people apart; feared, scorned and hated.

It's nothing less than amazing that Scandinavian countries with their reputation for high-mindedness, social justice and modelling as moderate and socially just societies find justification within their value system of judging Israel as wanting in every conceivable social-justice indice. It is useful to recall that tiny Denmark alone among all other countries occupied by Nazi Germany refused to give up its Jews to the fascist killing machine; all of Denmark was defiant.

In Scandinavia in general there is a consensus among anti-Semites that Jews control the media. In European countries in general the trifecta of international Jewish control of the news media, of financial institutions, and of the political arena served well to inculcate a miasma of suspicion, dread and hatred against Jewish interests. The message was simple and fairly direct - of Jewish aspirations to control the world, a useful racist libel that refuses to die.

It is a general propaganda tool that has been absorbed by Arab governments, and pretty well universally accepted. Not that Jews excel academically, scientifically, financially, politically, and pull more than their weight in the world of arts and sciences and the humanities, but that there is a purpose to all of this; world domination. Propagandists have enjoyed a field day taking up the cudgel of blame and libel against Jews; in particular Israel, emblematic of all Jews.

It came easily to the attention of Palestinians that whatever outrageous charges they might make against Israel would be believed by the outside world. Portrayal of Palestinians as innocent of any wrong-doing in their David-and-Goliath battle against a brutal state, was earnestly embraced by socialist governments, their media and their social activists.

Little surprise then that if Palestinian spokespeople claim to have first-hand knowledge by unnamed witnesses of official Israel abducting innocent Palestinians for the very particular purpose of harvesting body parts, it would sound reliable and true to type.

So Swedish Aftonbladet whose cultural affairs editor's dearest wish is to see a 'free Palestine', publishes as fact a libel that it is a well established practise for the Israeli army to murder Palestinian civilians to harvest their organs for sale to those requiring transplants. The charge is so blatantly absurd, the grounds for belief in its accuracy so grounded in spite, the 'journalist' who filed the story so clearly a propagandist yet the newspaper exercised its option to publish a charge clearly in need of verification.

It's reassuring that the Swedish ambassador to Israel deplored the story and its publication, declaring that the government of Sweden was offended by it, as would be most Swedes. And obviously freedom of the press mitigates against interference by government. Yet this is not an isolated incident, although it is an egregiously alarming one. Resulting, understandably, in overt antagonism between the two countries.

All the more so, that evidence has emerged that the government of Sweden actually funded the purported research that resulted in the story and its publication.

Maariv's Swedish correspondent, Liran Lotker, revealed that the material appearing in the article first appeared in a book published in 2001, authored by the very same individual who wrote the later article. Funding for the book itself came partially from Sweden's Foreign Ministry, and from Swedish labour unions along with groups in the Palestinian Authority geography.

Does not that plot sicken? All the more so when it is also revealed that Israel's Government Press Office stated that quasi-journalists employed by Aftonbladet enter Israel not to write stories but to participate in anti-Israel protests.

In this particular instance, the author of the controversial piece, Donald Bostrom, in a Voice of Israel Radio interview, admitted he is not quite certain if the testimony which was used to give credence to his story as first-person narratives, given him by a number of unidentified Arabs was in fact true. Despite that the story claims is to be fact.

Israel's outrage over the blood libel has encouraged Aftonbladet to headline a succeeding issue of its paper with the statement: "Israel fighting against Swedish freedom of the press"; encouraging the public to respond in defence of free speech. Equating freedom of speech with the freedom to slur and slander through lies and stupefying innuendo.

Sweden is free to do as it will, just as it felt morally free to assume neutrality during the calamity that befell Europe's Jews during World War II, through their collective agony of systematic mass annihilation.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Political Realities

posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 24, 2009