 "What is 'blood libel' allegation that has been made against US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar?")
The Anti-Defamation League has accused Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of ‘blood libel.’
The development occurred after Omar, visiting protesters at Columbia University, said Jewish students are pro or anti-genocide depending on whom they support in the Israel-Gaza war.
“I actually met a lot of Jewish students that are in the encampment,” Omar was quoted as saying. “And I think it is really unfortunate that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe and that we should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”
ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt posted on X, “It is patently false and a blood libel to suggest that ANY Jewish students are ‘pro-genocide."
“It is gaslighting to impute that Jewish people are somehow at fault for being harassed and menaced with signs and slogans literally calling for their own extermination,” he added.
Greenblatt claimed Omar slandered “entire group of young people in such a cold, calculated manner,” and added “this is how people get killed.”
Demanding an apology, Greenblatt said, “I’m not holding my breath.”
The protests that begun at Columbia University have since spread to other elite institutions in the US, as well as the UK, France, Italy and Australia.
This isn’t the first time that Omar, a member of ‘The Squad’ and the first woman Muslim-American member of the US House of Representatives, has previously been criticised for remarks her critics say are anti-semitic.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsBut what is ‘blood libel?’ Why is it so offensive to Jews?
Let’s take a closer look:
What is it?
According to the BBC, the term ‘blood libel’ has its genesis in the Middle Ages.
It was an accusation which essentially accused Jews of murdering people, especially children, in ritualised slaughter.
It was often cited as a reason to incite violence against Jews.
As per The Nation, the term began being used in 1144 when the body of a young man was found outside the town or Norwich.
“The explanation for William’s death that emerged, though slow to take hold in medieval England, became a mainstay of anti-Semitic thought and a justification for atrocious crimes against Jews in the Middle Ages and beyond,” the piece noted.
According to BBC, rumours spread that the Jews had kidnapped Norwich and sacrificed him.
Pope Innocent IV eventually looked into the claim and found it false.
However, the allegation did not go away.
“Essentially it implies that Jews murder Christian and non-Jewish children to use their blood in Jewish rituals and holidays,“Amy Spitalnick, then press secretary for the progressive pro-Israel group J Street, explained to the BBC in 2011.
“At one point it was tied in with Passover. Using the term would imply the using of non-Jewish blood for the baking of Matzah.”
Indeed, The Nation quoted a Hamas spokesman as saying in 2014, “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence.”
The spokesperson provided no evidence.
“The blood libel is particularly appalling in light of the fact that Jews follow the Hebrew Bible’s law to not consume any blood, which is found in the book of Leviticus. In order for an animal to be considered kosher, all its blood must have been drained and discarded,” the ADL website states.
In modern times, it is usually levied against someone who falsely accuses the Jews of being involved in horrific crimes.
Why did it persist?
Some make the argument that it persisted because the Jews continued to be a convenient scapegoat for many.
“The only reason the blood libel accusation has persisted against Jews is because Jews continue to exist,” Australian historian Darren O’Brien wrote in his book The Pinnacle of Hatred, according to The Nation. “Witches, heretical Christians, and other groups accused in the past have all but disappeared from view. The only scapegoat remaining on which to hang the allegation is the Jew.”
Others point to religious sentiment.
The BBC, quoting from the Encyclopaedia Judaica, said that the allegation may indicate “another form of the belief that Jews had been and still were responsible for the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ” and “popular beliefs about the murder-lust of the Jews and their bloodthirstiness, based on the conception that Jews hate Christianity and mankind in general”.
The piece in The Nation states, “Why did they find this charge credible? One story that would have been familiar to them is the account of Christ’s Passion and suffering at the hands of the Jews. It’s not hard to imagine that the popularity and tenacity of the blood libel rests in part on how deftly it reimagines that story.”
Omar refuses to back down
Omar hit back at Greenblatt.
Quoting from an an article in the Intercept about the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ inquiry into the University of Massachusetts Amherst on claims of “anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow students.”
“This is the pro-genocide I was talking about, can you condemn this like I have condemned antisemitism and bigotry of all kind? ‘Kill All Arabs’ ‘They are all Hamas. All grotesquely evil’ ‘Level Gaza,’” Omar posted on X.
Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi was among the 100 students arrested and suspended from Barnard College.
Hirsi on X wrote that she was suspended for “standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide”.
Hirsi has said she is homelesss and starving after being suspended from her college.
Omar previously said she is ‘proud of’ her daughter.
With inputs from agencies
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