Friday, September 18, 2009

The Muslim Association of Britain and the blood libel

Last month, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published an article alleging that Israeli soldiers kidnapped Palestinian civilians and stole their organs, before returning their mutilated bodies to their families. This story provoked a storm of protest, as many saw it as a revival of the medieval antisemitic myth of the blood libel.

One feature of the blood libel charge during the Middle Ages is that an allegation in one locale would spark similar accusations against Jews elsewhere; and so it has proved with this latest version. On 6 September, some two weeks after theAftonbladet article, a story appeared in an Arabic newspaper, al-Marada, claiming that “Jewish rings” were kidnapping Algerian children and smuggling them to Morocco, where their organs were extracted for export to America and Israel. This story was quickly translated into English, spliced with some out-of-context quotes from the genuine organ-trading case in New York this summer, and circulated on the internet.

Full post at Harry's Place

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

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