{"id":122653,"date":"2025-07-20T17:05:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=122653"},"modified":"2025-07-20T14:01:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T12:01:21","slug":"20-00-111","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=122653","title":{"rendered":"The Blood Libels Come and Go, But We Will \u2014 and Must \u2014 Survive"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Blood Libels Come and Go, But We Will \u2014 and Must \u2014 Survive<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Pini Dunner<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS\/Ammar Awad<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In late March 1144, in the English town of Norwich, the body of a young boy named William was discovered in a wooded area just outside the city. He had been missing for several days when a group of nuns stumbled upon his corpse, hanging from a tree.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There was no sign of who had killed him. It might have been a group of bandits, or perhaps a passing vagrant, or \u2013 as some have suggested \u2013 possibly suicide. At the time, there was no investigation and no drama. Just a tragic, unexplained death. And life moved on.<\/span><\/p>\n

William\u2019s unexplained death might have faded into obscurity were it not for a man named Thomas of Monmouth \u2013 a zealous Benedictine monk with a cause, and, unfortunately, a flair for storytelling.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book,\u00a0The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich<\/i><\/a>, Thomas claimed that William hadn\u2019t been the victim of some random act of violence. Instead, he insisted the boy had been ritually murdered by the Jews of Norwich, in a gruesome reenactment of the crucifixion, as part of a sinister Jewish plot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas offered no evidence and no witness testimony, nor even a remotely plausible theory as to how or why the Jews of Norwich \u2013 who were by all accounts well integrated into local society \u2013 would have committed such a crime. But Thomas was persuasive, and his tale found eager listeners. And so, William became the first ever \u201cvictim\u201d of a Jewish ritual murder \u2013the prototype for every\u00a0blood libel<\/a>\u00a0that followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Six years later, in 1150, the blood libel turned lethal. A local knight, Sir Simon of Novers, murdered a Jew, Eleazar of Norwich, to whom he owed a considerable sum of money. In a calculated attempt to cover up both the killing and the debt, Sir Simon accused Eleazar \u2013 again, with no evidence whatsoever \u2013 of being part of a Jewish conspiracy to murder Christian children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The accusation ignited a fuse. Soon after, a rabbi traveling from England back to Cologne was set upon and killed by a mob. One baseless claim led to another, and what began as a fabricated tale became a campaign of incitement and violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so it went on, with one fabricated blood libel after another. Eventually, in 1255, there was the infamous case of \u201cLittle Saint Hugh<\/a>\u201d of Lincoln \u2014 an eight-year-old boy who went missing, and whose death was swiftly blamed on the local Jews.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But this time, the accusation wasn\u2019t just gossip \u2013 it was endorsed by the Crown. King Henry III personally intervened, ordering the arrest of ninety Jews and the execution of eighteen. There was no trial and no evidence, just frenzy and fury \u2013 all dressed up in religious zealotry and moral posturing.<\/span><\/p>\n

But here\u2019s an interesting fact that rarely gets mentioned \u2013 going all the way back to that very first blood libel, the case of William of Norwich. The local Christians \u2014 the ones who actually knew the Jews, lived alongside them, worked with them, and traded with them \u2014 never believed a word of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t revere William as a saint or martyr, and they certainly didn\u2019t riot or attack their Jewish neighbors. They simply rolled their eyes and got on with their lives. Because they knew the Jewish community. Critically, they also knew Thomas of Monmouth, and that he was spinning a self-serving tale \u2014 one part fantasy, two parts ambition.<\/span><\/p>\n

They understood, as people close to the facts often do, that truth is almost always far less dramatic than myth and legend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fast forward nearly 900 years. Once again, Jews are being accused of ritual murder. Not literally, perhaps, but the accusations are eerily similar in form and function. Israel defends itself against an unprovoked massacre on October 7th \u2013 and tries to root out those who murdered them, and openly threaten to do it again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But instead of sympathy, Israel is subjected to a torrent of accusations. Israel, we are told, is committing \u201cgenocide.\u201d The IDF is \u201ctargeting babies.\u201d Food, water, and medical aid are being deliberately withheld from innocent civilians so that children will die \u2013 because, apparently, Jews are cruel by nature.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rhetoric is breathless and furious. It is also unmistakably familiar. We are told that Jews are killing with calculated malice, as part of some twisted Jewish plot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just like the blood libels of medieval England, these accusations have no basis in fact. They ignore every detail that doesn\u2019t fit the script. Hamas\u2019 culture of martyrdom \u2014 its glorification of death, its deliberate use of human shields, its strategy of weaponizing suffering \u2013 is waved away as irrelevant. The story is simple: The Jews are guilty. The Jews are evil. The Jews must be stopped.<\/span><\/p>\n

And just like in Norwich, the loudest voices are not the locals. The blood libel wasn\u2019t born in a Norwich tavern. It was concocted by a Welsh monk who wanted to make a name for himself, then picked up by powerful outsiders with axes to grind. Similarly, today\u2019s most impassioned anti-Israel narratives are not coming from people in the region.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudis \u2013 who, if anyone has cause to stoke the flames, it\u2019s them \u2013 are not buying into the hysteria. They\u2019re watching and waiting \u2013 preparing to join the Abraham Accords when the dust settles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The voices calling for boycotts, sanctions, and diplomatic \u201cpunishment\u201d of Israel are coming from thousands of miles away \u2013 college campuses in America, city councils in Europe, and self-appointed \u201ctruth-tellers\u201d on social media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t know the facts. Because they don\u2019t want to know the facts. Like Sir Simon of Novers inventing a conspiracy to erase a debt, or King Henry III scapegoating Jews to consolidate power, these voices have pre-written their script and are just looking for a way to act it out.<\/span><\/p>\n

And, just like in 13th-century England, once officials get involved, the damage multiplies. French President Emmanuel Macron recently declared that France would unilaterally\u00a0recognize a Palestinian state<\/a>. There\u2019s no plan, no borders for this \u201cstate,\u201d no Palestinian leadership, and no peace partner. But none of that matters, because this isn\u2019t about building a future. It\u2019s about punishing the Jews \u2013 sorry, Israel \u2013 for its \u201ccrimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the hopeful part. The people closest to the situation \u2013 those who actually live in the region \u2014 know the truth. They may not be cheering for Israel, but they see what\u2019s really happening. They know that Hamas is a terrorist organization, hellbent on death and destruction, with no interest in peace or progress. They know that Israel isn\u2019t waging war for conquest or cruelty. They want Hamas gone, and they want the hatefest to end. And, most of all, they want to move on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings us to the prophet Jeremiah, whose words open the Haftorah for the first Shabbat of the period we call the\u00a0Three Weeks<\/a>, when Jews around the world mourn the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Temple that once stood at the center of Jewish life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeremiah lived in a time of chaos and collapse \u2013 foreign empires were rising, Jerusalem was under siege, and truth had become an endangered species. And yet, in Jeremiah\u2019s very first prophecy, God reassures him: \u201cThey will fight against you, but they will not overcome you \u2013 for I am with you to save you\u201d (Jer. 1:19<\/a>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not just you, Jeremiah. But you, Israel. Yes, you will suffer. Yes, you will be vilified. But the nations that rise against you won\u2019t last. Time and again, Jeremiah returns to the same message: the nations that rise against Israel will eventually disappear, but Israel itself will endure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s enemies \u2013 loud, arrogant, fiery outsiders \u2013 are passing actors in a much longer story. They make a lot of noise, and they may cause harm \u2013 but they are not the authors of history. As Jeremiah says, power doesn\u2019t mean permanence, and popularity doesn\u2019t mean truth. When the dust settles, those who are grounded in reality are the ones who remain standing. The others fade away.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s blood libelists may sound powerful. But in the end, they are just the Sir Simon of Novers of today. And just as the Jews of Norwich survived that storm, so too will the Jews of Israel survive this one. Because the people of Israel are home, and that\u2019s not negotiable \u2013 no matter how loudly the libelists shriek.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both history and prophecy agree: The shriekers come and go, but Israel always remains.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Blood Libels Come and Go, But We Will \u2014 and Must \u2014 Survive Pini Dunner The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS\/Ammar Awad In late March […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122768,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122653\/revisions\/122768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}