1144: 12-year-old William of Norwich, England, found dead. A priest accuses local Jews, but king’s sheriff dismisses charges, leading to uprising, canonization of William by local bishop. At coronation of King Richard II, 1189, mob turns on Jews; massacres follow in London, York.
1255: 8-year-old Hugh of Lincoln, England, found mutilated. 19 Jews executed.
1475: 2-year-old Simon of Trent, Italy, found dead. 15 local Jews burned at stake. Simon canonized 1588 by Pope Sixtus V; rescinded by Paul VI, 1965.
1491: 4-year-old Christopher of Toledo, Spain, “the Holy Child of La Guardia,” found dead; eight local Jews and Conversos executed by Inquisition. Christopher is canonized 1805 by Pope Pius VII.
1690: 6-year-old Gavriil Belostoksky of Zverki, Poland, found dead. Shutko, a local Jewish rent-collector, accused of draining blood for matzo. Gavriil canonized 1820 by Russian Orthodox Church, reaffirmed by Belarus state TV, 1997.
1840 February: Catholic priest found murdered in Damascus, Syria; 13 Jewish community leaders arrested, tortured on ritual murder charges. Worldwide protest campaign organized by Sir Moses Montefiore, Rothschild son-in-law and president of Board of Deputies of British Jews, ends in their release in September. (Incident includes first-ever mass action by American Jews for overseas aid, as N.Y. rally is held at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue Aug. 17. Rally follows months of debate over propriety of collective Jewish action. Protesters demand State Department issue a statement, unaware it had done so Aug. 14 at request of British ambassador.)
1903: 14-year-old Mikhail Rybachenko found murdered near Kishinev, Bessarabia (now Moldova). Newspaper accusation of ritual murder sparks 3-day pogrom, 49 Jews killed by mobs.
1910: Jews of Shiraz, Iran, accused of ritually killing Muslim girl. Mobs pillage Jewish quarter, 12 Jews killed.
1911: 11-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky found murdered in Kiev, Ukraine. Jewish nightwatchman Mendel Beilis arrested; chief police investigator who questions indictment is fired, arrested for dereliction of duty. Beilis trial ends in acquittal 1913.
1928: 4-year-old Barbara Griffiths disappears in Massena, N.Y. State police interrogate Rabbi Berel Brenglass on suspicion of ritual murder. Barbara is found wandering in woods the next day.
1980 November: Iraq accuses Israel of complicity in bungled Iranian air raid on Osirak nuclear reactor. Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Zippori calls accusation “blood libel.”
1982 Sept. 19: Israeli Cabinet issues a statement on Sabra-Shatila massacres, terms accusations of Israeli responsibililty “blood libel.” A year later, Israeli state judicial commission finds then-defense minister Ariel Sharon bears “indirect responsibility.”
1987: Simon & Schuster publishes “Blood libel: The Inside Story of General Ariel Sharon’s History-Making Suit Against Time Magazine,” by journalist/Sharon sidekick Uri Dan.
1990 Sept. 14: N.Y. Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal accuses CNN pundit Pat Buchanan of “blood libel” for claiming that the “only two groups that are beating the drums for war” in Iraq are “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.” Oct. 22, Jacob Weisberg counters in The New Republic that Buchanan’s “implied” charge of dual loyalty is “far from the fanatical hatred of Jews connoted by the term blood libel.”
The Anti-Defamation League reports in an October 15 press release that it has received an apology from the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Liberty Commission, Richard Land, for a September 26 speech to the Christian Coalition in which he described the congressional Democrats’ health care reforms as “exactly what the Nazis did.” In the same speech Land also quipped that he had given “the Dr. Josef Mengele Award” to Ezekiel Emanuel, President Obama’s chief health care adviser (and Rahm’s brother), for his “advocacy of health care rationing.”
In an October 14 letter to ADL national director Abraham Foxman, Land said he had been “using hyperbole for effect and never intended to actually equate anyone in the Obama administration with Dr. Mengele.” He promised to “refrain from making such references in the future,” and added: “I apologize to everyone who found such references hurtful.”
Land was responding to an October 9 letter from Foxman, complaining that the “Nazi comparison is inappropriate, insensitive and unjustified. As a Holocaust survivor, I take particular offense. Such comparisons diminish the history and the memory of the 6 million Jews and 5 million others who died at the hands of the Nazis and insults those who fought bravely against Hitler.”
Foxman had a busy summer on the health-care-is-Nazism front. Among those he scolded was Rush Limbaugh, who, among other things, repeated Glenn Beck’s riff about the Obama health-care logo looking Hitlerian. Another scoldee was syndicated radio talk jockey Bill Press, who had accused opponents of health care reform of using tactics that were “straight out of the Nazi playbook.”
The battle didn’t start this summer, though. Holocaust abuse is a continuing theme among Jewish community advocates. Sometimes, as in the case of Land, it yields results. Other abusers, like Limbaugh, remain unbowed.
One of the most celebrated successes was the 1998 campaign by the Zionist Organization of America to derail the appointment of Holocaust scholar John Roth as chief historian of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
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