'BLOOD LIBEL' REPREHENSIBLE TO JEWS

The accusations by Democrats and the liberal media that Sarah Palin’s ‘cross-hairs’ map may have led Jared Loughner to target Gabby Giffords are both unwarranted and unfair. But when she defended herself against those attacks, Palin showed why she is not presidential timber. She invoked the term ‘blood libel’ in defending herself on a seven minute video clip.

Here is that part of Palin’s statement: “Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

Palin and her advisors were obviously ignorant of the fact that the term ‘blood libel’ is highly offensive to Jews, and for good reason.

Long before anyone ever heard of Hitler, the accusation that Jews used the blood of murdered Christian children in a ritualistic baking of matzoh (unleavened bread) for Passover led to thousands of Jews being murdered throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, especially in Eastern Europe. Because the accusations were deliberate falsehoods, they came to be known as blood libels. The term has always been associated exclusively with Jews and anti-Semitism. Any public figure with presidential aspirations should have known that.

NOW SARAH PALIN BLUNDERS INTO RACE ROW OVER SHOOTINGS BY CRITICIZING MEDIA’S ‘BLOOD LIBEL’
By Tom Leonard

Mail Online
January 13, 2011

Sarah Palin broke her silence over the Arizona shootings yesterday, angrily accusing critics of a ‘blood libel’ after they linked her heated political rhetoric to the tragedy.

But the former Republican vice-presidential candidate left herself open to ridicule – and accusations of anti-Semitism – with her bizarre choice of language.

The seven-minute video that Mrs Palin posted on her Facebook page proved controversial because the phrase ‘blood libel’ refers to a medieval slur which claimed that Jews killed Christian children in order to use their blood for religious practices.

The libel was often instigated by the local clergy and resulted in executions, massacres, and expulsions of Jews throughout Europe over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

It did not help Mrs Palin that Gabrielle Giffords – one of the 14 people wounded by gunman Jared Loughner, who killed six others – is Arizona’s first Jewish congresswoman.

In the aftermath of the shootings, many left-wingers were quick to link the targeting of a Democrat politician to the sometimes violent language of the Tea Party protest movement of which Mrs Palin is a leading light.

She was singled out for a controversial website graphic last year in which gunsight-style crosshairs were used to pinpoint 20 Democrats – including Miss Giffords – who she wanted supporters to vote out of office.

The video released yesterday expressed Mrs Palin’s sadness over the tragedy.

But she went on to say: ‘Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them.

‘Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible,’ she added.