Dangerous Rhetoric: Blood libel and Ritual Killing

In the Torah, Jews are explicitly forbidden to consume blood, as it is believed to contain the life of a human or animal. Yet, blood libel—the false accusation that Jews sacrifice non-Jewish children for their blood—is one of the oldest forms of antisemitism and has led to the massacre of numerous Jewish communities.

The first recorded example of blood libel in Europe dates back to the Medieval period when a monk, Thomas of Monmouth, visited Norwich. His visit occurred around four years after the body of a 12-year-old boy named William was discovered in 1144. Inexplicably, shortly after his arrival, Thomas of Monmouth made the false claim that Jews had tortured and murdered William to reenact the killing of Christ. The assertion that Jews were carrying out ritual killings circulated among local communities and led to false accusations against Jews every time a child went missing or was killed.

Tales of ritual murders spread across mainland Europe, but in March 1475, shortly before the Christian Easter observance and the Jewish festival of Passover, Jews were first accused of killing a Christian child for his blood when the body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the Italian city of Trent. This false belief suggested that such killings were a requirement for making Passover matzah.

The story of Simon, accompanied by defamatory illustrations, spread rapidly throughout Europe due to the recent invention of the printing press, causing an escalation in fallacious allegations against the Jewish population. Despite the Vatican absolving Trent’s Jewish community of any involvement in Simon’s death and withdrawing the status of martyr that had been bestowed upon him in 1965, Simon and illustrations of ritual killings are still referenced by antisemites today.

The vilification of Jews continued throughout the early modern period and into the 20th century when it became an important tool for Nazi propagandists to spread fear and hatred among German citizens about the Jewish population.

Since the Hamas attack on October 7, both medieval and contemporary blood libel accusations have become increasingly common. Spread by notorious antisemites on social media, notably by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, the false claim that Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children is propagated to enforce misguided beliefs and fuel hatred and prejudice against Jews worldwide.