Dangerous rhetoric: Blood libel

The Torah explicitly forbids Jews to consume blood in the belief it contains the life of the animal and/or human. Yet blood libel, false accusations of Jews sacrificing non-Jewish children for their blood and which have led to the massacre of numerous Jewish communities, is one of the oldest forms of antisemitism. The first recorded blood libel dates back to the Mediaeval period when, in 1144, the body of a young boy named William was found in Norwich.

It was four years after William’s unexplained death, a monk, Thomas of Monmouth, inexplicably blamed Jews of torturing and murdering the twelve year old and rumours began to spread among local communities about Jews carrying out ritual killings.

Tales of ritual murders spread to and across mainland Europe, but in March 1475, shortly before Christian Easter observance and the Jewish festival of Passover, when the body of a two year old boy called Simon was found in the Italian city of Trent, were Jews first accused of killing Christian children for their blood in the false belief it was a requirement in the making of Passover matzah.

Simon’s death occurred shortly after the invention of the printing press so the story spread rapidly across Europe leading to an escalation in false allegations and even to this day, regardless of the Vatican absolving Trent’s Jewish community of his death, Simon is still cited by antisemites as an example of Jews ritually murdering children for their blood.

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 the 7th of October, incidents of contemporary blood libel accusations that Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children have become increasingly common, spread by notorious antisemites on social media, and notably by the Hamas run Ministry of Health, flaming hatred and prejudice against Jews worldwide.