Roundup

'Blood Libel' Remark Reverberates

Washington/JTA

t was a well-crafted message preach-
ing unity — and mined with a
"blood libel" that blew it all apart.
Sarah Palin's Jan.
12 video message, her
first substantial com-
mentary since the Jan.
8 shooting in Tucson
that critically injured
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,
D-Ariz., and killed six
Sarah Palin
others, at first appeared
to succeed in recon-
ciling two American
precepts that have seemed irreconcilable
in recent days: a common purpose and a
rough-and-tumble political culture.
"Vigorous and spirited public debates
during elections are among our most
cherished traditions:' said the former
Alaska governor and 2008 Republican
vice-presidential candidate. "And after the
election, we shake hands and get back to
work, and often both sides find common
ground back in D.C. and elsewhere."
But barely a breath later, Palin painted
herself the victim of a "blood libel" — a
notorious term fraught with Jewish his-
torical and emotional significance.
"Journalists and pundits should not
manufacture a blood libel that serves
only to incite the very hatred and violence
they purport to condemn:' Palin said.

No Jewish Target
TUCSON (JTA) -- An
analysis of Internet
musings by Jared Lee
Loughner, 22, dismisses
speculation that he
may have targeted U.S.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
Rep. Giffords
because she is Jewish.
"In the end, the writ-
ings so far revealed seem to indicate no
particular leanings about race, and it is
difficult to come away from the postings
with such a conclusion:' according to the
Jan. 11 analysis by the Anti-Defamation
League.
The ADL analysis also said that the
writings do not "point to a particular ide-
ology or belief system."
Loughner's "semi-coherent" writings
"are indicative of an individual who has
been exposed to a number of different
ideas, from across the political spectrum,
and has sometimes appropriated external
concepts — often seemingly divorced
from their original context:' the analysis

8

January 20 • 2011

"That is reprehensible
Palm's casual reference to the ancient
fiction that Jews killed children to drink
their blood as part of a ritual — one that
has inspired pogroms, massacres and
attacks on Jews throughout the centuries
and even today is referenced as fact in
parts of the Arab world and the former
Soviet Union — set off alarm bells.
Jewish reaction ranged from outraged
to uncomfortable to defensive.
"Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at
this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to
accuse others trying to sort out the mean-
ing of this tragedy of somehow engaging
in a 'blood libel' against her and others,"
National Jewish Democratic Council
President David Harris said in a statement
condemning her remark. "Perhaps Sarah
Palin honestly does not know what a blood
libel is, or does not know of their horrific
history; that is perhaps the most charitable
explanation we can arrive at in explaining
her rhetoric today"
Jews for Sarah, a pro-Palin group,
defended Palin, a potential Republican
presidential candidate for 2012. "Gov
Palin got it right, and we Jews, of all
people, should know a blood libel when
we see one Jews for Sarah said. "Falsely
accusing someone of shedding blood is a
blood libel — whether it's the medieval
Church accusing Jews of baking blood
in Passover matzahs, or contemporary
Muslim extremists accusing Israel of

said.
Last week, President Obama spoke with
Giffords' rabbi during a series of calls to
friends and families of victims of the Jan.
8 shooting at a shopping mall in Tucson. A
White House official said Rabbi Stephanie
Aaron of Tucson's Congregation Chaverim
was among the Tucson area officials, vic-
tims and families Obama reached in the
wake of the attack that left Giffords, an
Arizona Democrat, critically injured and
six dead.
Giffords turned to Aaron after a visit to
Israel in 2001 ignited an interest in her
Judaism, and the two were close. Aaron
performed the ceremony when Giffords
married Cmdr. Mark Kelly, an astronaut,
in 2007.

Esther And Mordechai
TEHRAN (JTA) -- Iranian authorities
have downgraded the status of the tomb
of Esther and Mordechai, while an offi-
cial state news agency has publicized
the Purim story as a Jewish massacre of
Iranians.

slaughtering Arabs to harvest their
tion noted in a statement, "We wish that
organs, or political partisans blaming
Palin had not invoked the phrase 'blood
conservative political figures and talk
libel' in reference to the actions of jour-
show hosts for the Tucson massacre'
nalists and pundits in placing blame for
Palin made the video to push back
the shooting in Tucson on others. While
against claims by some liberal commenta-
the term 'blood-libel' has become part of
tors that she played a role in the hyper-
the English parlance to refer to someone
partisan rhetoric in Giffords' district before being falsely accused, we wish that Palin
the election in part by putting out a map
had used another phrase, instead of one
with a gun-sight target over Giffords' con-
so fraught with pain in Jewish history."
gressional district as one Palin wanted the
Voices across the Jewish religious and
Republicans to win in 2010.
political spectrums, from the Reform
Her video calling for "common ground" movement to the Orthodox Union, and
set a tone that would have jived perfectly
from liberals to conservatives, echoed the
with the unity message President Obama
ADI!s statement.
delivered in Tucson later Jan. 12, if not for
The Zionist Organization of America
the blood libel remark.
(ZOA), along with Harvard University's
By contrast, Obama's speech earned
Professor Alan Dershowitz and Rabbi
widespread praise.
Shmuley Boteach, supported Palin's
"What we cannot do is use this tragedy "blood libel" description.
as one more occasion to turn on each
ZOA National President Morton Klein
other;' Obama said in Tucson. "That we
said, "As a child of Holocaust survivors,
cannot do. As we discuss these issues,
born in a Displaced Persons Camp in
let each of us do so with a good dose of
post-war Germany, I am acutely sensitive
humility. Rather than pointing fingers or
to using references to the Holocaust and
assigning blame, let's use this occasion to past Jewish persecution in public dis-
expand our moral imaginations, to listen
course for inappropriate analogies. This
to each other more carefully, to sharpen
one does not worry me because the anal-
our instincts for empathy and remind
ogy is not inappropriate. When we speak
ourselves of all the ways that our hopes
of blood libels against Jews, it means one
and dreams are bound together."
thing — a malicious, false accusation of
The Anti-Defamation League said it
evil doing, designed to whip up hatred
was inappropriate to blame Palin after the and hostility against those so accused.
Tucson shooting and said she had every
That matches the attempt to link Sarah
right to defend herself. But the organiza-
Palin to Jared Loughner."

Officials recently removed the sign that
identified the mausoleum of the bibli-
cal figures in the central Iranian city of
Hamadan as an official pilgrimage site.
The removal of the sign signifies that its
status has been downgraded, according
to reports.
The actions come about two weeks
after a group of about 250 militant stu-
dents surrounded the tomb and threat-
ened to tear it down. Their threats were
in response to alleged Israeli excavations
under the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.
The biblical Queen Esther was the
second wife of Persian King Ahasuerus,
identified as Xerxes I; Mordechai was her
uncle, who also raised her.
The Iranian state news agency Fars
has been reporting that Esther and
Mordechai were responsible for the mas-
sacre of more than 75,000 Iranians, an
event recorded in the Book of Esther,
which is read on the Jewish festival of
Purim.
The reports, according to the U.S.-
based Simon Wiesenthal Center citing

Fars, also call the tomb an arm of Israeli
imperialism that impugns Iranian sov-
ereignty; report that its name must be
wiped away in order to teach Iranian
children to "beware of the crimes of
the Jews"; call for the shrine's return to
the Iranian people; and say that the site
must become "a Holocaust memorial"
to the "Iranian victims of Esther and
Mordechai" and be placed under the
supervision of the state religious endow-
ments authority.
In a letter to the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization Director-General Irina
Bokova, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's
director for international relations, Dr.
Shimon Samuels, urged UNESCO to
call upon the Iranian authorities to take
appropriate measures to terminate this
campaign of racism and desecration!'
"It is perhaps time for UNESCO and
the World Heritage Committee to estab-
lish instruments for the universal protec-
tion of holy sites," Samuels concluded.
Roundup on page 10

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