Blood libel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Part of a series of articles on Discrimination
General forms
Racism · Sexism · Ageism Religious intolerance · Xenophobia
Specific forms
Social Ableism · Adultism · Biphobia · Classism Elitism · Ephebiphobia · Gerontophobia Heightism · Heterosexism · Homophobia Lesbophobia · Lookism · Misandry Misogyny · Pediaphobia · Sizeism Transphobia Against cultures American · Arab · Armenian Australian · Blacks · Canadian · Catalan Chinese · English · European · French German · Igbo · Indian · Iranian · Irish Italian · Japanese · Jewish Malay · Mexican · Native Americans Polish · Portuguese · Quebec · Roma Romanian · Russian · Scottish Serbian · Spanish · Turkish · Whites Against beliefs Atheism · Bahá'í · Catholicism Christianity · Hinduism · Judaism Mormonism · Islam · Neopaganism Protestantism New religious movements
Manifestations
Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime Genocide (examples) · Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing · Pogrom · Race war  · Religious persecution · Blood libel · Paternalism Police brutality
Movements
Discriminatory Aryanism · Hate groups · Ku Klux Klan Neo-Nazism · American Nazi Party South African National Party Supremacism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights Women's / Universal suffrage LGBT rights · Feminism Masculism · Men's / Fathers' rights Children's rights · Youth rights Disability rights (Inclusion) Autistic rights
Policies
Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid · Redlining · Internment · Ethnocracy Anti-discriminatory Emancipation · Civil rights Desegregation · Integration Equal opportunity · Gender equality Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action · Racial quota Reservation (India) · Reparation Forced busing Employment equity (Canada)
Law
Discriminatory Anti-miscegenation · Anti-immigration Alien and Sedition Acts · Jim Crow laws Test Act · Apartheid laws Ketuanan Melayu · Nuremberg Laws Diyya Anti-discriminatory Anti-discrimination acts Anti-discrimination law 14th Amendment · Crime of apartheid
Other forms
Nepotism · Cronyism · Colorism Linguicism · Ethnocentrism · Triumphalism Adultcentrism · Gynocentrism Androcentrism · Economic
Related topics
American exceptionalism · Afrocentrism · Bigotry · Black supremacy · Eurocentrism · Prejudice · Supremacism Intolerance · Tolerance · Diversity Multiculturalism · Oppression Political correctness Reverse discrimination · Eugenics Racialism
Discrimination Portal This box: view • talk • edit

Blood libels are sensationalized allegations that a person or group engages in human sacrifice, often accompanied by the claim that the blood of victims is used in various rituals and/or acts of cannibalism. The alleged victims are often children.

Some of the best documented cases of blood libel focus upon accusations against Jews, but many other groups have been accused throughout history, including Christians, Cathars, Carthaginians, Knights Templar, witches, Wiccans, Christian heretics, Roma, neopagans, Native Americans, atheists, communists, and satanists.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Against Jews 2 Against Christians 3 Blood libels in the modern world 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 6.1 General 6.2 Jews 6.3 Case studies 7 External links

[edit] Against Jews

Main article: Blood libel against Jews

The first recorded instance of a blood libel against Jews was in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed Greek victims in the Temple of Jerusalem. After this, there are no existent records of the blood libel against the Jews until the 12th century legend surrounding William of Norwich, first recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle. The libel afterward became an increasingly common accusation. In many subsequent cases, antisemitic blood libels served as the basis for a blood libel cult, in which the alleged victim of human sacrifice was venerated as a Christian martyr. Many Jews were killed as a result of false blood libels, which continued into the 20th century, with the Beilis Trial in Russia and the Kielce pogrom in post-World War II Poland.

[edit] Against Christians

During the first and second centuries, some Roman commentators had various interpretations of the ritual of the Eucharist and related teachings. While celebrating the Eucharist, Christians drink red wine in response to the words "This is the blood of Christ". Propaganda arguing that the Christians literally drank blood based on their belief in transubstantiation was written and used to persecute Christians. Romans were highly suspicious of Christian adoptions of abandoned Roman babies and this was suggested as a possible source of the blood.

In the Mandaean scripture, the Ginza Rba, a purportedly Christian group called the "Minunei" are accused of it against the Jews: "They kill a Jewish child, they take his blood, they cook it in bread and they proffer it to them as food."^[1]

[edit] Blood libels in the modern world

Accusations of ritual murder have gradually disappeared from mainstream Christianity, and some child martyrs have been removed from the official Catholic calendar of saints. In the modern world, only radical groups and individuals advance accusations of ritual murder and blood libels.

One claim states that physicians in the People's Republic of China who perform abortions consider the fetus a delicacy and eat it.^[2] The story, reported from Hong Kong by Bruce Gilley, was investigated by Senator Jesse Helms, and gruesome artwork reminiscent of traditional depictions of blood libel was featured in several pro-life campaigns. ^[3] The only use for "human fetal tissue" is in the medical research field, particularly stem cell research.^[4][5]

Another contemporary blood libel in the United States alleges, falsely, that both neopagans and Satanists use human blood, sexual abuse, or ritual murder, especially of children, in their rituals. Often Satanism, all of the diverse neopagan religions, the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and sometimes Roman Catholicism and liberal or non-fundamentalist Christian denominations, are portrayed as expressions of one monolithic and ancient global conspiracy of Satan-worshippers. Mike Warnke,^[6] William Schnoebelen,^[7] Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith,^[8] Jon Watkins,^[9] Bill Pricer, and Ken Wooden^[10] are some of the voices of these libels.

Many Jewish groups were shocked in 2003 by the British newspaper The Independent's publication of a cartoon depicting Ariel Sharon eating a baby.^[11] The Israeli government complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the cartoon alluded to the blood libel of Jews eating the children of Christians; Dave Brown, the author, responded that the cartoon was in fact inspired by Francisco de Goya's painting Saturn Devouring His Son and was not anti-Semitic in intent. The PCC accepted Brown's argument, stating "There is nothing inherently anti-semitic about the Goya image or about the myth of Saturn devouring his children, which has been used previously to satirise other politicians accused of sacrificing their own 'children' for political purposes".^[12] The cartoon ultimately earned Brown the British Political Cartoon Society's Political Cartoon of the Year award.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, during his March 2006 failed bid for re-election, said communists had a history of boiling babies.^[13] "I have been accused many times of saying communists eat babies," said Berlusconi at a rally of his Forza Italia party.^[13] "Go and read the Black Book on Communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but they boiled them to fertilise the fields."^[13] Despite Berlusconi's 2006 denial that he has ever said that 'communists eat babies,' in the 2001 campaign, Berlusconi said "I can organise a conference in which I will prove communists have really eaten babies and done even worse things.^[13]

In July 2007, American Michael Yon reported that Lieutenant David Wallach, an Arabic translator, had told him an Iraqi official's allegations that Al-Qaeda in Iraq has baked a young boy and served the boy's body to his family.^[14] These claims were later repeated in articles by the conservative American website World Net Daily.^[15][16]

Occasionally, antisemitic accusations of ritual murder still can be found in Islamist propaganda and state-sponsored media published in a number of Muslim nations.^[17]

In the 1990s, a number of publications by Russian Orthodox Church, as well as radio and TV broadcasts in Belarus revived medieval allegations of ritual murder of child saint Gavriil Belostoksky.^[18] The revival of the cult was cited as a dangerous expression of antisemitism in international reports on human rights and religious freedoms^[19][20][21] and were passed to the UNHCR.^[22][23]

In 2006, Chinese nationalist Li Ao in his TV talk show, in an attempt to portray the 1950 People's Liberation Army invasion of Tibet as a humanitarian intervention, claimed that the Dalai Lama had commanded human sacrifices, asking his followers to "tear out human skin" for "some religious ceremony".^[24]

[edit] See also

• Vampirism
• Witch hunt
• Host desecration
• Child cannibalism
• Satanic ritual abuse
• Ritual murder

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

[edit] General

• Susanna Buttaroni, Stanislaw Musial: Ritualmord. Böhlau Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-205-77028-5 (German)
• Rainer Erb: Die Legende vom Ritualmord. Metropol 1993, ISBN 3-926893-15-X (German)
• Hannelore Fieg: Ritualmord und Satanskultbeschuldigungen in Spätantike, Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Christen und Juden, Ketzer und Hexen, Diploma thesis Universität Innsbruck 2000 (German)
• Gerhard Muller (Hrsg.): Theologische Realenzyklopädie Band 29, Religionspsychologie - Samaritaner. Walter de Gruyter, 1998, ISBN 3-11-016127-3 (entry Ritualmord, pg. 253–265) (German)

[edit] Jews

• Alan Dundes: The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992, ISBN 0-299-13110-6
• Jules Isaac, Die Genesis des Antisemitismus, Wien: Europa Verlag, 1969 (German)
• Stefan Rohrbacher, Michael Schmidt: Judenbilder. Kulturgeschichte antijüdischer Mythen und antisemitischer Vorurteile. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-499-55498-4 (pg. 269–291: Ritualmord und Hostienfrevel; pg. 304–368: Die Barbarei längst verflossener Jahrhunderte)
• Johannes T. Groß: Ritualmordbeschuldigungen gegen Juden im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871–1914) Berlin: Metropol, 2002. ISBN 3-932482-84-0
• Alexander Baron: Jewish Ritual Murder: Anti-semitic Fabrication or Urban Legend? Anglo-Hebrew Publishing. 1994, ISBN 1898318360
• John M. McCulloh: Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth In: Speculum, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Juli 1997), S. 698–740
• Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia: The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany. Yale University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-300-04746-0 (English)

[edit] Case studies

• Schmoger, Karl (1974) The Life of Anna Katherina Emmerich: Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishing: 1974: Volume 1: ISBN 0-89555-059-8

[edit] External links

• Resources > Medieval Jewish History > Blood Libels
• Anti-Defamation League condemns Egyptian blood libel
• Blood libel in 1840 Syria
• Blood Libel, Host Desecration, and other Myths
• The Independent – info on Horseman Without a Horse
• Blood Feast Snopes.com Info page
• The JET report on murerous and cannabalistic Satanist allegations in the Broxtowe child abuse case.
• Anthony Julius: 'On Blood Libels' on the Engage website
• Stevenson, Mark (2006) "Evidence May Back Human Sacrifice Claims", Associated Press news story, accessed September 18, 2006.