Guardian: Reporting on Israel killing kids is blood libel

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... till-today

What a complete horses**t take. If Israel doesn't want to deal with reports on the children their violence harms, they should stop engaging in the violence rather than pretending that reporting on their actual actions is in fact a revival of blood libel.

For starters, by definition libel is a false accusation, it's not blood libel to report on easily documented activities.

Beyond that, this serves to conflate Israel with the Jewish people as a whole, as though a criticism of Israeli actions amounts to an attack on all Jewish people.

Lastly, no one's connecting Israel's activities to anything inherent to the Jewish people, they're merely reporting on the actions Israel engages in on a regular basis.

If people are worried about having their reputations tainted by Israel's actions, perhaps they need to reconsider their support for Israel rather than blaming the messenger.

I'm no expert on that war, but to me the Guardian looks somewhat biased towards Israel. Not for the first time either:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ketch.html

Steve Bell's cartoons have always been pretty vicious but the Guardian sanctioned them until this witch hut for antisemitists got fashionable. Corbyn was one casualty. I think they trumped it up because he was a socialist. He was later kept out of the Labour Party for suggesting that the scale of antisemitism in the party had been overstated. Diane Abbott got into deep trouble for saying that racism was more of a black skin thing than anything else. One thing I didn't notice was any concrete evidence of direct harm to Jewish individuals, yet a lot of people seem to "know" that their actions were highly likely to embolden antisemitic sentiments and promote antisemitic tropes to such a degree that they had to be shot down in flames.

I was heartened to see a protest in Sheffield by a group called Jews Against Genocide, whose views seem pretty close to mine on this matter. And it's interesting that the left seem to agree with me too, and that The Eye, a left-wing publication, was willing to publish the cartoon. I don't understand specifically what the matter has to do with left-right politics.

I guess it's all very subjective and there's not much hard evidence one way or the other. So it's a perfect topic for a snarky, acrimonious debate, and I already feel like I'm walking on eggshells for posting my views. But we'll see.

False analogy.

The "Blood Libel" is the Medieval anti Semitic canard that Jews steal and kill Gentile babies, and then use the babies' blood in religious rituals.

The crime itself was a fantasy. It never actually happened.

In contrast the current destruction and mass murder of Gaza, including the thousands of children who are dying there, is all too real.

Who is to blame? for the real crime? Its an open question: HAMAS for using the children of Gaza as human shields, or the Bibi regime that runs the state of Israel for doing the bombing, or both. But the crime is not the fault of Judaism as a religion..the way that the "Blood Libel" fantasy would be if it were true.

If Howard Jacobson is worried about a revival of actual blood libel, he should look at QAnon -- which, alas, has spread all over the world. See the separate WP thread QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic.

Ah yes, The Guardian. What a respectable publication. Even across the Atlantic they are oh-so famous for their love of Jews:
The Guardian issues apology for anti-Semitic cartoon

We saw their skill at planning and covert action with those exploding pagers. We've seen the effectiveness of drones at targeting in various contemporary wars. They know who they're after and have the skills and means to get them, but instead we're seeing the slaughter of the innocent. I could be wrong, but as far as I can tell, this is just about making a statement. So as far as I'm concerned, to hell with the IDF and their Gov.