I was going to keep my peace about the whole Sarah Palin issue and its relevancy or irrelevancy to the tragic shooting last weekend. I can’t stand her, but that’s not really enough to merit a blog post.
Then she made that ridiculous and unnecessary video in which she used the term “blood libel.” That’s an accusation that has a very specific and painful historical meaning for Jews. Lots of innocent public figures have been falsely accused of bad things and somehow they managed to avoid using that phrase.
I know she’s incapable of writing anything herself, but maybe she could hire some writers who are smart enough to use Google.
Here's another one who thinks that she used the term accurately:
ReplyDeletehttp://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/01/lets-talk-about-blood-libels-and-those.html
It starts:
"Without taking any partisan position, but purely on the issue's historical merits, nothing could have been more appropriate than Sarah Palin's use of the term "blood libel" to describe what happened to her after the Tucson killings. I know because my direct ancestors were the target of a blood libel.
A blood libel is a false accusation that someone else has deliberately caused the shedding of blood, made in order to harm that person or people, advance one's own political and ideological agenda, and stir up hatred for them in a manner that might lead to the shedding of their blood in revenge."
Here's another one:
"What is the modern incident that comes to my mind on hearing the phrase “blood libel?” Why, Mohammed al Durah, of course. Richard Landes has used the phrase many times in connection with the allegation that al Durah was killed by Israeli soldiers (for example, here), and quite correctly at that (Landes is a historian, by the way)."
That one was from Neoneocon.com
Even R' Shmuley Boteach said it was ok for Palin to use the term. He wrote:
"Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.
The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703583404576079823067585318.html