Anyone Noting Israel’s Crimes Will Be Accused of “Blood Libel”

Genocide apologists have declared the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof’s report on Israeli soldiers’ rape of Palestinians is “blood libel.” If that sounds familiar, it’s because they’ve said the same thing for three years about every Israeli war crime.

By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

No sooner was New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s report about Israeli soldiers’ systematic sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners published this past week than the charge of “blood libel” was suddenly leveled everywhere at Israel’s critics. It’s what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Kristof and the Times of spreading; what the Israeli foreign ministry is charging them with; what pro-Israel protesters are yelling outside the paper’s headquarters; and what various propaganda arms of the US pro-Israel lobby are flinging.

To be clear, “blood libel” is a centuries-old antisemitic myth that Jews ritually killed Christian children and baked their blood into their bread. Kristof’s article is a thorough piece of reporting based on interviews with fourteen Palestinian survivors, as well as with their families, investigators, and officials, and which surived the New York Times’s fact-checking process and famously pro-Israel editorial line. The two have absolutely nothing in common.

This is the latest case of Israel and its boosters cynically reaching for this talking point to distract and hector people away from thinking about its very real war crimes with empty charges of antisemitism. After all, that Israeli soldiers use rape and other forms of sexual violence against Palestinians was well documented long before Kristof’s piece and undeniable, not just because Israeli citizens literally rioted over a criminal investigation into a group of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) rapists — one of whom was later perversely turned into a celebrity by the Israeli media — but because Israeli soldiers have cheerfully admitted to it. From the start of the genocide in Gaza to today, pro-Israel forces have lazily screamed “blood libel” any time Israel has come under criticism for one or another bloodcurdling atrocity.

When Israel was accused of bombing Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital in the first month of the genocide, Israeli officials and their various US proxies like the Anti-Defamation League cried “blood libel,” even charging that simply reporting on the accusation was tantamount to accusing all Jews everywhere of feasting on children’s blood. The Israeli military would never attack a hospital. How could anyone even think such a thing?