Sponsored by Aish.com: Yahrtzeit of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer who was falsely arrested and charged with treason. Dreyfus was the victim of a frame-up; falsified documents were exposed in a famous open letter entitled J’accuse! (I Accuse!). This scandal, which came to be known as the Dreyfus Affair, bitterly divided French society for many years. Dreyfus was stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. (Five years later, he was released and later pardoned.) Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist reporting on the trial, was so affected by the anti-Semitism and injustice, that he committed
Read More +Today in Jewish History – Tammuz 8
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Sponsored by Aish.com: In 1840, U.S. President Martin Van Buren protested the Damascus blood libel, in which Syrian Jews were charged with killing two men and using their blood to make Passover matzah. Father Thomas of Damascus (and his Muslim assistant) had disappeared, prompting a blood libel that led to the arrest and torture of 13 Jews. More arrests and atrocities followed, culminating in the kidnapping of 63 Jewish children (compelling them to “reveal” where the blood was hidden), and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. In England, Jewish leaders Montefiore and Rothschild sought government intervention. In
Read More +Today in Jewish History – Tammuz 5
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Sponsored by Aish.com: In 1946, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, with no other place to go, returned to their hometown of Kielce, Poland — and were attacked by the townspeople in a bloody pogrom that left 42 Jews dead and 80 wounded. The pogrom began when rumors spread that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child. Polish policemen and soldiers entered the Jewish residences and began the violence; the Jews were then attacked outside by mobs in a fray that lasted five hours. Some 3 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust, yet this pogrom — occurring 15 months
Read More +Israeli Arabs big consumers of Matza
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Odd. Don’t they know that we bake matzah with the blood of Christians? From Israeli Arabs Big Consumers of Matza: During the Passover season, the Israeli Arab public regularly consumes large quantities of matza. A journalist associated with the Islamic Movement in Israel said he also bought matza. “The kids can’t get enough of it. They eat it like crackers.” A man from Baka al-Garbiyeh said his children and wife preferred to eat matza with a spread of jam or chocolate.
Read More +The New Blood Libel
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From The New Blood Libel: The alleged bloodthirst among the Jews is a classic anti-Semitic myth, known as the blood libel, that has been used over the years to justify the actual killing of many actual Jews. Here’s the two-time Pulitzer-winner, Nicholas Kristof, in Sunday’s New York Times: “B’Tselem…reports that last year Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians…and six Israeli soldiers. In the same period, B’Tselem said, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians.” Aside from the fact that Israel was being attacked by the Palestinians after withdrawing to the 1967 borders of the Gaza Strip, here’s some context that Kristof left out.
Read More +Fron Axis: Bulgarian secret services and the Israeli intelligence Mossad are involved in the infecting on more than 400 Libyan children with HIV in a hospital in the town of Benghazi in the late 1990s, the Libyan daily Ash Shams claims in its online edition. According to an article there, it was expected that Bulgaria and the European Union will try to exculpate the unheard crime with talks for human rights. According to the daily the problem is not linked to the nationality of the defendants. There should be people punished for this suffering, the daily comments. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief
Read More +(Communicated by the Bar-Ilan University Spokesman) Following is a statement by Bar-Ilan University Spokesman Shmuel Algarbali: “Professor Ariel Toaff is among Israel’s and the world’s senior researchers in medieval Jewish communities and the Italian Jewish community. Bar-Ilan University ( www.biu.ac.il/index_eng.shtml ) – like other universities – champions freedom of academic and scientific expression as the basis for its research activity. However, Bar-Ilan University expresses its strongest reservations over reports in the mediaregarding Prof. Toaff’s latest research regarding blood libels against European Jews in the Middle Ages. Bar-Ilan University – its officers and researchers – have condemned, and condemn, any attempt
Read More +‘Jews never committed Ritual Murders’
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Via Jerusalem Post: Ariel Toaff, the author of Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders feels as if he had been excommunicated. A rabbinical press release was issued against the contents of his book even before anyone had read it, based on a review that appeared in the Corriere della Sera, which attributed Toaff – an Israeli historian of Italian origin who heads Bar Ilan University ‘s Medieval and Renaissance History Department – with attempting to prove the validity of some medieval “blood libels.” Toaff feels like he had been pushed into a corner. None of his old
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