09 February 2007

Stirring up the hornets

An Israeli professor has published a book entitled Easter of Blood that claims that Jews in the Middle Ages did indeed kill Christians and use their blood in religious rituals. This claim has been made by anti-Semites for over a thousand years, often to justify anti-Jewish laws and acts.

Professor Ariel Toaff of the Bar Ilan University in Jerusalem tempers his claim by saying that the heinous acts were committed by a " small group of fundamentalists" and goes on to say that to blame this on all Jews would be like blaming all Muslims for extremist acts.

His claims have been met with outrage by large sections of the Jewish community in Italy and elsewhere. I have no opinion, one way or the other on the matter, other than to believe that if these things did happen they would have be the acts of a small, twisted minority. I have not read his book and neither, I suspect, have those that condemn him.

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