As for JM, Muffti doesn’t mind getting his hair mussed. But he can’t see the sense in engaging with people who are convinced that guilt by very loose association is a valid form of inference. They can call Muffti a cannibal all they like. The Grand Muffti will look into their histories and taunt them for the follies and crimes of their ancestors. Then maybe we can all realize how silly it is to be angry at a group, ashamed of a group, or proud of a group on behalf of what small numbers of its members did or may have done.

If one might to wish to cause harm and justifiies their anger by remote historical instances/ antecedents, they simply aren’t to be reasoned with.

It’s as bad as someone telling you that you are an idiot because the person who sits beside you said something stupid. how would you argue with that? By showing that the person sitting besides you actually said something smart and therefore you are off the hook from the charge of being stupid? Is that really a reasonable way to proceded?

You are saying, “I am not with them, officer, they are not my friends” meaning the Jews of the past. “Who knows, and who cares, what they did.”

But you will not escape the group. They are calling you, yes you, a cannibal.

No Jewish Mother ever, ever wrung the neck of a chicken. No Jew was ever put to bed by hands that had ended a life, earlier that day.

The problem isn’t one of justification, it’s one of self-justification (in the sense that those who might wish to cause harm can claim that historical instances such as this justify their anger/hatred/violence/etc.) and also of laying groundwork where the likelihood of problems grows.

Did you click on the link in my previous comment?

Let Muffti ask a hypothetical question: say it turns out that the jews did indeed murder simonino and used his blood to make matza that much grosses than it already is. Do you think that then the anti-semites have better justification for disliking us? Or would you do waht Muffti is urging you do already: fight the inference from ‘people of a group did action A’ to ‘the group is full of members or characterized by members who do A.’

Anyhow, Muffti sees your point. He just doesn’t really understand why we should get uptight about how the historians rule over things that happened to, as JM puts it, our great, grea…great… as she said, people take it htat what those poele did reflects on us now. We shoujld be fighting that connection. No matter hwat our great great great..parents did or didn’t do is, so fars Muffti can tell, completely irrelevant.

This contributes to the general public depression you have in the USA. Everyone (w. a few exceptions) is depressed, angry, irritable. Cannot relax. If they have to wait 25 minutes for their food order, there is panic, agression,
violence.

This is happening because of the wastefulness of the USA society. When people see such wealth on the one hand, and their own spartan existence, there are obvious jealousy issues.

This is one of the reasons that our Gedolim in Europe urges in the Diaspora to not live so comfortable, even if one is already wealthy. But this edict, is not followed. We started the McMansion syndrome in Flatbush and Boro Park.

The anti Semitism works on many levels, but they use the wealthy Jewish names out there to stir up anti Jewish feelings amongst the public.

I believe we will continue to see more and more vicious attacks against Jews in the diasora particularly the USA.

But I am not addressing the larger issues such as what kind of times these are, where it is all heading, why, and what we should do. I don’t feel like it right now.

TM is right. It matters a lot that this is not from “muslim scholars,” but from one of us, and from a prominent family.

As, in reality, we shun eating ANY blood at all – kosher meat is totally drained of blood – it is so extremely opposite to what we really believe and do!

GM, it is about demonizing people. Today’s people.

It is all nonsense, but evil nonsense needs to be confronted. Words matter. Words lead to deeds. Words matter even if they never lead to deeds.

I am sure it will come out in time that the guy is insane, or was bribed, or he hated his family and wanted to show them up, or something. It ought to be obvious that people will say anything under torture. They will say the moon is made of green cheese. It means nothing.

But as TM says, it is bad.

No, Muffti, a vacuum is filled by something and if it isn’t you it will be someone who you’d rather not fill that vacuum. We don’t live in a sterile world where everything is lovely and all think well of the Jewish people. My son, when he was 7 years old was approached by a friend who asked him directly why the Jews killed Jesus. This is a boy who comes from a nice family, educated middle class parents and certainly if you were to ask them, they would tell you they were horrified to hear that their son said such a thing. Maybe they were, or maybe they weren’t. A story like this isn’t one they will openly accept, but it will confirm some deep feelings that logic has little to do with. Muffti, not everyone studies philosphy and not everyone is an atheist. We are plumbing depths that go back millenia – for Jews as well.

Muffti agrees that we should fight falsity, misinformation as well as propaganda. And Muffti agrees that W&M’s stuff should be rebutted as carefully as possible. But that example actually sort of illustrates Muffti’s point.

This of it this way: if W & M’s paper was essentially correct, Muffti would think that America really should change the way that its governments deal with Israel and that a concerted effort should take place to block the lobby from ruining american interests and getting young american soldiers killed as pawns. And as such, its pretty important that we refute that.

But the blood libels are different. Say evidence comes to light that the jews realy did commit the murder of Simonino and say that it was done by some misguided whackos who really had decided that matza wasn’t quite right without the blood of a gentile boy. Would that really change the way you think about anything in teh world today vis a vis the jews and their relationship with gentiles? If it turned out that some Jews realy did kill jesus, would you think that woujld be the appropriate cause of changes between how jews view the rest of the world and vice versa? If you found out that the slave trade really had been funded and supported nearly entirely by rich jewish financiers, would that change how the jews as a whole should be viewed?

Muffti hopes that the answer to all of these questions is ‘no’. Of course, some people will answer ‘yes’ to these and they are called ‘anti-semites’ or ‘very poor reasoners and generalizers’. The former, sio far as Muffti can tell, are never anti-semites because they have real historical convictions about murders in Trent in the 1400s. The latter are awfully hard to persuade by rational means, but surely the latter group should be persuaded to see, if anything, that its simply invalid to argue from the actions of a few members of a group to hte expected action of the group as a whole. To do that, it is irrelevant to figure out who killed who in the 1400s.

That’s where we should be doing our intellectual excersizes. Whether or not the blood libels are supported by the evidence is and should be a matter of interest to history buffs.

Jews, as you know, have been victims of these types of situations many times in our history and all you need to do is look back at the Third Reich to see a fairly modern occurrence of this. In fact, I was at a bookstore today and happened to walk by a recently written book about the Nazi propaganda machine. Essentially, they convinced their people that they were victims of the Jews and that the Jewish people were were the cause of the ills and dangers befalling the German state and people. At the time, to remind you, Germany was considered by many to be one of the great societies of the modern world with many leading lights in the sciences, the arts, etc. A little propaganda and boom!

This particular blood libel that Toaff speaks about is part of an unspoken but deeply believed set of perceptions of Jews by many people. Great efforts have been made to correct this misperception, with some success I should think. Then, he comes along and with his little pebble shatters the recently calmed waters.

Yes, I do believe that scattered events, when combined with other elements, can lead to a very hostile environment. As example one, I bring you the current and ongoing vilification of Jews with respect to Iraq and the fact the US is embroiled in a number of difficult situations overseas. You simply need to read Walt & Mearsheimer’s crappy paper, soon to be published by an important publisher. These two academics strung together a bunch of accusations, butressed with a great deal of biased views of history, not to mention errors and willful ignoring or sublimating critical information that undermines their claims, and manage to give us a US and in turn a world that is driven by Jewish interests. If you read this Nazi propaganda book and think about their paper, there is a similar method going on where legitimate and credible actors begin to influence public perceptions.

Anybody reading W&M’s paper who has been on the Internet a while (in our circles anyway) can easily identify much of the information contained therein because it’s part of the ongoing campaign to delegitimize Israel, Zionism and their supporters. It’s a hodge podge of select info intended to paint a particular picture. Well, it’s now about to become a book written by a U of Chicago and a Harvard professor. Will the blood libel matter when you have these modern attacks on Jews? Yes. In a subtle and unspoken way, it reinforces the overt attacks. Not for everybody, to be sure, but then again, you don’t need everybody to have a problem with us before it becomes our problem.

The best way to fight this is with truth and facts and to make sure that even the small issues are addressed.