Syria Revives the 'Blood Libel'

...In a clarification to the Commission it maintained that Chaalan "did not in the least refer to Jews or Judaism and did not mention anything related to Judaic rituals...

...While the United Nations Commission on Human Rights as a body was silent in response to the Syrian charges, 14 of its members and 15 observer states did eventually raise their voices, albeit only in letters of complaint...

...in the second century C.E., the Roman theologian Tertullian complained: "We are said to be the most criminal of men, onthescoreof our sacramental baby-killing, and the babyeating that goes with it...

...Forty-three UN countries serve rotating three-year terms on the Commission, another 74 took part in its deliberations as "state observers," and 157 outside bodies were designated participants as well...

...The communication added: "Syria is well-known for its tolerance...

...The early Christians were accused of similar crimes...

...The claim that Jews use the blood of non-Jews to prepare matzoh for Passover predates the Damascus incident by some 2,100 years...

...The U.S...

...Present last February 8 on the podium of the Palais des Nations in Geneva, where the Human Rights Commission meets, were its 1991 chairman, Enrique Bernales Ballesteros of Peru...

...kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread...

...In his statement, Littman quoted from General Tlass' Preface to the Syrian volume, published in 1983: "The Jew can...

...The Syrian delegation sought to contain the mounting concern over its words...

...Hitler pointed to the blood libel in Mein Kampf, and Julius Streicher gave it prominence in the Nazi publication Der Stürmer...

...In that notorious incident members of the Jewish community in Syria's capital were accused of murdering a Capuchin missionary, Father Thomas, to use his blood for ritual purposes...

...Certainly, too, there can be little doubt about the government's position when no less a political figure than the Minister of Defense believes—and writes a preface to a book seeking to prove—that Jews kill nonJews for ritual purposes...

...The issue arose earlier that day when David Littman, the representative of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, one of the 121 nongovernmental organizations accredited to the Commission, asked it to press for repeal of the 1975 United Nations resolution defining Zionism as a form of racism...

...More important, Damascus' promotion of the blood libel does not bode well for the chances of a post-Gulf war settlement between Syria and Israel...

...The 29 nations—including all of the European members, except for Albania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union—called on the Commission to issue a public condemnation of the inflamatory Syrian stand...

...Thirteen of the non-governmental organizations attached to the Commission also expressed their objections...

...Indeed, Jewish dietary laws are replete with rules about the scrupulous removal of blood from meat before it may be eaten...

...Hardly less remarkable was the initial response to the Syrian delegate's speech affirming the ancient slander that Jews kill Christians, usually young children, to make unleavened bread for Passover...

...The Syrian delegate did not explain what a hoary anti-Semitic fabrication that goes back nearly 23 centuries has to do with Zionism...

...Neither they nor any of the approximately 400 persons assembled in the hall seemed to understand what the second-ranking member of the Syrian delegation, Nabila Chaalan, was saying as she urged them to read a book in Arabic entitled The Matzoh of Zion...

...In the year 1144, in medieval Europe, the so-called boymartyr, William of Norwich, was alleged to be a victim of the Jewish blood lust...

...None of this had any inhibiting effect on Chaalan...

...The cover illustration for The Matzoh of Zion, showing blood gushing into a bowl from the neck of a non-Jew while a bloodthirsty Jew applies the knife, is on a par with the Stürmer engravings...

...She did not speak of the successful intercession of Adolphe Crémieux of France and Sir Moses Montefiore of England with Mehmet Ali, the ruler of Egypt (which exercised hegemony over Syria), who ordered the release of the prisoners after expressing his disbelief in the charge against the Jewish community...

...and John Pace, the Commission's Secretary-General...

...If anything, the evidence suggests the opposite...

...Early last year, for example, the Syrian government radio produced a series of programs consisting of excerpts from The Matzoh of Zion that it broadcast throughout the Arab world...

...We deeply regret that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which is dedicated to ending intolerance toward any religious, racial, or ethnic group, was the venue for the expression of such crude and hateful allegations...

...letter said: "We assume that the statements made by the Representative of Syria do not reflect the views of the Government of Syria...

...The first historic record of the blood libel goes back to Hellenistic Alexandria—before Christianity, before Zionism—when Jews were charged with kidnapping a Greek child in order to kill him for ritualistic purposes...

...She then recounted the book's version of the 1840 "Damascus Affair...

...In the afternoon, Chaalan exercised her right of reply...

...THE POLITICS OF HATRED Syria Revives the 'Blood Libel' By Richard Cohen Syria, the United States' newest ally in the Middle East, has officially promoted one of the oldest calumnies in the long history of antiSemitism, the so-called "blood libel," from the least likely of all international forums: the United Nations Commission on Human Rights...

...Nor did she report that Montefiore had obtained from the Sultan Abd el Majid in Constantinople a fierce denunciation of the blood libel as base falsehood...

...We had thought that they had been relegated to the ashcan of history...

...Whoeverreadsthisbook, she said, holding The Matzoh of Zion in her hand, "will be informed of the reason behind Father Thomas' murder and will clearly discover the racist reality of Zionism...

...They offend the decorum of this body and damage the credibility of its work...

...The issue of May 1,1934, printed a lurid description of the blood ritual accompanied by obscene engravings supposedly depicting the whole procedure...

...The basis for that assumption is, to put it mildly, unclear...

...Thanks in part to an outraged world reaction, Mendel Beilis was acquitted...

...Richard Cohen, a past NL contributor, is a public relations consultant...

...Insisting that "historical realities cannot be effaced," she cited The Matzoh of Zion and launched "an appeal to all members of this Commission to read this very important work that demonstrates unequivocally the historical reality of Zionist racism...

...I hope that I have done my duty in presenting the practices of the enemy of our historic nation...

...Ambassador continued: "Such statements, absurd and patently false, are historical incitements to prejudice and violence...

...Jan Martenson, UN Under-Secretary for Human Rights...

...Although an investigation soon established that the boy had been killed by non-Jews, the Tsarist government stepped in and declared that Beilis committed the crime because the boy's blood was supposedly needed for the baking of matzoh for Passover...

...Nor can its effect on the prospects for an overall Mideast peace be discounted, especially when it is countenanced at a session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights...

...The accusation is especially outrageous because the Old Testament and the Talmud expressly forbid the consumption of blood...

...They have no place in this Commission...

...Still, the slander would not die...

...In the case of the Jews, however, the defamation took root...

...Urged to directly address the Syrian delegate's charges in his adjournment remarks on March 8, Chairman Ballesteros would only say, rather ambiguously, that "any ambiguity on the question of religious tolerance is unacceptable...

...The Syrian delegate did not mention that of nine Jewish leaders arrested and tortured in 1840 for the crime, two died in prison and seven others were condemned to death...

...Curiously, though, the final sentence of the U.S...

...The United States, in a protest signed by its permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Morris B. Abram, decried the fact that "the Representative of Syria made repeated approving references to the profoundly racist, anti-Semitic and calumnious allegation that members of the Jewish faith have engaged in the ritual murder of Christians, including children, to use their blood in the preparation of the unleavened bread of the Passover feast...

...but rather to the discriminatory nature of the Zionist movement...

...Never far beneath the surface, the libel erupted again not only in Damascus but in 1911 in Kiev, where one Mendel Beilis was accused of murdering a young boy...

...The work—and its Preface, written by the Syrian Defense Minister, Major General Mustafa Tlass—asserts the blood libel as fact...