Ancient Slanders Revived

"As part of the Israeli attempts to utilize religious sources of authority to achieve political goals, an Israeli human rights organization has exposed a religious ruling issued by Rabbi Shlomo Melamed, chairman of the Council of Settlement Rabbis, that gave the settlers permission to poison the drinking water and the natural wells in the villages and towns throughout the West Bank. This, with the goal of causing the residents to leave their lands, enabling the settlers to take control of them."
Palestinian TV report

No Rabbi Shlomo Melamed is known to exist, and there is no Council of Settlement Rabbis, referred to in the accusation. But little things like vibrant imaginations whose purpose is to paint a picture of an ancient libel newly refreshed will not stop anyone willing to believe such atrocious claims from claiming them to be true. True believers feel that Rabbis will stoop to issuing such outrageous instructions and that Jews are sufficiently hate-filled to carry them out.

After all, in the world of Islam mullahs and imams feel free to issue death fatwas at will, whenever they feel someone -- Muslim or non-Muslim -- has breached the sacred trust in Islam in some manner by  defaming the Prophet Mohammad through portraying him in a cartoon or a play or a book, when it is absolutely prohibited, or are guilty of criticizing Islam, alternately risking death as punishment for abrogating the stricture against abandoning Islam.

"What is the international community waiting for to interfere, the death of thousands of Palestinians of thirst? To meet such incident with silence and ignore the war Israel is waging against Palestinians is a cause of shame for the international community."
Palestinian Authority Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement

Inciting against Israel by 'validating' the dangerously inflammatory 'facts' revealed by some obscure source finding other methods of reaching out to the international community to complain about Israel's dastardly plan to annihilate Palestinian lives, needs no verification to ensure that the accusations have any basis in fact. That they are reported is sufficient proof that there is reason to report them; the words transform the hateful idea into reality.

"By scapegoating the Jewish state for all the world's health problems, just as medieval Europe once accused the Jews of poisoning the wells, the United Nations and its World Health Organization betray the very principles upon which they were founded."
"Israel remains' the beacon of the entire region on respecting the health rights of all people."
Hillel Neuer, director general, UN Watch

Certainly Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA seems to believe that the health rights of all people are safeguarded in Israeli hospitals, since he escorts his ailing wife for treatment inside Israel, trusting that Jewish and Arab physicians and medical staff working there in Israeli hospitals will take the excellent treatment of his wife that Israeli medicine is noted for. And nor has the leader of Hamas hesitated to send his family members to Israel for expert professionalism to deal with their serious health problems.

But it suits the purpose of the Palestinians to incite against Israel, as the brutal occupier whose human rights transgressions know no bounds of decency. Including abducting Arab children to drain their blood to be used in the preparation of Passover matzos. A blood libel charge that was popular in the Middle Ages when Jews were blamed for the most outrageous excesses in human rights atrocities, from using the blood of Christian children to produce matzos, to poisoning community wells and committing ritual murder.

These charges justified the pogroms and mass slaughters imposed upon Jewish communities throughout eastern Europe and beyond where in Ukraine, Poland and Russia in particular, the regular occurrences of popular charges of violence by Jews against Christians led mobs to rampage through villages, extracting their bloody revenge on the Jewish men, women and children who were the focus of their rage.

Often used as scapegoats by authorities to divert attention from their own oppression of the peasants, the charges were used, allowing the oppressed to vent their psychotic rage against helpless communities of Jews cowering in fear and hoping to survive the alcohol-fuelled rampages where Jewish business were looted, homes vandalized, and people slaughtered.

After Palestinian television aired the first report they corrected it, however. No one single rabbi was involved; the entire rabbinical council issued the directive, according to updated information. A charge that the Arab League was only too happy to support, giving them another opportunity condemn Israel, even using the non-existent Rabbi's dread name as proof of what was happening.

Enter the World Health Organization, passing a resolution presented by the Palestinian Authority that claimed Israel violates the rights of Palestinians through interference in West Bank and Golan Heights hospitals. Israel once again distinguished by representing the sole nation criticized at the conference in a vote of 107 to eight with eight abstentions.

Yair Lapid, former Israeli finance minister, wrote to Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director general, to point out that the resolution was a particularly pungent expression of anti-Semitism, fitting nicely in with the generalized delegimization campaign targeting Israel.  Israel, he pointed out, had set up a field hospital for the treatment of Palestinian civilians injured in the conflict in Gaza two years ago. Just as it more recently treats injured Syrians in the bloody civil war.

Two days ago, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responding to enquiries over incitements to violence by the PA, informed the European Union that the PA is not the only one that incites to violence: "The Israelis are doing this as well… Certain rabbis in Israel have said very clearly to their government that our water should be poisoned in order to have Palestinians killed." He has now retracted his previous charges to state otherwise.

"After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world."

Statement: Office of the PA President

Guess what is going to stick in the minds of perennially aggrieved Palestinians when thinking about the wrongs done them by Israel, based on numerous previous false claims used by the Palestinian Authority, including that Israel was planning to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque, causing violent riots and stabbing deaths by 'motivated' Palestinians of Israelis going about their business on the streets never imagining that the person approaching them is going to kill them.