Israel-Hamas war, Day 29Top Hamas official: Jews use blood of non-Jewish children for Passover matzos
Hamas is an avowedly and openly anti-Semitic movement, and the group’s loathing of Jews is part and parcel of its charter and what it teaches young Palestinians in the schools it controls. Hamas leaders, when they speak to Western audiences, are usually careful not to highlight this facet of the group’s ideology, but the other day one of Hamas’s leaders, in a televised interview, used the centuries-old “matzo blood libel,” asserting that Jews kill non-Jewish children in order to use their blood to make matzos for Passover. He linked the death of Palestinian children in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war to the Jewish thirst for killing non-Jewish children.
Hamas is an avowedly and openly anti-Semitic movement, and the group’s loathing of Jews is part and parcel of its charter and what it teaches young Palestinians in the schools it controls. Hamas leaders, when they speak to Western audiences, are usually careful not to highlight this facet of the group’s ideology, but the other day one of Hamas’s leaders, in a televised interview, used the centuries-old “matzo blood libel,” asserting that Jews kill non-Jewish children in order to use their blood to make matzo for Passover.
The top Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan claimed that Israelis kill children on purpose and linked this to the old blood libel.
The remarks were made in an interview on the Lebanese Al-Quds TV channel on 28 July.
Hamdan said that “The Israelis concentrate on killing children. I believe that this is engraved in the historical Zionist and Jewish mentality, which has become addicted to the killing of women and children.”
“We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence. It happened everywhere, here and there,” he added.
The blood libel originated in 1144 with the fabricated story of William of Norwich, England and is continuously used by Arabs. Earlier this month, Wisam Afifa, the editor of Hamas’s paper Al-Risalah, associated the killing of Palestinian Arab teen Mohammed Abu-Khder by three Israeli extremists with the blood libel.
Arutz Sheva notes that references to the hoary blood libel are not uncommon in parts of the Arab world. For example, last year the founder of the Egyptian Justice and Progress Party said in a televised interview, “It is well known that during the Passover, [the Jews] make matzos called the ‘Blood of Zion’. They take a Christian child, slit his throat and slaughter him. Then they take his blood and make their [matzos]. This is a very important rite for the Jews, which they never forego.”
Asked by the interview whether the Jews do this to this day, he replied, “Absolutely. The French kings and the Russian czars discovered this in the Jewish quarters. All the massacring of Jews that occurred in those countries were because they discovered that the Jews had kidnapped and slaughtered children, in order to make the Passover matzos.”
Lately, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, campaigning in the run-up to the 10 August Turkish elections, has used language not usually heard by leaders of countries which are members of NATO, and who want to join the EU.
After accusing Israel of exhibiting “barbarism that surpasses that of Hitler,” Erdogan said: “Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target. They kill women so that they will not give birth to Palestinians; they kill babies so that they won’t grow up; they kill men so they can’t defend their country … They [the Israelis] will drown in the blood they shed.”
