The Gaza Health Ministry’s Modern Blood Libel:

Anti-semites have used the blood libel for over a millennium to falsely accuse Jews of murdering non Jews in order to terrorize  and murder Jews and cast disapprobation on the Jewish people. 

The first blood libel occured in 1174 in England with the murder of William of Norwich. (“The Murder of William of Norwich. The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe, E.M. Rose, 2015).

The Damascus Affair in 1840 was another blood libel that encouraged antisemites to terrorize and murder in Jews. (“Blood Libel. The Damascus Affair. Ronald  Florence, 2004).

Over the last century, however,  antisemites have presented the blood libel  with a new iteration: legitimate Jewish self defense being denigrated  as a blood libel.

First one must remember that unfortunately and tragically civilians are killed in war. Sometimes thousands .

Sometimes millions. The evil that initiates many wars often does not die easily.

After the surprise attack on  Pearl Harbor in which Imperial Japan murdered 2300 individuals, the United States and its allies defended themselves demanding Imperial Japan’s unconditional surrender. Imperial Japan continued to pursue its evil policies and did not unconditionally surrender until 500,000 -- 1,000,000 civilians were killed.

Similarly after the Nazis invaded Poland on 9/1/39 and began to maraud across Europe killing millions of civilians, the Allies defended themselves and demanded an unconditional surrender. However the Nazis refused to  unconditionally surrender until nearly 40,000,000 civilians were killed .

These numbers are important to remember when one examines the blood libels that have been used to deny the fact of  legitimate Jewish self defense in Mandatory Palestine and Gaza.

On November 29, 1947 the United Nations General Assembly  created a two state solution( Partition) for the Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. The Jews accepted it.  On November 30, 1947 the leader of the Arabs, 

Nazi war criminal the Grand Mufti Amin al- Husseini, when he rejected this two state solution simultaneously commanded the Arabs to: “Murder the Jews. Murder all of them”.

At that point the Arabs began to murder the Jews of Mandatory Palestine who had accepted Partition. The Jews defended themselves in what could be described as a civil war. Of course on May 14, 1948 five Arab armies invaded Mandatory Palestine promising the genocide of the Jews -- consistent with the Grand Mufti’s command.

On April 9, 1948 there was a battle at Der Yassin in which 107 Arabs died. As described by Professor Eliezer Tauber in his recent exquisitely detailed study of the events of April 9 in which he compared survivor testimony, both Arab and Jew,  and was able to detail the circumstances of practically every death:

“Seventy percent of the about 1,000 inhabitants of Der Yassin managed to escape the attack( because the attackers let them escape), twenty percent were taken prisoner, and ten percent were killed. As we have shown, the ratio between Arabs killed and injured ( about 100 each) did not suggest a massacre. Even more indicative is the fact that double the number of Arabs were taken prisoner than were killed. This is an even better metric, because the decision to take individuals prisoners was an intentional act on the part of the captors ( unlike when injuring people ). Finally the fact that the overwhelming majority, ninety percent, survived the attack is the clearest refutation of the accusation of a massacre. “ The Massacre That Never Was. The Myth of Der Yassin and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem”,  Professor Eliezer Tauber, 2021.

Not only does Professor Tauber expose  the “massacre” at Der Yassin as a blood libel,  but just as importantly so does CONTEMPORANEOUS Muslim journalism which describes the Arab leaders’ modus operandi of screaming the blood libel of “massacre”  to inflame the Arab populace against the Jews.

On April 9, 1953 the Jordanian daily “Al Urdan” reported: “For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs..By spreading rumours of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy”. See:  “The Palestinian Delusion. The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process”, Robert Spencer , 2019, page 83.

 On October 7, 2023 , - there was a ceasefire on October 6 - Hamas and hundreds of its Gazan civilian willing executioners in a surprise attack not unlike Pearl Harbor murdered 1200 Jews including in  a frenzy of antisemitic misogyny raped, murdered, eviscerated, disemboweled, cut off breasts and sliced wide open vaginas of hundreds Jewish women, girls, infants and Holocaust survivors.

See: “Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct 7”, NY Times, 12/28/23);

Evidence Points to Systemic Use of Rape and Sexual Violence by Hamas in Oct 7 Attacks,” Beth McKernan, The Guardian, 1/24/24; “U.N. Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attacks”, NY Times, 3/5/24).

See also: “Screams Before Silence”, directed by Anat Stalinsky, produced by Sheryl Sandberg.

So just as the United States responded defensively  to Pearl Harbor, Israel has responded defensively to October 7.  Unfortunately there have been many civilian deaths especially since Hamas has stolen over $1 billion in aid designated for roads, schools, hospitals, etc and used every dollar  to build an underground electrified  Pentagon under every square foot of Gaza as a base to murder Jews. In addition the civilians of Gaza have made clear their enthusiastic support for the atrocities of 10/7.

(See:” ‘Ordinary Gazans’ and October 7: Hatred Among  the Population and the Massacre”, 11/14/23, Jeffrey Herbst, former  President of Colgate University and Chair of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, New York Daily News).

Finally, the blood libels since October 7 of the Gaza Health Ministry, 

 a propaganda arm of Hamas,  of vastly exaggerating  the number of civilian deaths in Gaza as well as blaming civilian deaths caused by Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad on the Jews are de rigueur  to inflame the Arab populace and their supporters and fill the pages of antisemitic journalists and commentators across the globe with antisemitic calumny after antisemitic calumny .

The single clearest example of the blood libelous foundational purpose of the Gaza Heath Ministry occured on October 17, 2023 when it spewed the antisemitic calumny that the IDF was responsible for a rocket that had landed near the al Ahli hospital and had killed numerous civilians. This blood libel  was repeated by every news service just as Hamas and the Gaza Health Ministry intended. Subsequent investigations with detailed telemetry  by many independent organizations demonstrated that these deaths were caused by a misfired rocket by Hamas ( Palestine Islamic Jihad?) and that the Jews had nothing to do with it. This is nothing more than the  blood libel that has its roots in many  centuries of blood libels. Similarly  every  inflated civilian casualty figure released by the Gaza Health Ministry  has now been shown to be nothing more than a blood libel. For months the Gaza Health Ministry has been spewing civilian  casualty figures of 35,000 or more. This blood libel has been continually repeated by Hamas’ sycophantic journalists across the world. The  New York Times has repeated this blood libel  of 35,000 plus civilian casualties at least a half dozen times.

It has reached a point where even the United Nations cannot stomach the Gaza Health Ministry’s blood libels.

The latest statistics as of May 8 from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA) states  that in Gaza a total of 7797 children and 4959 women have been killed in Israel’s defensive war against Hamas reducing the bogus casualty figure of 35,000 civilians  killed in Gaza  promoted by the Gaza Health Ministry by more than 1/2.

OCHA  has stated that any higher fallacious numbers are attributed to the Hamas controlled Government Media Office.

In this regard, Colonel Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, and head of the international terrorism team at the British Joint Intelligence Committee has said:

“My experience of monitoring the IDF actions, is that Israel is taking absolutely unprecedented and extremely effective measures to minimize civilian deaths. Despite what many people proclaim, who know nothing about it, [is that] Israel has achieved what I estimate to be the lowest proportion of civilian to military casualties in any conflict in modern times” he said.

“Kemp estimates the IDF has probably killed around 0.8 civilians for every Hamas kill, while in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ratios were five to one and  three to one.

“The measures they take have not been seen by any other army anywhere in history” he said. ( Australian Jewish News.com, 5/9/24).

Similarly, John Spencer, Chair of  Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern Warfare Institute(MWI) at West Point, has said:

“The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world’s most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.” (“Israel Has Set A  New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit it?”, Newsweek, 3/25/24.).

Mr. Spencer has also written:

“The reality is that when it comes to avoiding civilian harm, there is no modern comparison to Israel’s war against Hamas. Israel is not fighting a battle like Fallujah, Mosul, or Raqqa; it is fighting a war involving synchronous major urban battles. No military in modern history has faced over 30,000 urban defenders in more than seven cities using human shields and hiding in hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites, while holding hundreds of hostages.

“Despite the unique challenges Israel faces in its war against Hamas, it has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history.” (“ Israel Has Implemented More Means to Prevent Civilian Casualties Than Any Other Nation In History “, Newsweek com, 1/31/24.)

The bottom is that the medieval blood libel of 1174 has become today’s Islamic blood libel in which legitimate Jewish self defense has become “massacres” and “genocide”  -- once again to inflame the antisemites both in the populace across the globe  and in the main stream media and the academy.

Richard Sherman, POB 934853, Margate, Florida 33093(646)267-7904.