Ashrawi and Tlaib blood libel

Regarding “Rashida: Rushing to demonize Jews” ( January 27), the blood libel has now come full circle. A seven- year- old Arab child in Beit Hanina drowns in a tragic accident and, of course, a bizarre story of fiendish Jewish malevolence is immediately concocted to explain what happened. Precisely how the blood libels begin.

On March 22, 1144, Little William of Norwich was found dead, and the Jews were immediately accused, in a fantasized fable, of his murder. The story was memorialized by Thomas of Monmouth and spread widely. That likely led directly to the 1190 York massacre and 1290 expulsion of the Jews from England, not be formally reversed until 1655.

This new libel spread much wider and faster than the original. Hanan Ashrawi tweeted it to her many followers; it was further advanced by US Rep. Rashida Tlaib ( D- MI), who has a sordid history of jumping the gun on dubious stories. For example, as news of the recent Jersey City attack emerged Tlaib immediately and totally erroneously, blamed it on “white supremacists.”

Ashrawi at least had the decency to delete her tweet and semi- apologize; Tlaib has not yet apologized. Unlike how her party botched an earlier attempt to condemn antisemitism forthrightly, will it now call out Tlaib’s blatant antisemitism? Will her constituents remember in November?

RICHARD D. WILKINS Syracuse, NY

It is a travesty to see the infamous medieval blood libel rearing its ugly head here in the land of Israel.

It is a reminder of the tenacity of the seminal hatred of Jews in Europe, which manifested itself as late as 1946, the year after the end of WWII and the Holocaust, when a group of 42 Jews returned to Kielce to try to salvage their lives in Poland. When a 15- yearold Polish boy came home late one night and was reprimanded by his parents, he countered that the Jews had kidnapped him to use his blood for their religious rituals. The next day, July 4, 1946, all 42 Jews were murdered in Kielce as a result of the blood libel.

Such canards repeated today must be rooted out in the strongest manner possible.

MARION REISS Beit Shemesh