We have to go back a little over 900 years to understand how the Blood libel against the Jews got started. It was in England, in 1144, during the Middle Ages. The Jewish people had already suffered quite a bit, and Christianity–an originally Jewish faith–was distancing itself further and further from its Jewish roots. We are only fifty years after the first Crusade of 1096, and it is definitely not a great time to be Jewish in Europe.
In the town of Norwich, 40 miles northeast of London, a young boy named William was murdered during Holy Week. Even though the crime was never solved, the Jewish community was quickly accused. The accusation came after the testimony from a Benedictine monk, Thomas of Mommouth. According to the monk, the boy was tortured and murdered for the purpose of draining his blood and using it to make matzoh (unleavened bread for Passover). The monk was either unaware or willfully ignored the fact that in Judaism, the first thing that we are asked by God to do to make meat kosher is to drain all the blood. So, there is no point adding blood to our food (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3:17, 17:10-14; Deuteronomy 12:23).
This was the first recorded instance of blood libel, and it resulted in the death of many Jewish people across Europe. The lies about Jewish people using blood for matzah still live on in 2026, and it has opened the door for a myriad of other lies over the centuries. The truth is that any ill that can be blamed on the Jews will be blamed on the Jews. For as long as the Jewish people are the chosen people of God, they will remain the chosen target of Satan.
One of the best anthologies of Christian antisemitism and beyond is the book The Anguish of the Jews by Edward Flannery. Satan is extremely creative when it comes to convincing people about Jewish guilt for anything and everything. He constantly repackages the oldest hatred and uses people in various capacities to fulfill his agenda. The irrationality of antisemitism is beyond comprehension, but that doesn’t stop those who are not concerned with the facts.
The latest and most disgusting example is an article published in the New York Times on May 11 by Nicholas Kristof, where the Blood Libel is alive and well. How Mr. Kristof can sleep at night defies logic when he writes things such as: “Other Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have also cited reports of police dogs being coached to rape prisoners.” The article is laced with very graphic lies about rape and sexual abuse of Palestinians by IDF soldiers. How do you even train a dog to “rape” a human? This is a case of evil people relying on the stupidity of their audience. Incidentally, and very appropriately, Bibi Netanyahu has threatened to sue the New York Times for libel.
It is almost always the case that the accusations thrown at Israel by her enemies are the very acts committed by that enemy against Israel and the Jewish people. But that narrative doesn’t sell well to the mainstream media. What feeds the beast of Judeophobia is a sick and evil combination of lies and blood libels pointed at Israel.
In the 1930s and 40s, a man by the name of Julius Streicher was the publisher of a virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer (“the stormtrooper” or “attacker”). He was eventually convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He was one of Hitler’s key players. Streicher’s rag relied on blood libels that the people believed because they wanted to believed them. Streicher based his entire publishing endeavor on the propagation of fabricated lies to demonize the Jewish people. The newspaper was very instrumental in promoting the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” and we are seeing a repeat of that stage being set in front of our very eyes (Zechariah 12:3). Are we to remain silent?
The New York Times is Der Stürmer 2.0! There have been other articles, and there will be more to demonize and delegitimize Israel and the Jewish people in the Diaspora. There is no other way to explain what Mr. Kristof did with this recent article. Once again, people want to believe that IDF soldiers are monsters committing rape and other acts of sexual violence on Palestinians. When facts no longer matter, anything can happen. Our enemies want Israel to be the bad actor so that Jewish people can be blamed globally by proxy, and then persecuted, hurt, and even killed.
We live in a world where truth and lies have been switched (Romans 1:18-32). Every day, we are faced with an inverted reality. The only anchor to truth is the unchanging word of God, now more than ever. Satan must know that his days are numbered and that he is running on fumes. He is desperate. Normal is not coming back, but praise God, Yeshua is, and maybe sooner than we all realize! When it comes to Israel, should we trust a newspaper or God’s Word?
