In the aftermath of the DC killing by Elias Rodriguez, there are many articles (for example, this) featuring the phrase “blood on their hands” and blaming various entities for stirring up such murderous hatred: the universities, the online influencers, leftist organizations, the UN, international courts, and the press – all of which have been busy churning out anti-Jewish anti-Israel venom, a regular “Protocols of Zion” and/or blood libel a day.
Much of this anti-Jewish propaganda takes the form of an ancient Jew-hating lie: the blood libel, which accuses Jews of being baby-killers. Now, it’s certainly true (and tragic) that in modern wars, babies are killed at times. But the IDF goes out of its way to avoid that, whereas Hamas puts its children in harm’s way in order to encourage it and use it to demonize Israel and Jews. Hamas also lies constantly about the number of casualties, especially of young people, and the press dutifully spreads the lies without question. Accusations of “genocide” are hurled at Israel and accentuated by the farce of international courts.
In my early blogging days, I wrote at length about one of these blood libels, the Mohammed al Durah case. Palestinians faked a child’s death at Israeli hands, filmed it in an early example of what became known as Pallywood, and spread the lie around the world. It was used as justification for the Second Intifada, a series of bloody terrorist attacks on Israel.
Now the cry around the world is “Globalize the Intifada!” and we have the very predictable murder at the hands of the non-Arab activist leftist American-born Rodriguez.
Melanie Phillips describes the process in a piece entitled “Blood on their hands,” with the subtitle “Horrifyingly, antisemitism has become a moral obligation for liberals.” An excerpt:
The murderer pulled the trigger. But many others have the blood of these two innocents, who were reported to have soon become engaged, on their hands.
The university principals who have allowed hate mobs on campus to incite the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel, week in, week out; the politicians who have allowed the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Iranian extremists to spread their influence throughout western civil society; the media and all those who relentlessly demonize Israel with blood libels and murderous lies, including the British, French and Canadian governments that this week threatened to punish Israel for defending itself—these all bear responsibility for what happened in Washington.
This week, another falsehood about Israel’s war in Gaza was added to the relentless incitement against the Jewish state. This one came from the U.N.’s emergency coordinator, Tom Fletcher, who told the BBC that “14,000 babies will die in 48 hours” from malnutrition.
A moment’s thought would suggest that such a synchronized mass mortality event was simply incredible.
The media, however, parroted it as valid. It duly spread like wildfire. Countless Israel-haters leapt upon it to validate their loathing. In a poisonous debate about Gaza in Britain’s House of Commons, members of parliament referred to it no fewer than 13 times.
It soon turned out, however, that it was indeed nonsense. As the BBC later clarified, Fletcher had misrepresented a claim made on May 12 by the U.N.’s IPC food classification system—a claim that was itself highly questionable—that an estimated 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition were expected to occur among Gazan children aged between 6 and 59 months from April 2025 to March 2026.
So two days actually turned out to be one year, and 14,000 certain deaths turned out to be 14,000 possible cases of malnutrition.
We don’t know whether Fletcher can’t read, was feeling the worse for wear that day or maliciously misrepresented what the IPC had said. What we do know is that the United Nations and the entire global humanitarian establishment constitute a bubbling sewer of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred.
False claims of imminent famine and starvation in Gaza have been made on a regular basis since the very start of the war. It’s an emotive blood libel that has incited a murderous hysteria of the kind that led to the gunning down of the young couple on Wednesday night.
The famine and starvation never materialized.
Those aren’t the only lies about Israel and the Gazans, of course. But accusations of baby killing and baby starvation are especially potent and emotional ones with an ancient lineage. They’ve been sparking the murder of Jews for centuries.
Rodriguez is a leftist clearly motivated by the left and its propaganda. But don’t think there aren’t people on the right – or supposedly on the right – who spread the same and/or different lies, although there are far fewer of them then on the left. I’m thinking of Candace Owens, to take one prominent example (the following are from her “X” account):
Live with Ian Carroll today discussing Zionists wasting no time using a tragedy to try to score points.
Or:
There is nothing more fake, gay, and obvious than the“you have blood on your hands” aimed at people who have nothing to do with a crime that has taken place, because they hold a reasonable opinion about something else.
What is happening in Gaza is still wrong, psychos.
Her use of the phrase “what is happening in Gaza” does not refer to anything the Palestinians are doing; it refers to Israel.
By highlighting Owens, I most definitely do not mean to suggest that the left isn’t much much worse in this regard. I’ve written about that many times before. I merely want to illustrate that Jew-hatred is growing on the right as well, mostly online and due to Owens and a few others who have gained many many followers.
NOTE: Here are some posts you get when you do a search on this blog for “blood libel.”
