It was no coincidence that the image of the starving toddler in Gaza—which, as it turned out to our great relief, depicted a child who was not dying but suffering from a genetic disease, and not even in Gaza—was used to propagate the blood libel of starvation against Israel. The photograph of the toddler held motionless in his mother's arms deliberately echoes Christian images known as the "Madonna and Child," depicting Mary, the mother of Jesus, carrying him in her arms, as well as the "Pietà" (compassion) images of the mother cradling the body of the dead Jesus in her lap after his removal from the cross.
This connection immediately evokes, for any Christian worldwide who sees the misleading photograph, the figure of the crucified one murdered by the Jews—and, by extension, the subsequent libels of Christian children murdered by Jews for the same purpose: to draw their blood for Passover.
It is important to note that the original blood libel, which gave all antisemitic libels their name, was probably based on actual facts. The Sanhedrin did indeed convene at the High Priest's house in Jerusalem on the eve of the Seder to judge Jesus. It is also true that, the day after this nighttime trial, Jesus was sentenced to death by the Romans, crucified and bled.
Blood libels require no more than a flimsy factual basis to flourish, and that is exactly what has happened here
As recorded, the timing of the trial during Passover gave rise to the libel that Jews use the blood of Christian children to bake matzah, turning the holiday into a period prone to pogroms against Jews—even in our own time. The fact that it later emerged that the Sanhedrin had actually tried to save Jesus from a certain death sentence by the Roman governor—inevitable once Jesus declared himself "King of the Jews"—no longer mattered. The libel triumphed over the facts, and Jewish blood was spilled again and again in Nisan.
The current blood libel accusing us of deliberately starving Gaza is also based on true facts: there is severe distress and hunger in Gaza, which the military devastated in a war forced upon us. But the leap from this to accusing the Jews (sorry, Israel) of starvation is vast, stemming in part from Israel's provision of humanitarian aid and primarily from the actions of Hamas, which controls life in the Strip, loots and blocks food distribution, and deliberately fosters hunger for propaganda purposes. Not that it matters: blood libels require no more than a flimsy factual basis to flourish, and that is exactly what has happened here—even within Israel itself.
This is not surprising. The spread of blood libels has always been aided by Jews as well, whether out of a desire to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the accusers from the "other" Jews targeted by the libel, or from a belief that those others were indeed guilty. Just as there are "journalists" and "researchers" in Israel today who claim that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war—despite lacking any initial evidence—so too, throughout the generations, there have been Jewish "researchers" who asserted that the blood libels against Jews in Europe were true, based on real Kabbalistic healing texts that involved the blood of Christian children.
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Only about 20 years ago, Professor Ariel Toaff from Bar-Ilan University claimed in his book "Pasque di Sangue" ("Blood Passovers") that a group of fundamentalist Jews in the past had indeed used the blood of Christian children for healing purposes, thereby confirming the antisemitic libel.
Christian blood libels were long ago adopted by the Muslim world. Ramadan television series are rife with scenes of Israelis (rabbis and soldiers) slaughtering Palestinian children to transplant their organs into Jews. The image of the toddler who is all skin and bones in his mother's arms also directs Muslims toward those same blood libels, seeking to justify the horrors committed by Palestinians against our children on October 7—in the sense of "a child slaughtered for a child slaughtered"—as well as the horrific starvation of our innocent hostages in their hands.
Although it is not surprising, it is a shame that some among us, who know full well that the IDF is not deliberately starving anyone, still assist in spreading these libels under the pretext that "it is important for the world to know there are other Israelis who oppose this." History teaches that this will not help. They, like all of us, will forever remain those who supposedly seek to draw blood from Christian children and starve Palestinian children to death—and therefore, it is permissible and even desirable to massacre them.
- Prof. Yuval Elbashan is Ono Academic College's dean of the Multicultural Campuses in Jerusalem