{"id":396,"date":"2015-08-10T22:23:41","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T22:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/?p=396"},"modified":"2015-08-10T22:52:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T22:52:07","slug":"economist-toys-with-blood-libel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/?p=396","title":{"rendered":"Economist toys with Blood Libel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The blood libels keep pouring in. \u00a0I wrote this letter to The Economist based on their recent article on the Cracking down on Settlers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

DEAR SIR,<\/p>\n

\u201cJew kills baby\u201d is a tagline that should be raising red flags at any respected journal, as it provokes the medieval Blood Libel slur.\u00a0 And yet, the number of times the press rallied around dead Arab children they hoped to pin on Jews in the past year is staggering.<\/p>\n

Which is why I was quite disappointed to see you running the story “Cracking down on the settlers”.\u00a0 It remains to be seen whether a Jewish settler even committed the arson \u2013 forensic evidence actually points to the contrary.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.israelnationalnews.com\/News\/News.aspx\/198961#.VckfBSZVhBd<\/a><\/p>\n

But to take a crime still under investigation, rush to pin it on Jews, and run with it to a criticism of Israeli policies in general, well it only delegitimizes any authority you have on the issue.<\/p>\n

Some points I\u2019d like to make:<\/p>\n

Settlements aren\u2019t \u201cillegal\u201d.\u00a0 People like to claim it is so, but the area was never a country, and continues to be under dispute.<\/p>\n

Gaza 2014 drove the point, at least materially, that evacuating disputed terriroties to Arab rule only exacerbates this situation. \u00a0Old\u00a0dogmas die hard, but the fact is the best hope for peace isn\u2019t a Judenrein West Bank \u2013 it\u2019s making Arabs and Jews live among each other.<\/p>\n

Despite your massaging your wording\u00a0to even out the casualties, one dead Arab baby makes world headlines, while\u00a0Jews are quite unceremoniously under constant Arab attack.\u00a0 And it doesn\u2019t matter whether Jews\u00a0live in disputed territories or well within the confines of Israel. \u00a0If an Arab is killed, it’s soldiers stopping\u00a0them from a murderous terrorist rampage, not any sort of Jew vigilante murder.<\/p>\n

Finally, suppose the attack were actually caused by Jews.\u00a0 A more rational mindset would understand that, under such a tense situation, blowback is inevitable.\u00a0 Some certainly use it to justify the World Trade Center attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blood libels keep pouring in. \u00a0I wrote this letter to The Economist based on their recent article on the Cracking down on Settlers: —— DEAR SIR, \u201cJew kills baby\u201d is a tagline that should be raising red flags at any respected journal, as it provokes the medieval Blood Libel slur.\u00a0 And yet, the number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[253,250,254,249,103,80,251,252,255,183],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}