Blood libel.
Seriously?
A little story: one that I am told is absolutely true. Now maybe it is, maybe it isn’t…but it makes the point.
In a town in Eastern Europe long ago, there was a small community of Jews who resided there and more or less kept to themselves. But their very presence was an irritant to many in the village, particularly so to one villager–a rabid anti-Semite–who decided the best thing to do was target the rabbi and turn the whole of the village against him.
And so, in the dead of night, the villager smothered his own six month old infant in the crib. Then he took the child’s corpse, stole over to the rabbi’s house and buried the child in a shallow grave.
Upon the morning, the alarmed mother discovered the absent child. Her screams summoned the entire village and the husband, “sharing” his wife’s ire, suggested that the Jews be investigated first since there had been tales of how they loved to use the blood of Christian children in their secret rites. So they converged upon the rabbi’s home and the newly turned earth of the grave was quickly discovered.
The rabbi was promptly hung and the rest of the Jews either killed or driven from the city.
Here’s an offer I will make you, on behalf of myself and my fellow Jews: I will continue not to use gun imagery and language in my discourse so that no one can possibly accuse me of having anything to do with acts of violence, and you keep your mouth shut about blood libels so that no one can possibly mistake you for being one of us.
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