Palin Defends ‘Blood Libel’ Use

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stabbing-bloodFormer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin insisted Monday that she did know the definition of, and correctly used, the term “blood libel” in recently striking back at her critics.

“Blood libel obviously means being falsely accused, or having blood on their hands,” Palin said in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity.

It was Palin’s first interview since the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and the political fallout that followed. After catching flak for rhetoric that led some to pin blame for the shootings partly on her, Palin released an eight-minute video statement last week that denounced the mainstream media for having manufactured “a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

That led to reprimands from Jewish leaders for her use of the term, which has its roots in false, anti-Semitic charges from centuries ago that Jews would use the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzo.

Asked to respond to critics who questioned if Palin really knew what she was saying, the former governor responded: “I don’t know how the heck they would or wouldn’t know” if she understood the definition.

“It goes back to the Jewish people being falsely accused,” she said. “A group of people being falsely accused of having blood on their hands.”

As Palin defended the term by insisting that she has been unfairly targeted, the former governor declared that her response to the tragedy was not “about me.”

“My defense wasn’t self-defense, it was defending those who were falsely accused,” she insisted. “I was puzzled as to why, and before facts were even gathered, why the mainstream media was pointing fingers.”

And her sometimes inflammatory rhetoric, Palin said, has not crossed a line. “When I talk about being up in arms, I’m talking about getting to the voting booth,” she contended.

Palin also conceded that the icons used on a map created by her PAC showing her 20 congressional targets for 2010 were indeed “crosshairs” rather than “surveyor symbols,” as one of her aides initially claimed.

Palin acknowledged that the map – which showed a target on the district district represented by Giffords, who remains hospitalized – was taken down following the shooting. She did however defend the use of the crosshairs icons, pointing to other examples from across the political spectrum.

“It’s not an original use of an icon or website,” she said.

In addition to defending her actions and those of her political committee, Palin also went on offense for part of the interview – accusing her liberal critics of trying to silence her, and echoing conservative criticisms that the atmosphere during President Barack Obama’s speech at the University of Arizona last week was too much like a “pep rally.”

“Certainly I agree with the idea of being civil… but we should not use an event like that in Arizona to stifle debate,” Palin said. “They can’t make us sit down and shut up. And if they succeeded in doing that our Republic would be destroyed.”

{Capitol News Company, LLC/Matzav.com}


12 COMMENTS

  1. When will this fractured woman give up the conspiracy to make herself a greater person in our minds than she really deems herself to be? I mean, it was clear that her adds were out of the definition of public decency. Lets take our medicine and heal ourselves. Stop spitting it back in our faces.

  2. In the comments on Matzav’s earlier article about this subject at http://matzav.com/jewish-republicans-muted-on-palins-blood-libel-comment (Comments #7 & #8), I began to write a detailed analysis of the issue. B’Ezras HaShem, I will start here again from the beginning with reposting here those two comments and then continuing with further explanation.

    At the earlier article, there were some excellent remarks made in Comments #4, #5, and #6 from “Everybody, “TorahYidKS,” and “sk”; here too, are two excellent remarks in #2 and #3 from “Anonymous” and “schmoiger.”

    So I say to all of them:

    “TRIPLE DITTOS!!!!!!!”

    It should not need to be said that all this outright sick nit-picking of every little word of non-Jewish officials to say that this statement or that remark was “insensitive” to Jewish people is absolutely ridiculous!! It is a terrible Chillul HaShem, as it must certainly be severely irritating to the officials to repeatedly hear these baseless cries of “anti-Semitism.” At best, they will think that we are people who are totally paranoid.

    And especially with a person like Mrs. Palin, who has been extremely supportive of Israel and other Jewish causes, and with whom there have been rumors that both she and her husband are (from several previous generations) themselves actually Jews, such nit-picking garbage is completely out of place!

    Those Jewish officials and Jewish organizational CEO’s who made all this empty noise definately need to give Mrs. Palin a very big apology.

  3. In Comments #7 and #8 of Matzav’s earlier article about this subject at http://matzav.com/jewish-republicans-muted-on-palins-blood-libel-comment, I began to write a detailed analysis of the issue. B’Ezras HaShem, I will start here from the beginning with first reprinting here those two comments and then continuing with some further explanation.

    In that earlier article, “Everybody, “TorahYidKS,” and “sk,” made some excellent remarks in Comments #4, #5, and #6; here too, “Anonymous” and “schmoiger” made excellent remarks in Comments #2 and #3.

    So to all of them I say:

    “TRIPLE DITTOS!!!!!!!”

    First of all, before we even begin the phraseology analysis, we cannot stress and repeat enough times the following important Yisod – important principle – of dealing with people.

    All this outright sick nit-picking of every little tiny word of non-Jewish officials, to say that this statement that they made or that remark that they said or this phrase that they used was “insensitive” to Jewish people, is simply absolutely ridiculous!! It is a terrible Chillul HaShem, as it must certainly be severely irritating to the officials and everyone else with them to over and over and over again hear these baseless cries of “anti-Semitism.” At best, they will well think that we are people who are totally paranoid.

    And especially with a person like Mrs. Palin, who has been extremely supportive of Israel and other Jewish causes, and with whom there have been rumors that both she and her husband are (from several previous generations) themselves actually Jews, such nit-picking garbage is completely out of place!

    Those Jewish officials and Jewish organizational CEO’s who made all this empty noise definitely need to give Mrs. Palin a very big apology.

  4. As Comment #6 on the earlier Matzav article, the article from “The Washington Times” at http://matzav.com/washington-times-editorial-blood-libel-against-palin-limbaugh, and, as related right here, Mrs. Palin herself, very eloquently explain, the use of the phrase “blood libel” IS entirely appropriate for this situation.

    B’Ezras HaShem, I will just elaborate in a little more detail.

    Throughout history, there have been numerous events where the descriptive part of the title of the event has been latter used for the title of subsequent, albeit much smaller, but still, similar events.

    [For example, THE “Missile Crises” of world history was the “CUBAN Missile Crises.” (It occurred in the Fall of 1962, when the Communist Soviet Union built up a huge array of nuclear armed missiles in its “Talmid” country of Communist Cuba. Boruch HaShem, the U.S. stood up to the threat and forced the USSR to remove the missiles. That super-power confrontation though, was the one time when the world was on the brink of actually having the horrific annihilation of a full nuclear war, Rachmana Litzlan.) In subsequent years though, there have been many different problematic situations of various missiles and rockets used by Arab countries and terrorist groups and being developed and tested by North Korea and Iran. Throughout the news reporting of these incidents, the phrase “missile crises” has often been used.]

    The same type of phenomenon is here too. THE “Blood Libel” of world history was the long line of countless vicious fabrications of us Jews killing non-Jewish children to use their blood for our rituals. Almost always, these trumped up allegations were merely an excuse to go murder scores of Jews from a targeted village.

    Obviously though, the phrase “blood libel” is a general phrase that does not refer specifically to any one “blood libel” or even any one TYPE of “blood libel.”

    What does this phrase “blood libel” mean? Well, let us look at each word. The word “libel” is a noun that means: “a false accusation.” [See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/libel where one of the definitions is: “A : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression. B (1) : a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt.”] The word “blood” in this phrase is an adjective that describes the noun “libel.” As the noun “libel” means “a false accusation,” the adjective “blood” is describing the “false accusation”; it is telling us WHAT KIND of false accusation is this; it is telling us WHAT SUBJECT this false accusation is about. As the adjective here is “blood,” this then is a false accusation about blood, which means, about the SHEDDING of blood.

    So the phrase “blood libel” means “a false accusation about the shedding of blood”; in other words, that is “a false accusation about WHO SHED a particular person’s blood.” In other words, that is “a false accusation that WRONGLY ACCUSES someone of shedding a particular person’s blood.”

    Again, the big “blood libel” of history was the long line of fake accusations falsely accusing us Jews of killing non-Jewish children. Along with this though, there have obviously been countless other instances of fake accusations that were hurled at people or at even whole groups of people, falsely accusing them of killing certain people. Each of these occurrences can thus easily be thought of as a — albeit a little one, but still a — “blood libel.”

  5. Just as one should save the term “Nazi” for an actual Nazi one should save the term “blood libel” for an actual blood libel. Otherwise, if there ever is another real blood libel c”v nobody will take it seriously. Palin does not have a stake in this; we Jews do.

  6. BLOOD LIBEL IN THE NEWS

    Dining on the liver
    …I prophesised a day
    Might come that we
    Might all
    Investigate the
    Friendship we have
    With Sarah Palin
    Burp
    Excuse me

  7. Fairly recently, right within Klall Yisroel, there was a new blood libel, and it was a pretty big one too. On the evening of November 4, 1995, 12 Cheshvan, 5756, the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Yitzchak Rabin, was killed. The man who was (supposedly) the assassin, a Mr. Yigal Amir, was immediately arrested, and was subsequently tried, convicted, and put in prison for life.

    Mr. Amir’s parents were Mizrachi type frum people from Yemen; Yigal had went to a Yeshiva Ketana and a Yeshiva high school. He then went to the top Mizrachi yeshiva, Kerem B’Yavneh, with its Hesder program of alternating Torah study with army service. He also went to law school at Bar Ilan University. While at Bar Ilan, he was intensively involved in activism that vehemently opposed the Israel-Palestinian peace efforts being led by PM Rabin.

    “I STUDY TALMUD ALL DAY . . . ” Amir haughtily declared as he openly bragged that he thus “knew” that in Talmudic law, it was “permitted” to kill Rabin!!!!

    (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yigal_Amir#cite_note-1 and http://profiles.incredible-people.com/yigal-amir/.)

  8. (continuation of previous comment)

    Because of this, the painful shock and horror — and anger and hatred — of the tragic assassination was fiercely directed at the “right” side of the Israeli political arena: Those farmers of West Bank settlements who did not want to be evicted in the “to the Palestinians” land giveaways, those people of the yeshiva world who, in reality, actually DO “study Talmud all day,” and all other people who could be even remotely labeled: “nationalist religious zealots.”

    A couple of yeshiva faculty members, including one from Amir’s alma mater Yeshiva Kerem B’Yavneh, were interrogated by the police on allegations that they had given Mr. Amir a “P’sak Halacha” – a Torah Law Legal Decision – permitting him to kill PM Rabin! Several religious Members of the Knesset were given outright death threats.

    (See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/rabinass.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshivat_Kerem_B%27Yavneh)

  9. (continuation of previous comment)

    The real truth though, was extensively related in detail by several issues of the “Yated Neeman” Torahdike newspaper: There is an exceedingly long list of severely suspicious points of evidence that strongly indicate that 1.) Yigal Amir WAS NOT the person who killed PM Rabin, and 2.) Instead, PM Rabin was killed by officers of the Israeli government’s secret service/security/intelligence agencies for certain convoluted political ends.

    (Already, Mr. Amir’s self righteous claim of studying Talmud “all day” was obviously a gross distortion. While he did have some yeshiva education, as related above, he was also attending law school at Bar Ilan and was also an actual agent of the government’s Shin Bet intelligence service.)

    (And, yes, the phrase “blood libel” was used in these discussions.)

    (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin_assassination_conspiracy_theories and
    http://thetruthonly.narod.ru/08_To_the_editors_.htm)

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