RON Unz’s excellent article today, quoted in this previous post, deserves further mention here. Bear in mind, please, that Unz is Jewish. He writes:

… [O]ver the years and the decades, our dominant media organs of news and entertainment have successfully conditioned most Americans to suffer a sort of mental allergic reaction to topics sensitive to Jews, which leads to all sorts of issues being considered absolutely out of bounds. And with America’s very powerful Jewish elites thereby insulated from almost all public scrutiny, Jewish arrogance and misbehavior remain largely unchecked and can increase completely without limit.

I’ve also sometimes suggested to people that one under-emphasized aspect of a Jewish population, greatly magnifying its problematical character, is the existence of what might be considered a biological sub-morph of exceptionally fanatical individuals, always on hair-trigger alert to launch verbal and sometimes physical attacks of unprecedented fury against anyone they regard as insufficiently friendly towards Jewish interests. Every now and then, a particularly brave or foolhardy public figure challenges some off-limits topic and is almost always overwhelmed and destroyed by a veritable swarm of these fanatical Jewish attackers. Just as the painful stings of the self-sacrificing warrior caste of an ant colony can quickly teach large predators to go elsewhere, fears of provoking these “Jewish berserkers” can often severely intimidate writers or politicians, causing them to choose their words very carefully or even completely avoid discussing certain controversial subjects, thereby greatly benefiting Jewish interests as a whole. And the more such influential people are thus intimidated into avoiding a particular topic, the more that topic is perceived as strictly taboo, and avoided by everyone else as well.

For example, about a dozen years ago I was having lunch with an especially eminent Neoconservative scholar with whom I’d become a little friendly. We were bemoaning the overwhelmingly leftward skew among America’s intellectual elites, and I suggested it largely seemed a function of our most elite universities. Many of our brightest students from across the nation entered Harvard and the other Ivies holding a variety of different ideological perspectives, but after four years departed those halls of learning overwhelmingly in left-liberal lock-step. Although he agreed with my assessment, he felt I was missing something important. He nervously glanced to both sides, shifted his head downward, and lowered his voice. “It’s the Jews,” he said.

I do not doubt that much of the candid analysis provided above will be quite distressing to many individuals. Indeed, some may believe that such material far exceeds the boundaries of mere “anti-Semitism” and easily crosses the threshold into constituting an actual “blood libel” against the Jewish people. That extremely harsh accusation, widely used by stalwart defenders of Israeli behavior, refers to the notorious Christian superstition, prevalent throughout most of the Middle Ages and even into more modern times, that Jews sometimes kidnapped small Christian children in order to drain their blood for use in various magic rituals, especially in connection with the Purim religious holiday. One of my more shocking discoveries of the last dozen years is that there is a fairly strong likelihood that these seemingly impossible beliefs were actually true. [cont.]

— Comments —

George writes:

So you’re going to start promoting the blood libel now? You should know that the opinion that the Jews were using the blood of Christian children in religious rituals has been condemned by two popes. Here is Pope Gregory X in 1272:

“Since it happens occasionally that some Christians lose their Christian children, the Jews are accused by their enemies of secretly carrying off and killing these same Christian children and of making sacrifices of the heart and blood of these very children. It happens, too, that the parents of these children or some other Christian enemies of these Jews, secretly hide these very children in order that they may be able to injure these Jews, and in order that they may be able to extort from them a certain amount of money by redeeming them from their straits.

And most falsely do these Christians claim that the Jews have secretly and furtively carried away these children and killed them, and that the Jews offer sacrifice from the heart and blood of these children, since their law in this matter precisely and expressly forbids Jews to sacrifice, eat, or drink the blood, or to eat the flesh of animals having claws. This has been demonstrated many times at our court by Jews converted to the Christian faith: nevertheless very many Jews are often seized and detained unjustly because of this.”

Think about it, how could the Jews have been ritually performing these atrocities and the truth of it not come to the knowledge of the Holy See through the testimony of prominent Jews who had converted to Christianity? It’s true that the Jews hate Christianity, and they have even murdered some Christian children out of hatred for Christ, but the blood libel is just that, a lie, and it is unbecoming a true Catholic.

 Laura writes:

It’s unbecoming of a true Catholic to make blanket condemnations based on scanty research.

You are incorrect.

The Jewish convert Giovanni da Feltre, for one, testified that he had seen his father use human blood in a ritual at Landshut in Bavaria. Of course, not all Jews would have been involved in these ritual practices based on the magic arts of the Kabbalah.

The court of Pope Sixtus IV confirmed the verdict of two previous tribunals that came to the conclusion that the child known as St. Simon of Trent was murdered in 1475 in a ritual homicide. The verdicts were based on the testimony of Jewish witnesses. There is extensive documentations of ritual murders in many parts of Europe.

These facts are included in Ariel Toaff’s 2007 book Bloody Passovers: European Jewish and Ritual Homicides. Toaff, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, is the son of Elio Toaff, former chief rabbi of Rome.

At Tradition in Action, Atila S. Guimarães has carefully examined the case made by Toaff.

Marian Horvat also discusses the book:

In particular, Toaff looked at the case of St. Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy from the Italian town of Trent kidnapped by Ashkenazi Jews from his home on the eve of Passover 1475. He was murdered, his body mutilated and crucified head down. The killers were apprehended, confessed and found guilty by Bishop Hinderbach of Trent. Fifty years later, Pope Sixtus IV assembled a commission of six cardinals chaired by the best legal mind of that time for a retrial, and this court also found the murderers guilty. Records of the trial have survived for centuries.

St. Simon’s worship was approved in 1588 by Pope Sixtus IV, and every year the town of Trent celebrated his feast with processions and fanfare – until 1965. In that year, to foster better relations with the Jews after Vatican II, Paul VI ordered the Trent case to be re-examined, and ruled that the confessions of the killers were unacceptable because they were obtained under torture. A decree forbade the cult of St. Simon of Trent. His cult was discontinued and prohibited, and the remains of the martyred child removed and hidden to avoid resumption of pilgrimages.

In his research, Dr. Ariel Toaff made a thorough examination of those court records preserved at Trent. His discovery was that the confessions of the killers contained material that could not have been known to the Italian churchmen or police. The secret rites practiced by the Ashkenazi community, which could not have been known by the judges, were faithfully reproduced in the confessions. Toaff told Haaretz News: “I found that there were statements and parts of the testimony that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges, and they could not have been invented or added by them.” (10)

Laura writes:

And in answer to your initial question: No, I am not promoting the blood libel. It isn’t a libel (and to state that it is a libel is a libel against the millions of Catholics who have believed in its truth) and I simply quoted a statement, one of many, by a Jewish author (Ron Unz) who believes in its credibility. Apparently Unz thought it was significant enough to mention. Perhaps you might scold him for it.

July 19, 2018

George writes:

I withdraw my blanket condemnation. Simon of Trent does appear to be a valid exception to the general rule of false accusations.

Laura writes:

You have not proved — not at all — a “general rule of false accusations.”

The idea of a “general rule of false accusations” is a libel against those dozens of parents throughout Europe who lost their murdered children and all those who sympathized with them. Ariel Toaff’s study, according to the reviews I mentioned, does not prove anything like a “general rule of false accusations.” You are committing a despicable libel against innocent victims. But isn’t that the way, eh? Cover up evil by accusing the victims of evil. What a Satanic strategy!!

George writes:

I have not proved a general rule of false accusations?  Didn’t you read the letter of Pope Gregory X?  That’s exactly how he judged them.  Don’t you think we should conform our judgments to those of the Vicar of Christ?  You say that I am guilty of libel.  If I am, then Gregory X is more so, since I was only assenting to his judgment.  In fact, if I am wrong, don’t you think it’s somewhat excusable, since I am only following the guidelines laid out by the Holy See?

Laura writes:

First, I apologize for my statement that you were committing a libel. My words were much too harsh (but then so was your claim that I was “promoting the blood libel.”)

Secondly, Pope Gregory’s letter was written in 1272 before many of the cases discussed in Toaff’s book. I do not doubt that there were false accusations, as the Pope said. However, it seems that numerous cases were subsequently proved.

Whether as a general rule, accusations were false, I am not qualified to say.

Please give me a source for Pope Gregory’s letter. I would like to read the whole thing.

Laura writes:

Never mind, I have found the text of the letter. It can be read here.

Pope Gregory X calls the accusations of ritual murder “silly.” But if even one case was proved then the idea of such a thing clearly was not “silly.” Toaff’s book lends credibility to accusations made as early as the 12th century.

This is an important subject that deserves further research. The fact that there were attempts to suppress Toaff’s book gives it further credibility but more needs to be written on the subject.

George writes:

OK, fair enough. I apologize for suggesting that you were supporting blood libel. The topic is more ambiguous than I had thought.

Laura writes:

Thank you. I appreciate your alerting me to that letter by Pope Gregory X.

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