Palin courts controversy with 'blood libel' analogy

Sarah Palin. Photo / AP

On a day set aside for healing and prayer in the wake of the Tucson shootings, all vestiges of a political armistice were shattered when Sarah Palin, the former Alaska Governor, issued a video message accusing her critics of committing "blood libel" against her.

In a nearly eight-minute video posted on Facebook that veered between defiant and defensive, the Tea Party figurehead broke her silence to answer allegations that her rhetoric and the passions stirred by the Tea Party had somehow propelled the man accused of the carnage that left six dead and congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded.

Her video was posted just hours before President Barack Obama, in the role of healer-in-chief, addressed a memorial event at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and John Boehner, the new House Speaker, opened a day of debate and reflection on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Palin, seen as a likely Republican candidate for president in 2012, had been under pressure to respond publicly to the criticisms piled on her since the Tucson shooting. Her political action committee last year used cross-hair symbols on a map to identify districts with vulnerable Democrat incumbents before last year's mid-term elections. One was Giffords'.

Her statement may have had a greater impact than she expected because of her citing "blood libel" - a phrase associated with the centuries-old slander of Jews that they used the blood of Christian children in their rituals, which was used as a pretext for anti-Semitic persecution.

Some Jewish leaders objected to her using the phrase. Giffords, still in intensive care, is Jewish.

In her video, Palin rejected the case for a link between the attempted assassination of Giffords and political debate in last year's campaigns.

She had listened to commentary on the killings, she said, "at first puzzled, then with concern and now with sadness to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event".

"Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

"There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal," Palin went on.

"And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those 'calm days' when political figures literally settled their differences with duelling pistols?"

Violent acts, she went on, should be blamed on the perpetrators.

Palin's standing may already have suffered serious damage.

"Instead of dialling down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a 'blood libel' against her," said David Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Association.

"This is, of course, a particularly heinous term for American Jews."

Ronnie Hsia, a history professor at Pennsylvania State University who has written two books about blood libel, said, "In her own thinking, I just don't understand the logical use of this word.

"I think it's inappropriate and I frankly think if she or her staff know about the meaning of this word, I think it's insulting to the Jewish people."

DIRECT REFERENCE TO ANCIENT ANTI SEMITISM

The term "blood libel" is highly charged - a direct reference to a time when Jews were tortured and executed for crimes they did not commit.

Blood libel dates back to the 12th century in England, France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe, when many Christians believed Jews killed children, usually boys, for rituals including re-enacting the crucifixion of Christ, historians say.

According to the belief, Jews would torture and kill the children and use their blood, often to make matzoh, the "bread of affliction" that is central to celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Belief in blood libel spread through northern Europe before fading in the 18th century. But it reappeared in the 19th and 20th centuries. The best-known case was in Ukraine where a Jew named Mendel Beilis was arrested in 1911 after a boy was found dead. Beilis was imprisoned for two years, but eventually acquitted, despite the attempt by prosecutors to pin responsibility for the murder on him based on his religion.

Palin is not the first to use the term in the context of the Tucson shootings. In the past few days, it has been used by commentator John Hayward on the conservative website Human Events and in a Wall Street Journal piece by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor.

- INDEPENDENT AP