We here in America have come a long way from the Salem Massachusetts witch hunts, but the anti-Semites, especially in Islamic totalitarian countries, still wish to believe that Jews must kill a Christian child for the blood for the matzos -- based only on unfounded rumors.
During the month of Ramadan (October-November) 2003, Lebanese Al-Manar satellite television (affiliated with Hizbulah) screened a 26-part special produced by Syrian television. The series, called Diaspora, depicts a centuries-long global Jewish conspiracy headed by the Rothchild family. The conspiracy's main actors portray rabbis and Zionist leaders. Episode 20, broadcast November 18, 2003, depicts a blood libel in which Jews murder a Christian child and use his blood for baking Passover matzos.
The following anti-Semitic video clip was lifted (poorly reproduced with lens reflections, but otherwise unedited) from the website, MemriTV.com. The website monitors Al-Jazeera and other Arab Islamic media. This Syrian clip is one of many such clips aired in the Islamic world aimed at spreading inflammatory anti-Semitic lies. Click to watch video.
What about racism, bigotry, and religious tolerance among immigrants to America?
After the 2006 Danish Cartoon crisis, my Mexican immigrant wife who at the time did volunteer work at our children's school, told me that one of the Hispanic mothers attending an English class told her that she had heard that Jews practice witchcraft. When told of this, I was initially shocked, but I realized that it is difficult for Americans who for the most part have been insulated from such dogmas to relate to such medieval thinking.
Un-assimilated minority ethnic groups are often thought to have a better appreciation for diversity than Americans because of their own persecution experiences. But common sense tells us that immigrants made up of Kosovars and Albanians, Turks and Armenians, British and Irish, Israelis and Palestinians, Latinos and Spaniards, Mexicans and Salvadorans, etc., are in far more need of diversity sensitivity training than Americans. America has been at the forefront of correcting the wrongs of the past attributed to racism, but due to massive immigration, the future of America is in peril, not due to its own racism, but due to massive immigration that imports ethnic and religious feuding.
Hal Netkin
World wide and imported anti-Semitism