Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(JNS) — Like the proverbial old soldiers, anti-Jewish lies never die. But they don’t fade away either. No matter how often they are proven false, they come back to incite hatred and murder.

Today, the focus of antisemitism is Israel, although the old forms of Jew-hatred remain. So, there are contemporary blood libels like the media accounts of the shooting of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durah, an exercise in what scholar Richard Landes has called “lethal journalism.”

One of the most pernicious and persistent lethal narratives has been the myth of the “Jenin Massacre.” In April 2002, the IDF entere...