ABSTRACT
When one scans the media in the contemporary West, where the blood libel was invented and diffused since the Middle Ages, one is stunned by the persistence and recurrence of the "Jews is news" theme, whereby anything that has to do with Israel, Jews, or Zionism anywhere in the world and at any time in history, immediately captures headlines and universal attention. Josephus Flavius, the renowned Jewish historian who witnessed the destruction of the Second Temple, wrote a treatise against that libel and explained that not only did Jewish law prohibited human sacrifice but it also cultivated the abhorrence of animal blood. But in those days, there was no court of law before which one could bring a case of blood libel, or any libel for that matter. One had to rely on human decency and intellectual honesty, which were always in short supply, to defend, protect, and preserve one's reputation and good name.
