ABSTRACT
Like in classical anti-Semitism, blood libel, in all its forms and manifestations, including an approximate reversal to its original form, is used today to demonize the Jews so as to render them a legitimate prey for physical annihilation—as Iran and its Hamas and Hizbullah followers are not embarrassed to admit openly, encouraged as they are by world complicity or indifference. The images that flash across television screens throughout the world, and appear in the electronic and print media, in both Arab countries and the progressive West, are even scarier than the picture in Der Stürmer and the anti-Semitic caricatures of the Middle Ages. For many years, the main task of demonization and delegitimation of Israel and the Jews was left to the crude, primitive, vindictive, and self-defeating rhetoric of clerics and politicians in the Arab and Muslim world.
