ABSTRACT
Christian antisemitism in Medieval Europe spread the libel that Jews engaged in the ritual murder of non-Jews, supposedly secretly crucifying them and draining the blood of their victims for making Passover bread (also known as ‘the blood libel’). The libel spread to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This chapter examines a contemporary blood libel – the case of Saint Philoumenos, supposedly ‘ritualistically’ murdered by ‘Zionists’ and ‘Jews’ in Nablus in 1979, and subsequently glorified as a Saint by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem in 2009. This ritual murder libel still circulates today in the Orthodox churches, parts of the contemporary Palestine solidarity movement and even in academic publishing, each having instrumentalised rather than challenged a narrative that is demonstrably false.
