Letter to the Editor – Richard Sherman

The modern ritual murder legend of the Gaza Ministry of Health:

For over a millennium, anti-Semites have used the ritual murder legend to falsely accuse Jews of murdering non-Jews, to terrorize and murder Jews, and to discredit the Jewish people.

The first ritual murder legend arose in England in 1174, when William of Norwich was murdered (“The Murder of William of Norwich. The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe”, EM Rose, 2015).

The Damascus Affair of 1840 was another ritual murder legend that encouraged anti-Semites to terrorize and murder Jews. (“Blood Libel. The Damascus Affair. Ronald Florence, 2004).

In the last century, however, anti-Semites have given the ritual murder legend a new form: legitimate Jewish self-defense was denigrated as a ritual murder legend.

First of all, we must remember that unfortunately and tragically, civilians are also killed in war, sometimes thousands.

Sometimes there are millions. The evil that causes many wars is often not so easy to eradicate.

After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, in which Imperial Japan murdered 2,300 people, the United States and its allies defended themselves and demanded the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. Imperial Japan continued its evil policy and did not surrender unconditionally until 500,000 – 1,000,000 civilians had been killed.

Similarly, when the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, they pillaged throughout Europe, killing millions of civilians. The Allies defended themselves and demanded unconditional surrender. However, the Nazis refused to surrender unconditionally until nearly 40,000,000 civilians had been killed.

These figures must be kept in mind when examining the ritual murder legends that have been used to deny the fact of legitimate Jewish self-defense in Mandatory Palestine and the Gaza Strip.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly decided on a two-state solution (partition) for Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. The Jews accepted it. On November 30, 1947, the leader of the Arabs,

When the Nazi war criminal Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini rejected this two-state solution, he simultaneously ordered the Arabs: “Murder the Jews. Murder them all.”

At this point, the Arabs began to murder the Jews of Mandatory Palestine who had accepted the partition. The Jews defended themselves in a kind of civil war. Of course, on May 14, 1948, five Arab armies invaded Mandatory Palestine and promised genocide against the Jews – entirely in accordance with the Grand Mufti's orders.

On April 9, 1948, a battle broke out at Der Yassin in which 107 Arabs died. Professor Eliezer Tauber described this in his recent, extremely detailed study of the events of April 9, in which he compared the testimony of Arab and Jewish survivors and was able to describe in detail the circumstances of virtually every death:

“Seventy percent of Der Yassin's approximately 1,000 residents escaped the attack (because the attackers let them escape), twenty percent were captured, and ten percent were killed. As we have shown, the ratio of Arabs killed to injured (about 100 each) does not indicate a massacre. Even more telling is the fact that twice as many Arabs were captured as were killed. This is an even better yardstick, since the decision to capture individuals was a deliberate act of the captors (unlike injuring people). Finally, the fact that the overwhelming majority, ninety percent, survived the attack is the clearest refutation of the charge of a massacre. “The Massacre That Never Happened: The Myth of Der Yassin and the Genesis of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” Professor Eliezer Tauber, 2021.

Not only Professor Tauber exposes the Yassin “massacre” as a ritual murder legend, but – just as importantly – so does CONTEMPORARY Muslim journalism, which describes the modus operandi of the Arab leaders who loudly spread the ritual murder legend of a “massacre” in order to incite the Arab population against the Jews.

On April 9, 1953, the Jordanian daily Al Urdan reported: “Our leaders are responsible for the flight and fall of the other villages because they spread rumors that exaggerated Jewish crimes and portrayed them as atrocities in order to incite the Arabs. By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, the murder of women and children, etc., they instilled fear and terror in the Arabs in Palestine until they fled and abandoned their homes and properties to the enemy.” See: “The Palestinian Madness: The Disastrous History of the Middle East Peace Process,” Robert Spencer, 2019, page 83.

On October 7, 2023—a ceasefire had broken out on October 6—Hamas and hundreds of its civilian executioners from the Gaza Strip murdered 1,200 Jews in a surprise attack not unlike Pearl Harbor. In a fit of anti-Semitic misogyny, they raped, murdered, disemboweled, and slit the breasts of hundreds of Jewish women, girls, infants, and Holocaust survivors.

See: “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” NY Times, 12/28/23);

“Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in October 7 attacks,” Beth McKernan, The Guardian, 01/24/24; “UN team finds evidence of reports of sexual violence in Hamas attacks,” NY Times, 03/05/24).

See also: “Screams Before Silence”, directed by Anat Stalinsky, produced by Sheryl Sandberg.

Just as the United States responded defensively to Pearl Harbor, Israel responded defensively to October 7. Unfortunately, there have been many civilian casualties, especially since Hamas has stolen over a billion dollars in aid for roads, schools, hospitals, etc., and used every dollar to build an underground, electrified Pentagon beneath every square foot of Gaza to serve as a base for the murder of Jews. Moreover, Gaza's civilians have made clear their enthusiastic support for the atrocities of 10/7.

(See: “'Ordinary Gazans' and October 7: Popular Hatred and the Massacre,” 11/14/23, Jeffrey Herbst, former president of Colgate University and chair of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, New York Daily News).

Finally, the ritual murder slanders of the Gaza Health Ministry since October 7,

The practice of Hamas's propaganda arm to grossly exaggerate the number of civilian deaths in Gaza and to blame Jews for civilian deaths caused by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a common tool for inciting the Arab population and its supporters and filling the pages of anti-Semitic journalists and commentators around the globe with one anti-Semitic slander after another.

The clearest example of the bloodthirsty founding purpose of the Gaza Health Ministry occurred on October 17, 2023, when it spread the anti-Semitic slander that the Israeli forces were responsible for a rocket that struck near Al-Ahli Hospital, killing numerous civilians. This bloodthirstiness was repeated by all intelligence agencies, just as Hamas and the Gaza Health Ministry intended. Subsequent investigations using detailed telemetry data by many independent organizations showed that these deaths were caused by a Hamas (Palestinian Islamic Jihad?) rocket that misfired, and that the Jews had nothing to do with it. This is nothing more than the bloodthirstiness that has its roots in many centuries of bloodthirstiness. Likewise, every inflated civilian casualty figure released by the Gaza Health Ministry has now been proven to be nothing more than bloodthirstiness. For months, the Gaza Health Ministry has been peddling civilian casualty figures of 35,000 or more. This bloodthirstiness has been constantly repeated by Hamas's servile journalists around the world. The New York Times has repeated this ritual murder legend of over 35,000 casualties at least half a dozen times.

It has now reached the point where even the United Nations can no longer tolerate the ritual murder legends of the Gaza Health Ministry.

According to the latest statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on May 8, a total of 7,797 children and 4,959 women were killed in the Gaza Strip in Israel's defensive war against Hamas, reducing by more than half the false death toll of 35,000 civilians killed by the Gaza Strip Health Ministry.

OCHA has stated that any higher, false figures are attributed to the Hamas-controlled state media office.

In this context, Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and head of the British intelligence service’s international terrorism team, stated:

“My experience in observing IDF actions is that Israel is taking absolutely unprecedented and extremely effective measures to minimize the number of civilian casualties. Despite what many people who know nothing about it claim, [is that] “Israel has, in my estimation, achieved the lowest ratio of civilian to military casualties in any modern conflict,” he said.

Kemp estimates that for every person killed by Hamas, Israeli forces probably killed about 0.8 civilians, while in Afghanistan and Iraq the ratio was five to one and three to one, respectively.

“No other army in history has taken such measures,” he said. (Australian Jewish News.com, 5.9.24).

John Spencer, director of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern Warfare Institute (MWI) at West Point, made a similar statement:

“The UN, EU and other sources estimate that in modern wars, civilians typically make up 80 to 90 percent of casualties, a ratio of 1:9 (mixing all types of warfare). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a US-supervised battle that used the world's most powerful air forces, about 10,000 civilians were killed, compared with about 4,000 ISIS terrorists.” (“Israel has set a new standard for urban warfare. Why won't anyone admit it?”, Newsweek, 3/25/24).

Mr Spencer also wrote:

“The reality is that when it comes to preventing civilian harm, there is no modern comparison to Israel's war against Hamas. Israel is not fighting a battle like it did in Fallujah, Mosul or Raqqa; it is fighting a war that simultaneously involves major urban battles. No military in modern history has faced over 30,000 urban defenders in more than seven cities, using human shields and hiding in hundreds of miles of underground networks purpose-built beneath civilian sites, while holding hundreds of hostages.

“Despite the unique challenges Israel faces in its war against Hamas, it has taken more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other army in history.” (“Israel has taken more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other nation in history,” Newsweek.com, 31.01.24.)

In effect, the medieval ritual murder legend of 1174 has become the Islamic ritual murder legend of today, in which legitimate Jewish self-defense becomes “massacres” and “genocide” – once again to incite anti-Semites both in the population worldwide and in the mainstream media and academia.

Richard Sherman, POB 934853, Margate, Florida 33093(646)267-7904.