Demonization vs. Inclusion – Blood Libel Modernized : From Blog Posts to Book 

The purpose of “Demonization vs. Inclusion – Blood Libel Modernized” and these blog posts is to combine them into a published book entitled Safe Schools for Jewish Students: An Educator’s Guide to Preventing Antisemitism and Strengthening Belonging.

Go here for the full Table of Contents.

Chapter 5 – Demonization vs. Inclusion: The Blood Libel Modernized

“The amazing thing about antisemitism is that Jews can simultaneously be accused of being rich and of being poor, of being integrated and not integrated enough, and of being stateless and of having a state.”

—Douglas Murray, Douglas Murray: A Time of War, October 2, 2024

This chapter covers:

• Definition of Demonization
• Blood Libel Modernized
• Greed Modernized
• Global Domination
• How to Respond in the Classroom
• Reflection and Takeaways

Demonization: The portrayal of someone or something as evil or as worthy of contempt or blame.

Antisemites don’t run out of filthy stereotypes, they just recycle the ones that smelled bad the first time. There are common antisemitic tropes that, when one is familiar with them, will be easy to spot and call out.

The Blood Libel Modernized

“Perhaps the blood libel was a means of transferring onto their victims the guilt that the Christians felt for their own acts of oppression. By making the Jews guilty of the very crimes that Christians had committed, the Christians’ burden of guilt was shifted.”
―Bernard Glassman, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Without Jews: Images of the Jews in England 1290-1700

“Tell me what you accuse the Jews of—I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”
―Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

Historically, Jews have been accused of being bloodthirsty, killing innocents to mix the blood of victims into their food.

The most recent example of this bloodthirsty stereotype is the accusation of Israel — the Jewish State — of committing genocide in Gaza.

Genocide

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The 1948 Genocide Convention specified intent as a part of the requirement to qualify as genocide, stating, “To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique.”

Amnesty International

Amnesty International was not happy with that definition, so they changed it to more easily accuse Israel of committing Genocide. The organization put out a report called “‘You Feel Like You are Subhuman’; Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.” On page 101, the report stated:

“However, [the International Court of Justice’s] rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations. As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.”

So Amnesty International, in their report, changed the way to “infer intent.” In other words, by permitting multiple goals of a war—like recovering hostages and eliminating Hamas threats—Israel’s result of causing civilian casualties, or serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians during the war can be inferred as a “genocidal intent.”

While Amnesty International’s report could have been placed in the Double Standards chapter of this book, the reason it is the demonization of Jews is because of its echo of the blood libel. To have to argue for the right of Jews to defend themselves is insulting, but below is further evidence of how the Gaza War was not a genocide.

The Ten Stages of Genocide

As presented in Chapter 1, Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, formulated The Ten Stages of Genocide that can function as a guide for identifying whether or not a genocide is looming, a genocide is occurring, a genocide has happened in the past.

For a classroom poster to download, use the QR code below.

The stages are:

1. Classification – The differences between people are not respected. There’s a division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which can be carried out using stereotypes, or excluding people who are perceived to be different.
2. Symbolization – This is a visual manifestation of hatred. Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear yellow stars to show that they were ‘different’.
3. Discrimination – The dominant group denies civil rights or even citizenship to identified groups. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, made it illegal for them to do many jobs or to marry German non-Jews.
4. Dehumanization – Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’.
5. Organization – Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out the destruction of a people.
6. Polarization – Propaganda begins to be spread by hate groups. The Nazis used the newspaper Der Stürmer to spread and incite messages of hate about Jewish people.
7. Preparation – Perpetrators plan the genocide. They often use euphemisms such as the Nazis’ phrase ‘The Final Solution’ to cloak their intentions. They create fear of the victim group, building up armies and weapons.
8. Persecution – Victims are identified because of their ethnicity or religion and death lists are drawn up. People are sometimes segregated into ghettos, deported or starved and property is often expropriated. Genocidal massacres begin.
9. Extermination – The hate group murders their identified victims in a deliberate and systematic campaign of violence. Millions of lives have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition through genocide.
10. Denial – The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime.

The Ten Stages Applied to the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917)

The intent, planning, and execution of the genocide is relatively clear across all ten stages.

Stages 1-4 – Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization

Before 1915, Armenians were classified as a disloyal group, given second-class dhimmi status, framed as the enemy allied with Russia, and dehumanized as traitors, parasites, and existential threats.

Stages 5-7 – Organization, Polarization, Preparation

The Central Committee of Union and Progress and state bureaucracy issued orders against the Armenians using euphemisms like “relocation” and “resettlement.” Arms were confiscated from the Armenians while mobs were armed against them. Moderates were silenced or eliminated.

Stages 8-9 – Persecution and Extermination

Armenians were deported en masse to the Syrian desert, experiencing deliberate starvation, mass rape, and death marches. Women and children were targeted. Any conversion or assimilation was not enough to survive. The death rate was more than 60% in many regions. All of these actions by the Ottomans were with the intent to destroy the Armenians, not as a part of counterinsurgency.

Stage 10 – Denial

The Ottomans denied the genocide and there still exists Turkish state denial to this day. There has been a destruction of records and a support for alternate narratives as revisionist history.

The Ten Stages Applied to the Holocaust

The Holocaust instigated the need to incorporate the term genocide in our dictionary.

Stages 1-4 – Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization

Jews were classified racially, not religiously. They had to wear yellow stars to separate themselves from the community. The Nuremberg Laws stripped them of their citizenship, and they were referred to as vermin and disease.

Stages 5-7 – Organization, Polarization, Preparation

Germany formed the SS and the Einsatzgruppen (death squads). A common euphemism was the “Final Solution.” The Wannsee Conference held near Berlin coordinated the execution of the Jews.

Stages 8-9 – Persecution and Extermination

The death camps were designed only to kill. The murder of Jews was indiscriminate, regardless of behavior, age, loyalty, or location. The intention was the total destruction of the Jews.

Stage 10 – Denial

Nazis attempted to erase evidence and there were postwar denial movements. To this day, in classes across the world, there is revisionism and minimization of the Holocaust.

The Ten Stages Applied to the Gaza War of 2023

Here, many activists invert the framework instead of applying it. Notice the stages applied to the Palestinians by Israel, to the Palestinians by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, to the Jews by Hamas, and to the Jews by the West.

• Classification – Israel classified Hamas as an enemy force, not Palestinians. Israeli Arabs (Palestinian citizens of Israel) retain citizenship, vote, and sit in the parliament. In the West, the Palestinians were classified as the oppressed with the conclusion that Israel must have been the oppressor. Palestinian non-citizens of Israel—Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—were indeed oppressed, the oppressors being Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, limiting their human and civil rights.
• Symbolism – There were no forced markers, badges, or registries labeling Palestinians as a group for elimination. Language used in war is not the same as state-mandated symbolism. As for the Jews in the West, fortunately, the West did not require Jews to wear markers or badges and instead citizens adopted the Palestinian flag and the keffiyeh. Those that did adopt these symbols seemed less concerned about the Palestinians without rights under Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, walled in by Egypt, blocked off by Jordan, and stuck in camps in Lebanon. Instead, it was the way of demonstrating against Israel, the Jewish state.
• Discrimination – Though systemic bias exists, especially against the black communities in Israel and Palestinian Territories, discrimination is not the same as genocide unless paired with the intent to destroy the people. There were no laws stripping Israeli Arabs of citizenship, and no conversion, loyalty, or compliance tests leading to execution. On the other hand, Hamas forbade Israelis from entering Gaza. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the National Educators Association (NEA) was sued for discrimination against Jewish teachers.
• Dehumanization – Dehumanization language existed as it does in all wars. In this case, the language is not codified into an extermination policy like Hamas did in their original charter of 1988 (Article 7). Any cruel language by Israeli administrators is regularly challenged within Israeli society. Also, the language does not accompany any doctrine of “Palestinians must not exist.” In the West, Jews are dehumanized by being called “Zionists” with claims that Zionists are filth, vermin, and swine. Their defense that they don’t hate Jews, only Zionists, is like saying, “We won’t hate you as long as you give up your right to self-determine in your ancestral homeland.”
• Organization – There is no Israeli political organization whose purpose it is to identify Palestinians for execution, execute them, and bypass laws allowing the murder of Palestinians. The IDF’s rules of engagement, legal review, and internal investigations are the opposite of a genocidal organization — even when imperfectly implemented. On the other hand, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have a Pay to Slay program, a budget for martyrs that funds any family of a Palestinian who kills or attempts to kill an Israeli. As far as what’s happening in the West, lists of names of Jews are being distributed for the purpose of doxxing, publishing private information about individuals without their permission. One example was the “Zio600 Leak” when a New York Times reporter working from Sydney, Australia leaked information of over 600 Jewish professionals as Zionists to boycott, intimidate, and threaten.
• Polarization – In genocides, the polarization prepares the population for extermination. In Israel, there was indeed an uncomfortable emotional polarization between Jews and Arabs, but that came after the October 7th attack as a response, not before. In the West, Jewish students are polarized in their classrooms, facing curriculum that they are less than others because they are the oppressors.
• Preparation – Non-existent. In fact, Israel warned Palestinians of impending attacks so that the Palestinians could evacuate. Israel provided humanitarian corridors and aid passage, all antithetical to genocidal preparation — even if flawed or insufficient. Hamas started planning the attack against Israel a year earlier, working with Iran and Hezbollah to join the attack.
• Persecution – While there were indeed deaths and suffering of Palestinian civilians, including displacement and hunger, all was initiated by Hamas and continued by Hamas by embedding its military within civilian infrastructure. Israel did not target civilians, whereas the thousands of indiscriminate rockets fired from within Gaza at Israel launched with the intent of causing as much damage and deaths as possible.
• Extermination – There was no campaign to kill Palestinians as a people, and the resulting population numbers do not reflect genocidal intent. Reducing the loss of life to numbers is awful, but for a claim of genocide, it must be done here. Over 70% of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed. Less than 4% of the population was killed (75,000 of 2 million is 3.75%), roughly half of them combatants. According to an anti-Israel news source, Israel dropped 85,000 tons of bombs, more explosives than there were deaths in Gaza. The intent to commit genocide came from Hamas, not Israel.
• Denial – If the IDF denied the existence of a genocide after ample evidence of there being one, that would fall under this stage of Denial. I have witnessed members of the IDF deny genocide, and through them, I confess of being guilty of this one. With all the advance warnings of targeted bombings via pamphlets and phone texts, the delivery of aid, the polio vaccinations to Palestinian children, I truly have not seen any evidence of intent to destroy Palestinian non-combatants. Israel has shown more interest in the welfare of the Palestinians than the Hamas has shown. Ironically, many rallies in the US and other countries in the West deny the attempted genocide by Hamas on October 7th, the attack that Ghazi Hamad swore would continue again and again until all of Israel is annihilated.

How the Claim of Genocide is a Blood Libel

Historically, the blood libel referred to Jews being falsely accused of murdering innocents and, often, the lie led to the death of Jews. In this modern case, the libel uses Holocaust-derived language, removes legal definitions, inverts Jewish self-defense as racial extermination, and applies standards never applied to any other urban war.

The erasure of the Jewish victims of October 7th, 2023 and the strongly suggested accusation of Jews wanting to kill Palestinians is not just anti-Israel, it’s antisemitism.

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Author Biography of Safe Schools for Jewish Students

Ezra Barany, son of a Bronx father and a Dutch mother from Nazi-occupied Netherlands, loves riveting readers with Jewish thrillers. His first two books in The Torah Codes series were award-winning international bestsellers. In his free time, he has eye-opening discussions on the art of writing novels with his wife and book coach Beth Barany. A high school physics teacher, Ezra lives in Oakland with his beloved wife and two cats working on the next book. Ezra, not the cats.