Israel Matzav

In Italy, another old blood libel is revived

An Italian group called the Italian New Weapons Committee is claiming that Israel is poisoning the soil in Gaza through the bombs it has dropped on the Strip.

The Italy-based group of researchers studied Israel's use of ammunition and said the population of the Gaza Strip is "in danger." It based the claim on soil analysis of four bomb craters. "It is essential to intervene at once to limit the effects of the contamination on people, animals and cultivation," the researchers stated. Their findings grabbed headlines in Italian, European and Middle Eastern publications, including Terra, Ambito, the Turkish Weekly and Tehran Times.

"This so-called research is eerily reminiscent of ancient blood libels against the Jewish people, when rumors were spread about Jews poisoning wells," said Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress. "Today we are seeing a recurrence of all the worst excesses of anti-Semitism and diatribes that we perhaps naively thought had remained in the Dark Ages."

Paola Manduca, the committee's spokesperson, declined to comment when contacted by Haaretz. "Our study indicates an anomalous presence of toxic elements in the soil," she stated. This included metals that "can cause tumors and problems with fertility, and they can have serious effects on newborns, like deformities and genetic pathologies."

The researchers hailed from the universities of Rome and Genoa and elsewhere and listed the dangerous metals: tungsten, mercury, molybdenum, cadmium and cobalt.

Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University said that the study did not present enough evidence to be credible. In September, the same group accused Israel of experimenting with new weapons in the Gaza Strip.

The picture at the top is an engraving by Hartmann Schedel showing Jews being burned in 1493 for allegedly spreading the black plague by poisoning wells. I got it from a 9/11 truther site, which I will not link.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:42 PM