Blood Libel Spotting

That Swedish blood libel article really set off the avalanche, didn't it? Counterpunch magazine, as per Alison Weir of "If American's Knew", is now asserting that not only is the Swedish article accurate, but also the original medieval blood libel is actually true as well. This may mark the first time in recent memory that the blood libel has been disseminated in an even remotely mainstream American media outlet (Counterpunch definitely is on the border of that characterization).

Meanwhile, an Algerian official has gotten in on the act with his own tale of Jewish organ theft, this time of Algerian children being smuggled across the Moroccan border. Busy beavers we are, it seems (needless to say, all these accusations are trumpeted in the Iranian press).

Of all the anti-Semitic myths I really assumed had died a permanent death, the blood libel was pretty high on the list. Alas, I'm always far too optimistic about these things, it seems.

Resist/Accept Oppression!

Dave Kopel, the Volokh Conspiracy's resident gun scholar, has an interesting request of his readers. Or rather, an interestingly juxtaposed pair of two requests:

I believe I have read--but I can't recall where-- that during the Second World War, some English pacifists proposed that when the Nazi troops arrived in England, unopposed by military resistance (thanks to pacifist policy), they should be greeted with Christian love. Such a greeting would be disarming, and the Nazis, seeing that the invaded population were Christian friends rather than belligerents, would realize the error of the war-like Nazi ways.

Does anyone have a citation or other information about this proposal?

.... How a good article or book chapter on Frantz Fanon's influence in promoting racist violence and other terrorism? There's mention of this scattered in many sources, but how about a consolidated, extended treatment?

Hmmm.

Now, I admit to playing psychologist as to the motives of Kopel's request, but I feel pretty confident about this. The former bleg is about the need to sometimes violently resist oppression. The latter bleg is indicting Fanon for encouraging...the violent resistence of oppression. The British pacifists were clearly unrealistic in their appraisal of Nazi evil (and of course, the Jew in me knows what happens to those of us who are not by any twist "Christian friends"). But the French colonization of Algeria was undeniably evil as well -- is Kopel guilty of misapprehending the nature of the situation as well? There's no indication that pacifism would have been any more likely to drive the French out of Africa than it would have been a deterrent to Nazi occupation of the UK.

Fanon, at least, was consistent: he won the Croix de Guerre after being wounded fighting for the Free French Forces in World War II.