Friday, January 15, 2010

Blood Libel XXI Century Style

Al-Ameen, a Muslim newspaper from British Columbia, has published a story that alleges that Israelis are targeting 25,000 Ukrainian children for organ harvesting. The story was uncovered by Terry Glavin, a Canadian journalist.

The article was a reprint from Press TV, a mouthpiece of the Iranian regime known or its Holocaust denying material and additional anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic material. Al-Ameen defended itself claiming that they lacked the resources for fact checking.

How lame!

The Internet today offers most of the tools required for fact checking, and thousands of fair minded bloggers do so every day.

As Honest Reporting Canada reports:

With respect to this Al-Ameen report, B'nai Brith Canada promptly and commendably condemned it as a "blood libel," while the B.C. Muslim Association
called the article "racist and anti-Jewish."

Friday's editions of the National Post, Vancouver Province, and Calgary Herald, all covered the conflagration. B'nai Brith Canada noted that the Al-Ameen posting was a "hideous blood libel against the Jewish community and has no place in Canada or anywhere else."

With regards to the source of the story, Press TV, Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith, said that it's "the official mouthpiece of the terrorist-sponsoring Iranian regime."

Subsequent to B'nai Brith's complaint, Al-Ameen removed the article online (to enlarge click image), publicly apologized for the article, and retracted the report.

According to the apology: "in the spirit of honoring our most cherished Canadian Values, and to demonstrate our commitment to upholding and defending such values, the Editorial Board of al-Ameen Post, without prejudice, extends its honest and sincere apology to our fellow Jewish Canadians for any hurt which may have caused by us publishing or communicating such a news article."
As far as I am concerned, apology not accepted.

In the meantime in Gaza British MP George Galloway recycles the Swedish blood libel to employ Holocaust analogy. Click here to read more about it.

No comments: