In an interview on official Hamas television, former Jordanian MP Sheikh Abd Al-Mun’im Abu Zant declared Jews use blood to prepare their Passover matzah.
The interview on al-Aqsa television appeared earlier this month, and was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“On their religious holidays, if they cannot find a Muslim to slaughter, and use drops of his blood to knead the matzos they eat, they slaughter a Christian in order to take drops of his blood, and mix it into the matzos that they eat on that holiday,” Abu Zant said.
The first blood libel originated in 1144 in Norwich, England, when the body of a murdered Christian boy named William was found. Such tales were often used as an excuse to commit atrocities against Jews. According to Jewish law, however, the consumption of blood, even the blood of permitted kosher animals, is forbidden.
The Sheikh went on to accuse the Jews of other forms of cannibalism. “We have to understand the true nature of the Jews, because the entire world is deceived and tormented by them. The Holy Koran has revealed their true nature… One could go on forever about the deceptiveness of the Jews… They allow cannibalism, and the eating of human flesh.”
No stranger to controversy, Abu Zant told al-Aqsa television back in 2012 that Christians had forgotten their responsibility to “liberate” Bethlehem due to “alcohol, syphilis, gonorrhea and AIDS.”
Nor is this the first blood libel levelled by Arabs against Jews. MEMRI has documented several similar cases, including one in July where a top Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, claimed Israelis kill children for their blood. the editor of Hamas’s paper Al-Risalah, Wisam Afifa, also linked the murder of young Mohammed Abu-Khder with the blood libel.
