Quote:
Poll: Conservatives not to blame for Ariz. shooting
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Most Americans reject the idea that inflammatory political language by conservatives should be part of the debate about the forces behind the Arizona shooting that left six people dead and a congresswoman in critical condition, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.
A 53% majority of those surveyed call that analysis mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad. About a third, 35%, say it is a legitimate point about how dangerous language can be.
And there is little sense that stricter gun control laws in Arizona might have averted the tragedy. Only one in five say they would have prevented the shooting; 72% say tighter controls wouldn't have prevented it.
Meanwhile, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin posted a statement and a video on her Facebook page denouncing criticism that she bore some responsibility for the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The congresswoman was one of 20 congressional Democrats whom Palin had targeted for defeat in November's elections on a map showing their congressional districts in cross hairs.
"Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn," Palin wrote. "This is reprehensible."
The phrase "blood libel" is a false slur against Jews that has been used for centuries to justify their persecution.
There are partisan differences in views of the shooting. Even among Democrats, however, a third say it isn't legitimate to single out conservatives' language for criticism; just over half say it is legitimate. Seven in 10 Republicans call that analysis mostly an attempt to make conservatives look bad.
In the poll, the public is precisely evenly divided on whether the heated language generally used in politics today was a factor in the shooting: 42% say yes, 42% say no. Another 15% have no opinion.
Those who see political rhetoric as a factor are almost evenly divided over whether it was a major one or a minor one.
Most of those surveyed see inflammatory language being used by both Republicans and Democrats. And the Tea Party movement gets slightly less blame than the two major parties, although the difference is too small to be statistically significant.
Fifty-three percent say Republicans and their supporters have gone too far in using inflammatory language; 51% say that of Democrats; 49% say it of Tea Party supporters.
The poll of 1,002 adults, taken Tuesday, has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
J Street, a political organization for Jews and supporters of Israel, criticized Palin's choice of words.
"The term 'blood libel' brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds," Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street president, said in a statement. "When Governor Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words."
Newsflash 2: Not all Jews are up in arms about using the phrase "blood libel", because as a rhetorical device it's ultimately more about false accusations of murder than about Jews.
Quote:
HOUSES OF WORSHIP | JANUARY 14, 2011
Sarah Palin Is Right About 'Blood Libel'
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder.
By SHMULEY BOTEACH
The term "blood libel"—which Sarah Palin invoked this week to describe the suggestions by journalists and politicians that conservative figures like herself are responsible for last weekend's shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz.—is fraught with perilous meaning in Jewish history.
The term connotes the earliest accusations that Jews killed Jesus and enthusiastically embraced responsibility for his murder, telling Pontius Pilate, "His blood be upon us and our children" (Matthew 27:25). Thus was born the legend of Jewish bloodlust and of Hebrew ritual use of Christian blood for sacramental purposes. The term was later used more specifically to describe accusations against Jews—primarily in Europe—of sacrificing kidnapped Christian children to use their blood in the baking of Passover matzos.
The Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth is generally credited with having popularized the blood libel in his "Life of the Martyr William from Norwich," written in 1173 about a young boy who was found stabbed to death. Thomas quoted a servant woman who said she witnessed Jews lacerating the boy's head with thorns, crucifying him, and piercing his side. While William was canonized, the Jews of Norwich fared less well. On Feb. 6, 1190, they were all found slaughtered in their homes, save those who escaped to the local tower and committed mass suicide.
Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.
The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.
Jews did not kill Jesus. As the Roman historian Tacitus makes clear, he was murdered by Pontius Pilate, whose reign of terror in ancient Judea was so excessive, even by Roman standards, that (according to the Roman-Jewish chronicler Josephus) Rome recalled him in the year 36 due to his sadistic practices. King Herod Agrippa I, writing to the Emperor Caligula, noted Pilate's "acts of violence, plunderings . . . and continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, endless, and unbelievable cruelties, gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity."
Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Indeed, the belief that the concept of blood libel applies only to Jews is itself a form of reverse discrimination that should be dismissed.
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder, as the Hebrew Bible condemns accusations of collective guilt against Jew and non-Jew alike. "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (Ezekiel 18).
How unfortunate that some have chosen to compound a national tragedy by politicizing the murder of six innocent lives and the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.
To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.
Rabbi Boteach is the author of "Honoring the Child Spirit: Inspiration and Learning from Our Children" (Vanguard, 2011). He will shortly publish a book on the Jewishness of Jesus and his murder at Roman hands.
FYI "Rabbi Shmuley" is a notable public figure in American Judaism: 
