Palestinians and the Blood Libel

Part of what made the story in Sweden's Aftonbladet so starkly antisemitic was that the science was simply wrong. You can't shoot people in the torso in a village and then send them somewhere else and harvest their organs. This wasn't even worth mentioning at the time, because no-one really contested that the story was antisemitic - except the antisemites, of course, but since the demise of Nazism that's standard. Auschwitz gave antisemitism a bad name, and even people who were once proud of their sentiments thereafter pretended they'd never had them.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), however, isn't a Swedish hate rag. It's the Palestinian government. Its President is scheduled to meet with Barack Obama later this month and perhaps re-start direct negotiations with Israel's government. The PA are the moderates, the peace partners, the hope for the future and all those fine sentiments.

Well, today they set up a high-level commission to investigate the veracity of the Aftonbladet story (which was cooked up, we remember, by some Palestinian villagers).

Secretary-General of the Palestinian Cabinet Hassan Abu Libda said the commission will be made up of the interior, health and foreign ministers. The PA will decide whether or not to pursue action against Israel in the international legal arena once the investigation's findings are revealed, he said. "Should the suspicions prove to be true, our position will be unequivocal, because (organ theft) is not only a violation of human rights, it goes against all values and creeds," said the secretary-general.