Claim: A Saudi Arabian newspaper ran an article claiming that Jews use the blood of Christians and Muslims in foods created to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim.



Status: Multiple — see below:

Jews include the blood or body parts of non-Jews in some dishes: False.

A Saudi Arabian newspaper presented this claim as fact: True.

Example:

[WorldNetDaily, 2002]







A Saudi government-approved newspaper published a column asserting that Jews use the blood of teenagers to make a special pastry associated with the March holiday of Purim.







Origins: On 13 March 2002, the The Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) published excerpts of a translation of an article which had appeared in the Saudi Arabian daily newspaper Al-Riyadh on 10 March . The article, a column by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam, dealt with the “The Jewish Holiday of Purim”:





Special Ingredient For Jewish Holidays is Human Blood From Non-Jewish Youth I chose to [speak] about the Jewish holiday of Purim, because it is connected to the month of March. This holiday has some dangerous customs that will, no doubt, horrify you, and I apologize if any reader is harmed because of this. During this holiday, the Jew must prepare very special pastries, the filling of which is not only costly and rare – it cannot be found at all on the local and international markets. Unfortunately, this filling cannot be left out, or substituted with any alternative serving the same purpose. For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries. In other words, the practice cannot be carried out as required if human blood is not spilled!! Before I go into the details, I would like to clarify that the Jews’ spilling human blood to prepare pastry for their holidays is a well-established fact, historically and legally, all throughout history. This was one of the main reasons for the persecution and exile that were their lot in Europe and Asia at various times. This holiday [Purim] begins with a fast, on March 13, like the Jewess Esther who vowed to fast. The holiday continues on March 14; during the holiday, the Jews wear carnival-style masks and costumes and overindulge in drinking alcohol, prostitution, and adultery. This holiday has become known among Muslim historians as the “Holiday of Masks.” How the Jews Drain the Blood From Their Young Victims Who was Esther, and why the Jews sanctify her and act as she did, I will clarify in my article next Tuesday, Allah willing. Today, I would like to tell you how human blood is spilled so it can be used for their holiday pastries. The blood is spilled in a special way. How is it done? For this holiday, the victim must be a mature adolescent who is, of course, a non-Jew – that is, a Christian or a Muslim. His blood is taken and dried into granules. The cleric blends these granules into the pastry dough; they can also be saved for the next holiday. In contrast, for the Passover slaughtering, about which I intend to write one of these days, the blood of Christian and Muslim children under the age of 10 must be used, and the cleric can mix the blood [into the dough] before or after dehydration. The Actions of the Jewish Vampires Cause Them Pleasure Let us now examine how the victims’ blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim’s body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim’s blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment – torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend. After this barbaric display, the Jews take the spilled blood, in the bottle set in the bottom [of the needle-studded barrel], and the Jewish cleric makes his coreligionists completely happy on their holiday when he serves them the pastries in which human blood is mixed. There is another way to spill the blood: The victim can be slaughtered as a sheep is slaughtered, and his blood collected in a container. Or, the victim’s veins can be slit in several places, letting his blood drain from his body. This blood is very carefully collected – as I have already noted – by the ‘rabbi,’ the Jewish cleric, the chef who specializes in preparing these kinds of pastries. The human race refuses even to look at the Jewish pastries, let alone prepare them or consume them!





As WorldNetDaily correctly noted, this screed was yet another repetition of the centuries-old anti-Semitic blood libel fable:





The allegation of blood libel was common in the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of “ritual murder” in their celebration of the Passover. During the feast, which commemorates Israel’s escape from Egypt, a family puts the blood of a lamb on the doorpost of its home, but Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children. The Catholic Church has since condemned the unfounded allegation.





Al-Riyadh‘s editor, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, claimed the article had “slipped through the cracks” while he was away in Lebanon and “never should have been published”:





The editor, Turki al Sudairy, said he was upset to discover that while he was in Lebanon, his paper ran a two-part series by a professor that vilified Jews and the holiday of Purim — and embellished a tale dismissed long ago as the product of deeply anti-Semitic thinking. The editor, Turki al Sudairy, said he was upset to discover that while he was in Lebanon, his paper ran a two-part series by a professor that vilified Jews and the holiday of Purimembellished a tale dismissed long ago as the product of deeply anti-Semitic thinking. “I went back to the article and found it unfit for publishing because it is not based on any historical or scientific fact but in fact is against every religious ritual in the world, including Buddhism and Hinduism,” Sudairy wrote in a column that appeared Tuesday, adding that the article’s “credibility is nil.” Although Sudairy said the article had slipped through the cracks and never should have been published, the fact that it appeared over a two-day period reflects the willingness of governments in this region to use the media as a safety valve for the deep animosity their people feel toward Israel and Jews. Al Riyadh is a privately owned paper, but there is censorship in Saudi Arabia, and there was no effort to block publication of the article.





The Al-Riyadh article itself is probably less surprising than many American’s unawareness that virulent anti-Semitic, anti-American material is common fodder in the Middle Eastern press, even in state-controlled (or state-approved) newspapers of countries which receive massive amounts of financial aid and support from the U.S., (such as Egypt), as Arnold Beichman noted in a Washington Times editorial:





If you want to know why, despite the New York Times and its columnist Thomas Friedman, peace in the Middle East is impossible, let me refer you to articles published March 10 and 12 in the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh under the title “Jews Use Teenagers’ Blood for ‘Purim’ Pastries.” If you want to know why, despite theand its columnist Thomas Friedman, peace in the Middle East is impossible, let me refer you to articles publishedand 12 in the Saudi government dailyunder the title “Jews Use Teenagers’ Blood for ‘Purim’ Pastries.” The author of this blood libel is not your average Jew-hating Saudi. He is not only a columnist, he is an academic: Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University in Al-Dammam. So while the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz-al-Saud, is whispering sweet nothings into Mr. Friedman’s trembling ear, the Arab press is telling its readers under a headline: “Special Ingredient For Jewish Holidays is Human Blood From Non-Jewish Youth.” [ . . .] Al-Riyadh isn’t the only Middle East Muslim publication that publishes this hate-filled filth. The Egyptian press has published and republished the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a forgery concocted a century ago by the Russian czar’s secret police and still circulating in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat’s wife has publicly accused the Israelis of poisoning the well water from which Palestinians drink. And, of course, the United States is a major target, too.





Last updated: 13 July 2007









Sources:



Beichman, Arnold. “Blood Libel Lives.”

The Washington Times. 19 March 2002.

Slackman, Michael. “ Saudi Editor Retracts Article That Defamed Jews”

Los Angeles Times. 20 March 2002.