The blood-libel myth surfaced in Romania after police there held an Israeli and three Romanians accused of smuggling babies to Moldova and Israel, police said last week.
A Romanian police spokesman identified the Israeli citizen as Mahmud Asadi, a Palestinian who converted to Judaism and claims to have been a personal secretary to slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, according to the World Jewish Congress.
Resurrecting the centuries-old anti-Semitic blood libel, the Bucharest weekly Baricada reported last month that there was no chance of ever seeing the smuggled children alive because “as is well-known, Jewish matzah demands kosher, young Christian blood.”
But “as long as the Jewish mafia” involved in “collecting kosher blood” is protected by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, it is “unlikely” that proof of the horrible deed can be produced, the weekly said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
