It Had to Happen?

Who’s to blame for 9/11, the Asian Tsunami, Katrina, Climate Change and now genocide in Sudan?

You got it! Israel and Jews are to blame for these problems, according to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The President dispenses with the normal camouflage of saying ‘Zionists’:

“It is very clear there is a plan to redraw the region," especially after the invasion of Iraq, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told a news conference on the sidelines of a ministerial U.N. General Assembly session.

"The main purpose is the security of Israel. Any state in the region should be weakened, dismembered in order to protect the Israelis, to guarantee the Israeli security," he said.”

How tediously predictable.

You could almost foretell for each up-and-coming modern catastrophe: hurricane, earthquake, thunder or lightning or genocide, who people will blame.

In one shape of words or the other they say “it was the Zionists/Jews/Israelis that are to blame”.

The chronic antisemitism and conspiracy theories that pervade much of modern thinking are a throwback
to the Middle Ages when Jews were blamed for the Black Death:

"In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of all kinds of slanders and were scapegoats for the problems of the day.

* Blood Libel _ In 1144, a myth began in England that Jews murdered Christian children. This myth was expanded to become an accusation which persisted for centuries that the Jews used the blood of Christian children in the preparation of their Passover unleavened bread (matzohs). This "blood libel" was ironic in that the consumption of any blood is expressly prohibited by Jewish law.

* Black Death_ the bubonic plague, the cause of the Black Death that liquidated a quarter of the population of Europe in the 14th century, was blamed on the Jews in Europe and Asia. The Pope issued a bull declaring that Jews were not responsible for the plague, but not before many Jews were burned alive or hanged by enraged mobs."

How regressive, it is as if cranky marginal beliefs normally confined to neo-Nazis, their camp followers or fellow travellers are spreading through modern thought on a daily basis.