Thanks to the internet, media blood libels take on a life of their own like never before.
The latest example: A non-governmental organization called the International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD) posted this statement on the UN Human Rights Council's web site alleging that Israel harvests Palestinian organs:
After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial.
Journalist Donald Bostrom admitted he has no proof that the charges he raised in the Swedish daily, Aftonbladet, are true, but that hasn't stopped the unending fallout. His article:
- Was denied by the family at the center of the controversy.
- Created a rift in Israeli-Swedish relations.
- Poisoned Ukraine's elections.
- Was a pretext for Egypt to ban Israeli doctors from a medical conference.
- Spawned copycat claims.
- Prompted an academic to dredge up years-old charges against the director of Israel's Institute of Forensice Medicine that proved nothing about Bostrom's claims.
The power of the press is already clear. That's why Bostrom won HonestReporting's 2009 Dishonest Reporter Award. But why does the UN further condone the blood libel by allowing it to remain posted on its own web site?
The answer to that may be reflected in the nature of the UNHRC's own obsessions. Yesterday, it passed three resolutions against Israel.
Read more about this at the Jerusalem Post and UN Watch.
