Guardian contributor Rachel Shabi was invited on BBC’s Dateline London program on Aug. 8th to discuss Jewish extremism in Israel in the context of the recent murder of an eight month-old Palestinian boy and his father in the Palestinian town of Duma.
Here’s what Shabi said when asked by BBC presenter Gavin Esler to contextualize the Israeli government’s response to the killing. (Pay particularly close attention beginning at the 20 second mark)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik9l88MImWA]
Of course, so-called ‘price-tag attacks’ in this context refers to attacks (against property or persons) by Jewish extremists intended to exact a price for Israeli policies believed to be detrimental to the settlement enterprise. Shabi is in effect saying that the death of hundreds of children in Gaza during last summer’s war with the terror group Hamas represented a willful Israeli policy of targeting Palestinian children as a similar act of vengeance or retribution. Her narrative, which went unchallenged by the BBC presenter, is consistent with the odious charge, typically found within Islamist and radical left circles, that Jews intentionally murder innocent kids.
This is the kind of ugly smear that the late Robert S. Wistrich has characterized as a modern secular blood libel, and both Ms. Shabi and Mr. Esler should be ashamed of themselves for legitimizing such a historically toxic calumny.
