PLO Official Hanan Ashrawi’s NGO Publishes Passover Blood Libel

MIFTAH, an NGO whose founder PLO Official Hanan Ashrawi is a well known media personality in the West, and which receives funding from the UN and the Ford Foundation, published an article to its website Wednesday that claimed Jews use the blood of Christians for Passover rituals.

Anonymous pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon spotted this passage in an article by Nawaf al-Zaru on MIFTAH’s Arabic-language site (bold courtesy of EoZ):

“Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between “Passover” and “Christian blood” ..?!Or “Passover” and “Jewish blood rituals..?!Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover …”

Al-Zaru was responding to this section of U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech to students in Jerusalem last Thursday:

“I also know that I come to Israel on the eve of a sacred holiday – the celebration of Passover. And that is where I would like to begin today. Just a few days from now, Jews here in Israel and around the world will sit with family and friends at the Seder table, and celebrate with songs, wine and symbolic foods. After enjoying Seders with family and friends in Chicago and on the campaign trail, I’m proud to have brought this tradition into the White House. I did so because I wanted my daughters to experience the Haggadah, and the story at the center of Passover that makes this time of year so powerful.

“It is a story of centuries of slavery, and years of wandering in the desert; a story of perseverance amidst persecution, and faith in God and the Torah. It is a story about finding freedom in your own land. For the Jewish people, this story is central to who you have become.”

According to Elder of Ziyon, al-Zaru also quotes  “a 2007 Haaretz article on a book by a Bar-Ilan University professor that bizarrely claimed that a few blood libels could have had a basis in fact, without noting that the same professor recanted those claims a year later.”

When reached on the phone by The Algemeiner a MIFTAH employee had no comment on the article. After The Algemeiner emailed the organization the article was removed from MIFTAH’s website. It was never published to MIFTAH’s English-language webpage.

A screenshot of the relevant part of the article in Arabic on MIFTAH’s website can be viewed below.

Screenshot of the MIFTAH blood libel article.