Rindfleisch (or Rintfleisch) was a Franconian knight, who instigated the massacre of up to 100,000 Jews in Southern and Central Germany during a civil war between Adolph of Nassau and Albert I of Nassau. Rindfleisch may have been heavily in debt to Jewish moneylenders.ref Rindfleisch claimed a divine mission to exterminate “the accursed race of the Jews” following a rumor of desecration of the host. The “desecration of the host” was a medieval superstition which maintained that Jews defiled the communion wafer with blood. It is now believed that the wafers were attacked by a brownish-red fungus that looked like blood.

Rindfleisch
Rindfleisch and victims, Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum, Nuremberg, 1493.

The massacres followed a series of blood libels in Mainz (1281, 1283) Munich (1285) and Oberwesel (1287). In Munich, Jews were burned alive in 1290. Likewise, there was an accusation of desecration of the host in Paris in 1290. The massacres began on April 20, 1298 in the little town of Rottingen (also Roettingen, Rothingen), where 21 Jews were burned at the stake by Rindfleisch’s mob as revenge for the alleged desecration of the host. Rindfleisch then led his mob on a rampage of slaughter and pillage. Massacres took place in Rothenburg, Nuremburg and Wurzburg.

In the massacres, 146 Jewish communities were attacked and often destroyed in southern Germany. In Wurzburg, the Jewish community was annihilated on July 24. In Nuremberg, Jews took refuge in the citadel, which was attacked on August 1, 1298; 628 victims were recorded in the Nuremberg Memorbuch for 1298. (Ahituv, Shmuel, The Jewish People: An Illustrated History, Continuum, 2006, p. 251 [according to the Encyclopedia Judaica, the number was 728]).

The origins of the massacres in the area of Wurzburg may be due to the action of the Kraft I of Hohenlohe. According to the chronicle of the Dominican Rudolph of Schlettstadt in Alsace, The Historiae memorabiles, Kraft owed the Jewish moneylenders a large sum. They petitioned to have him enjoined from harming the Jews of Wurzburg. According to Rudolph, the Jews entered the Weikersheim Church on Maundy Thursday and desecrated it, They flung Hosts (communion wafers) on the alter and abused them with knives. The hosts, relates the Dominican, bled real blood and cried out “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabbachtani” (“My Lord, my Lord, why hast thought forsaken me” – Christ’s last words on the cross) Kraft went to the Bishop of Wurzburg with this tale, and the Bishop informed him, “You know the penalty for killing a man, how much greater for killing Our Lord, Jesus Christ, son of Mary…” With this sanction, Kraft and his followers joyfully proceeded to burn every Jew they could find, which the good Dominican Rudolph accounted a very good thing

But maybe I’m wrong – in your view, was Israel ever the guilty party in a conflict? I acknowledge that Israel is imperfect. Have you ever expressed in writing that Israel or the Jewish people are not guilty. In your voluminous writings, here or on JPost, is Israel or Jews ever innocent. You are as predictable as the Pyongyang Times

ALSO NOTE: “The Dogs of War: The Next Intifada”, By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, 9/03/11
[excerpt]…The second (“al-Aqsa”) intifada started after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David conference and Ariel Sharon’s deliberately provocative “visit” to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians held non-violent mass demonstrations. The army responded with selective killings. A sharpshooter accompanied by an officer would take position in the path of the protest, and the officer would point out selected targets – protesters who looked like “ringleaders”. They were killed.
This was highly effective. Soon the non-violent demonstrations ceased and were replaced by very violent (“terrorist”) actions. With those the army was back on familiar ground. . .

Does a non-state, and one that does not acknowledge international law – both law of the sea and other political – have a right to a port (which functions under international law)?

I don’t think so.

I liked the Meshal proposal (on Charlie Rich – I saw via the web), that proposed that a Gazan port be set up and monitored by consented international parties, with the purpose of allowing civilian materiel and acknowledging the prohibition of military materiel.

NOONE took him up on it. Why? For the left, it was giving in. For the right, they didn’t trust him. The same distrust plays in the deliberations about the blockade. That Hamas floated the idea of cessation of rocket-firing until the blockade was lifted, is a declaration of war as much as it is confident and viable offer of cease-fire. (Especially if they knew that Israel would not lift the blockade at that point.)

On the numbers that you cite associated with Cast Lead. I always consider that a red herring, in that per the Amos Oz assessments in real time for example that I largely agree with (more limited scope and ending quickly), the numbers would be far far less skewed. Its a strawman argument to compare a duration that I objected to as if that is what I suggested.

On Israeli terror. It was six years before my birth for one. I don’t know what I would do if facing a do or die setting.

If it were just about myself, I’d probably die rather than mass murder. My life is short anyway. And, I consider that I am on the planet to do good. So, to mass murder for the vanity of my short life, and grossly conflict with my life “mission”, doesn’t make sense.

If it were about my children, I’d fight and by any means necessary.

You?

My views on Cast Lead are similar to Amos Oz’ that regardless of the political context and good or bad judgment relative to the blockade and other relations to Hamas, that once shelling of civilians begins (terror, not war), that it is the responsibility of a nation’s military to stop it, by the means at its disposal.

And, that once the valid elements of the mission were completed, or obviously not feasible, then they should have withdrawn.

However, given the history of Hamas’ relatively successful guerilla resistance to ground actions, and their assertions that the IDF would be harmed if they undertook another ground assault, that if the IDF was earnest in that responsibility then it had to undertake an expanded scope of operations.

The choice to not seek to stop Hamas shelling of civilians, would be a choice to not be a nation’s defense.

I thought that you regarded the IDF as responsible for Israeli citizens’ defense (sorry for the snide).

It is a continental divide. Jerome Slater declared in a few blog posts, that he felt that Israel had no right even to undertake any action relative to the shelling of civilians, that the government in effect had put the civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon in that position. That though is a rock and hard place, to politically declare that a nation’s defense has to stand down while rockets rain on civilians.

I wasn’t in the room when Israel and Hamas negotiated the ceasefire (noone was as the two parties BOTH refused to talk to each other).

The blockade was ALSO conducted by Egypt (surely at the insistence of Israel), but which only yesterday allowed unlimited ground traffic between Gaza and Egypt, and only for a few hours, and without any official announcement or communication that their policy had changed. They had regime change close to a year ago, but still didn’t change their policy until yesterday.

Cast Lead and all relations with Hamas at the time were also set in the context of a fractured Palestinian community, in the midst of a light civil war. As Israel had treatied in some regard with the PA, it postured (opportunistically), that to negotiate in any further way with Hamas was to functionally attack the PA, as if they weren’t emasculating the PA at every turn anyway.

I appreciate that your positions are based on a more charitable and moral conviction, than just getting caught in the political maze of the rats nest of opportunistic triangulated politics.

Still, I believe that the methods of resistance ALSO, more than also, contribute to escalation. When methods of mass murder are adopted, they are themselves at the level of a sexual taboo, like incest, that shifts all subsequent discussion.

That is what we are talking about, the significance of terror as a means, and specifically about whether if Hezbollah was involved in the Bulgaria terror, if that was justifiable (as NOT a party to the Israel/Iran conflict).

Think about that for a bit. The state of Israel is killing high energy particle and theoretical physicists. That means that Iran should target Israeli and Zionist working in the same fields. What a collection of names. Einstein, Fermi, Szilard, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Weinstein etc and all of their students of course. The state of Israel certainly knows how to pick fights.