Gaza Hospital Bombing Highlights ‘Blood Libel’ And Other Antisemitic Tropes
JERUSALEM — The heated discourse about the deadly rocket explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the southern Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun on Tuesday is rooted in the centuries-old religious hatred underlying the current war in Gaza.
Immediately after the blast in the parking lot of the missionary medical center, which reportedly killed 500 displaced Gazans sheltering there, journalists accepted Hamas’ account blaming the Israel Defense Forces for the deadly attack. U.S. President Joe Biden, in a visit to Israel on Wednesday, reiterated that evidence showed a Palestinian rocket had struck the facility.
Among the first to denounce the bloody bombing was Richard Sewell, dean of the Anglican St. George’s College, in Jerusalem.
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“Disaster: Our hospital, Ahli Arab hospital has taken a direct hit from an Israeli missile,” he posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “This is deliberate killing of vulnerable civilians. The bombs must stop now. There can be no possible justification for this.”
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital — meaning “The Arab People’s Hospital” — was founded in 1882 by the Church Mission Society of the Church of England. Between 1954 and 1982, the healing center was managed by the Southern Baptist Church’s medical mission. As a result, it is still sometimes referred to as the Baptist Hospital. Today the center is run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem said, “As we grieve the loss of countless souls who perished on our premises, we declare a day of mourning in all our churches and institutions. We beseech our friends, partners and individuals of goodwill to stand in solidarity, mourning with us the heinous assault on our dedicated staff and vulnerable patients.”
Citing the IDF’s compelling evidence that the cause of the carnage was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, Israeli President Isaac Herzog decried Sewell’s unverified accusation that Israel was behind the Gaza hospital tragedy as “a blood libel.”
“An Islamic Jihad missile has killed many Palestinians at a Gazan hospital — a place where lives should be saved,” Herzog tweeted on X. “Shame on the media who swallow the lies of Hamas and Islamic Jihad — broadcasting a 21st-century blood libel around the globe. Shame on the vile terrorists in Gaza who willfully spill the blood of the innocent. Never before has the choice been clearer. Israel is standing against an enemy made of pure evil. If you stand for humanity — for the value of all human life — you stand with Israel.”
Blood libels and the gharqad tree
Herzog was referencing the medieval slander that Jews ritually murdered Christian boys and used their blood to bake Passover matzah. The libel — alongside those of well poisoning and desecration of Communion wafers called hosts — evolved into a leitmotif in the persecution of Jews throughout Europe from the Middle Ages down to modern times.
Among those allegedly murdered were William of Norwich in 1144 and Simon of Trent, killed in 1473 and subsequently beatified. The baseless rumor spread to Damascus in Syria, where in 1840 the disappearance of a Capuchin friar was blamed on the Jews’ bloodthirstiness. It was then that European antisemitism began to merge with Islamic antipathy for Jews.
While widely acknowledged as a baseless calumny, the memory of the blood libel accusation still resonates in the consciousness of many Jews, including Herzog.
Another medieval calumny that has gained traction in the current war is the hadith (reports attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), which the grand mufti of Jerusalemn Hajj Amin al-Husaynin popularized about the gharqad tree. Collating anti-Jewish teachings in the Quran and hadith, the Arab Palestinian leader’s antisemitic booklet was distributed at the widely attended pan-Arab summit in Bloudan, Syria, on Sept. 8-9, 1937.
It was subsequently published in Nazi Germany and distributed to soldiers in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. It says the following:
“Abu Huraira passes on the following hadith: The day of judgment will only come when the Muslims have dealt the Jews a crushing blow, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden, speaks to the Muslim. Behind me is a Jew. Strike him dead. Only the gharqad tree, a small shrub with sharp thorns, will not take part, for it is a Jewish tree. The reason for the arguments made above is that the Jews are on the point of reaching out their hands toward the holy places which are sacred for each Muslim and each Christian.
“The Islamic world and the friends of Islam shall be shown how the Jews truly are in their innermost being. Usually, one only sees the Jews with the veneer of civilization, but the Arabs have learned best how they really are, that is, as they are described in the Koran and in the sacred scriptures. Then the agonies to which the Arabs in Palestine have been subjected can be understood. And one can imagine how these agonies will increase to the monstrous when the Jews have fully and completely laid their hands on Palestine. I present to my Muslim brothers in the entire world the history and the true experience which the Jews cannot deny. The verses from the Koran and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them. They know only hypocrisy and guile. Hold together, fight for Islamic thought, fight for your religion and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews. Do not tolerate the plan of division, for Palestine has been an Arabic land for centuries and shall remain Arab.”
Since al-Husayni’s popularization of the gharqad tree hadith in 1937, it has remained a trope in the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Also called the Arabian boxthorn (Lycium shawii), the tree figures in Sunni eschatology. According to Islamic tradition about the end of days, it will hide Muslims from their enemies, who will be unable to see them.
According to the terrorist group Hamas, as “the hour approaches,” all of creation will turn against the Jews. Their only ally will be the gharqad tree. Some sheikhs have claimed Israelis planted the desert shrub around their settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, thereby creating magic mandalas protecting them from terror attacks.
The symbolism of the gharqad tree was detailed by Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg in their 2006 book, “The Road to Martyrs’ Square: A Journey Into the World of the Suicide Bomber.”
In fact, brochures citing the tree were found on the bodies of some of the terrorists killed in battles in Israeli cities after they crossed the border fence on Oct. 7 and killed 1,300 Israelis, marking the bloodiest day in the history of Israel since it became the Jewish state in 1948.
The Anti-Defamation League, which has been tracking cases of antisemitism since 1979, reported over 100 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. alone since the surprise attacks.
“We appreciate the strong support of our governments and our law enforcement agencies for our Jewish communities, both in public statements and in actions to guarantee our security,” the ADL said in a statement. “Regrettably, our communities are seeing a shocking increase in antisemitic incidents, which foreshadows a troubling period ahead.”
Gil Zohar was born in Toronto and moved to Jerusalem in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.