The accusation that Jews murder Christian children for ritual purposes can be traced back to Roman times, but the form of the libel that has persisted to this day first emerged in 12th-century England, when the death of young William of Norwich was blamed on local Jews. In a recent book on the subject, E. M. Rose argues that the accusation tended to originate with individuals who had a vested personal interest (usually in the form of large debts owed to Jewish moneylenders) in the outcome. In a review, Madeleine Schwartz questions the underlying thesis:

[Rose] makes it clear that the blood-libel story didn’t emerge from an untapped well of hate. “This supposed ‘irrational,’ ‘bizarre,’ ‘literary trope’ was the product of lucid, cogent arguments, thoughtfully and carefully debated in executive councils, judged in detail by sober men who were not reacting under pressure to thoughtless mob violence,” she writes. She argues that the blood libel was an accusation developed by rational men in need of a “strategy”—a word Rose uses repeatedly throughout her book.

She shows how slowly the blood libel spread and takes this as an indication that the myth’s anti-Semitic sentiments were not easily accepted. [The clergyman Thomas of Monmouth’s] account of William’s death, for example, contains repeated defenses of [William’s] holiness, as if the monk is constantly imagining the retorts of naysayers who don’t believe the young man should become a saint. . . . The extortion of Jews in Gloucester using the blood libel happened two decades after William of Norwich’s death; it wasn’t until 1168—more than twenty years after the initial charge was made—that the blood libel began to gain ground in Europe. . . .

Rose stops short of showing why the blood libel persisted, consistent in form, for centuries after its first dissemination. In her emphasis on the rational reasons for the story’s initial diffusion, she downplays the enduring, and less rational, religious stories it might well have echoed among the people who heard it. Yet once it gained initial acceptance, the accusation of ritual murder was easily believed by men and women far removed from . . . any of the tangible, tactical reasons for its spread.

Why did they find this charge credible? One story that would have been familiar to them is the account of Christ’s Passion and suffering at the hands of the Jews. It’s not hard to imagine that the popularity and tenacity of the blood libel rests in part on how deftly it reimagines that story.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.