Israel has been subjected to repeatedly blood libels. Their details are always more or less the same. Israeli forces fight terrorists. Non-Jewish civilians die, and Israel’s right to exist is rejected by “right thinking” people the world over. 

The responses elicited by the death of al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh were written hundreds of years ago. Blood libels — the practice of using the death of non-Jews as a means set up the Jewish collective for demonization, condemnation, ostracism and mass murder — may vary in their proximate details. But the substance is always the same. The Jews are guilty.