Note: This article will be followed by an experiment. In an effort to foster rational dialogue, Talkback responses to this piece will be subject to stringent new guidelines, as specified below.

	Advertisement

Blood libels never die, they just get digitized.

Thanks to new media, ancient prejudices need never fade away. So it is that Jew hate, nothing if not adaptable, has become easier to disseminate than ever before. Bigotry as old as time can now be downloaded, podcast, cable cast, sat-phoned, text-messaged, downloaded, YouTubed across state lines, oceans, and all continental borders at the touch of a grimy button.

At this point, you never quite know where you're going to find it next, or what form it will take.

This year, I found it at Ground Zero.

I was handed a complimentary DVD by a 9/11 conspiracist. It was a newly enhanced version of the Protocols of the new millennium, the theory - simultaneously promulgated by elements of the far left, the far right, and fundamentalist Islam, people who in every other respect hate each others' guts and each others' every opinion - that it was Israel and the Mossad that brought down the World Trade Center.

The Anti-Defamation League and other groups have labored mightily to combat the theories. Reviewing five years of intensive activity, however, the ADL said last month that "Today, those theories are even more widespread and some have taken their anti-Semitic allegations even farther by claiming that it was specifically Jewish members of the Bush Administration who directed the government in planning the attacks for the benefit of Israel."

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the great blood libel of the new millennium - and its most striking parallel to the Protocols of the elders of Zion - is its adaptability to today's headlines.

Look no further than the case of Kobi Alexander, the one-time software guru who made it to the FBI's Most Wanted list on the strength of alleged stock option book-cooking and other allegations.

Writer Christopher Bollyn, one of the more prolific conspiracists, calls Alexander "the Israeli crook who owned the Mossad companies who had clear foreknowledge of the terror attacks of 9/11."

According to Bollyn, employees of an Israeli-based software firm called Odigo received word of the 9/11 attacks some two hours before they took place.

"Odigo had its U.S. headquarters two blocks from the WTC. The Odigo employees, however, did not pass the warning on to the authorities in New York City, a move that could have saved thousands of lives."

He goes on to state that Odigo, "like many Israeli software companies, is based and has its Research and Development (R&D) center in Herzliya, Israel, the small town north of Tel Aviv, which happens to be where Mossad's headquarters are located" and that "shortly after 9/11, Odigo was taken over by Comverse Technology," Kobi Alexander's flagship concern.

The examples are endless, the conclusion one: The Jews did it. The Jew media covered it up. The Jews did it so that America would have to go to war, shedding the blood of Christian boys in a fight against Israel's Muslim enemies.

"Never in the history of the Jewish people has one terrible lie about 'Jewish control' spread so quickly and with such power, captivating not only those on the extreme fringe but the educated elite, particularly in the Muslim and Arab word," ADL National Director Foxman said in 2003.

"The Big Lie has been repeated by imams, the press and government officials in the Arab world, and is contributing to disturbing and dangerous mutations in global anti-Semitism."

Perhaps it was only inevitable, given the low purposes to which high-technology has been adapted, that the ADL found that one of the mutations is none other than that the one once spread by direct priest-peasant contact: the idea that the key ingredient in Passover matzo dough is the lifeblood of a Christian boy.