El asunto de Damasco

A day like today, February 5 but 1840 there was a fact of great transcendence and very little known, which is named the title of this article.

The situation we bring to public knowledge occurs after the disappearance of the Capuchin friar, the Italian Father Thomás and his Muslim assistant Ibrahim Amara.

As a consequence of these mysterious disappearances, the well-known prejudices of the French consul in Damascus Ulysse Ratti-menton emerged, who directly blamed the Jews of the city, not only to kill the friar and his assistant but also to have used them for a liturgical ritual.

Obviously it was not an unusual fact to use the Jews as scapegoat where the most renowned cases were to name a few examples that of William de Norwich in England of 1144, where the Jewish community of Norwich was accused without any evidence of the disappearance of the child William, which resulted in the beginning of a Judefoba narrative that was repeated during the later centuries in Europe.

As the case of Lincoln’s Hugh boy in England of 1255 where the body of the infant cited above was found and of his position the Jews were directly accused of killing him for a ritual in order to obtain his blood for the Jewish Easter, Therefore, almost 100 Jews were arrested, executed 18 and we can mention the case of the Libel of Trent in Italy of 1475, for the same excuse executing 15 Jews, this case in particular catapult the anti -Semitism in central Europe, including this Child was revered as San Simón de Trent until the twentieth century entered.

Returning to the case that concerns us regarding the introduction in the Middle East of Libelos and Prejudices Antijudíos, we can express without fear of making mistakes, that the case of Damascus is not confined to the borders of the Syria and that quickly extended to the entire region, enhanced in many cases by European diplomats that brought with it this poisonous scourge that they knew in inoculating when there was a hardship where the figure of the scapegoat was perfecting perfectly to blame the Jews due to circumstances as disguise as the cause of a plague, The poisoning of a water well, the death or disappearance of an infant, the bad fortune, the bad harvests, in short, the alphabet is long.

Those prejudices that began in the Middle East, in the case of Damascus, we can see them reflected decades later, by leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser who led the Egyptian nation between 1956 and 1970 and conducive several conflicts with the state of Israel such as 1956 in The Sinai campaign, as well as the famous for Israel and disastrous for this character in the 6 -day War.

Among his most virulent phrases towards Israel and the Jewish people, we can mention: “Israel is a thorn in the heart of the Arab world, we will not rest until it eliminates it.” Cairo 1965

“Egypt has purged the Zionist elements that betrayed our nation from the inside,” justified the expulsion of the inhabited Jews Egypt for centuries, with a community prosperous and close to 100,000 people.