Rick Lazio: “Mr. Chairman, in 1911 a Russian Jew named Mendel Beilis was arrested by the czar's secret police. He was accused of a…”

“Mr. Chairman, in 1911 a Russian Jew named Mendel Beilis was arrested by the czar's secret police. He was accused of a crime resurrected from the dusty, murky depths of medieval antisemitism, the blood libel. That was an ancient myth that the ritual murder of a child was needed in order to make a Passover Matza. It was an utterly absurd assertion. Mr. Chairman, we are witnessing an equally obscene perversion of justice today. Earlier this year, ten Jewish residents of the Iranian town of Shiraz were charged by the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iraq of espionage for Israel. Mr. Chairman, the analogies between these two cases are instructive. In both cases, there was not a shred of plausible evidence to support the prosecutors' case. In both cases, the government had clear political reasons to proceed with a groundless prosecution. In both of these cases, the scapegoats, who were sacrificed at the altar of political cynicism, were Jews.”