Left: The Angel of Death passes by a household in this painting by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1794-1872.

Anti-Trump, anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic propaganda or “fake news” relies on the general public’s vague familiarity with details.

Take for example the left’s reaction to Jared Kushner’s and Ivanka Trump’s celebration of the Jewish “Holiday of Freedom,” or Passover (Pesach in Hebrew), beginning at the Seder table, to celebrate the Jews’ miraculous exodus from Egyptian slavery back to freedom in their homeland, Israel.

Here is what Fusion.net published:

Perhaps during her family’s seder, Ivanka (or, better yet, one of the little Trumplets!) could add a fifth question to the proceedings just for her father: Would the exodus-era Israelites – a group seeking refuge from unimaginable hardships in the Middle East – need some sort of “extreme vetting” to enter the U.S., or would they simply be banned altogether?

This is a new addition to the nine-centuries-old “blood libel” against Jews celebrating Pesach.  The first known incident happened in the twelfth century in Norwich, England, where Jews were falsely accused of torturing to death a 12-year-old and using his blood as part of the holiday ritual.  By 1171, the blood libel of Passover ritual murder resulted in burning to death the whole Jewish community of Blois, France.  Since then, similar false accusations have been used against the Jews throughout the world, not only around Passover time, and not only by European Christians.  Nazi and Muslim regimes used staged blood libel cases to solidify the masses against the Jewish bogeyman.  And the Muslims, including the peace-loving “enlightened” Palestinian leadership, use it to this day.

In March 2013, Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian Palestinian politician and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, who was a close confidant of the late Yasser Arafat and is very popular in the West, published an article criticizing President Obama for hosting the Jewish Seder in the White House.

“Does Obama, in fact, know the relationship, for example, between ‘Passover’ and ‘Christian blood’?!” Ashrawi asked.  “Or ‘Passover’ and ‘Jewish blood rituals?!'”   To add credibility to her rant, Ashrawi noted: “[M]uch of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.”

The article was published on the website of the NGO Ashrawi founded in 1998, Miftah, which, according to its website, is “the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, an initiative which works towards respect for Palestinian human rights, democracy and peace.”  Miftah is generously funded by United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the British Oxfam, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands,  Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and others.  With much fanfare, Ashrawi received the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize and was endorsed by former former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who said, “She [Ashrawi] is a brilliant spokeswoman for her cause.”

While Ashrawi was forced to remove the article from the website, she is still serving on the advisory board of the World Bank, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), and the International Human Rights Council.  She and other Palestinian leaders who have expressed similar ideas should not be allowed to participate in any negotiations regarding the new Trump initiative for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

When Jared Kushner and Ivanka and the Jews in America, Israel, and elsewhere observe the Passover Seder, they are also celebrating the extreme vetting that helped enslaved Jews to escape captivity in a foreign land to freedom in their promised land.  The Jews were no immigrants or refugees.  As told in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Almighty used “extreme vetting” to distinguish the Jews from the Egyptians and to save the former from the ten plagues inflicted on the Egyptians, who refused to set the free the Jews.

It is unlikely that the Passover story was on Donald Trump’s mind when he first mentioned “extreme vetting.”  However, his efforts to single out Middle East refugees and immigrants who wish us harm could help keep Americans freedoms and save our lives.

Happy Passover!

* This commentary was published by American Thinker on April 12, 2017