I don't think they're wrong for kvetching the way they are. This is probably a particularly damning bit of research on Sephardi blood libel due to the contents, but even moreso due to its coming from one of the most noted and traveled British explorers of all time, his sexual proclivity and potential perfidy notwithstanding. But not because of his esteemed status. Consider this. The wiki article states frankly in the Scandals section,
>His travel writing… often hints that he had participated
It goes on in the next paragraph,
>Burton (went) undercover to investigate a male brothel… It has been suggested that Burton's detailed report may have led some to believe he had been a customer.
He had a habit of becoming personally involved in any investigation or adventure in any number of things, without respect or regard for the taboos of the time, down to possibly having engaged in homosexual acts. Unverified, unknown. A particularly stabbing rumor was that he'd killed an Arab boy who had seen him urinating standing in Christian fashion as opposed to squatting as the Arabs do in Mecca. Mecca, where he had infiltrated under the guise of an Arab, where any European enters on pain of death in that time; he rubberbanded between frankly denying it up and down as ridiculous, that such a murder would've only made his exposure more likely, and that he'd never killed anyone, and alternately falsely admitting the dirty deed with taunting pride and absurdity.
What, then, does it mean for Richard Francis Burton to have researched into blood sacrifice among the Sephardi, stupider, more outwardly violent, orthodox and plainly Semitic than their Ashkenazic counterparts, who themselves have found a nice balance of purity of impurity through thievery of white blood? It means he was likely a personal witness to at least one instance of blood sacrifice, traveling under false pretenses as a Jew. He had disguised himself multiple times as different ethnic groups in the East, and had already circumcised himself for the first famous Meccan expedition, such was his dedication to the completion and survival of his adventure. He tanned his skin heavily, grew out his beard, and matched his dress to the area. He went so far as to select the dress of a Pashtun to make any failure of accent add to the ruse. His hair was dark. His beard was wiry. His eyes were or could be sallow-set with ease.
The Jews are terrified, because Richard Burton's account is almost definitely a credible first-hand one. His disguise would be perfect, and as a speaker of both Arabic and of reconstructed Hebrew of the time, would have had no problem interfacing with the Sephardi; any difficulties he had with the tongue are easily explainable by the fact that he is Ashkenazi, and has a poor grip of the Eastern tongues. As he spoke German, too, and Yiddish is essentially a German-Hebrew pidgin, it's doubtful he wouldn't be able to adopt some of that tongue, too. He will have discussed with rabbis at length and in person the dusting of blood and the snatching of men. He will have spoken to them on the perceived inhumanity of the goy. He will have seen their disgusting, smug, self-assure and self-worshipful conduct, and the incongruence of their personal filthiness with their farcical ritual cleanliness. And he will have seen the spilling of the blood of a child.
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