Tales of infanticide have stoked hatred of Jews for centuries. They echo still today | Howard Jacobson

A year after the 7 October attack, the myth of blood libel' persists in the media coverage of Gaza violence

It says something for the conscience of the Church of England that, in 1955, it put up a plaque alongside the former shrine of Little Hugh in Lincoln Cathedral, apologising for the harm it had done by falsely accusing Jews of the ritual slaughter of the boy in 1255.

That Jews habitually murdered gentile children for blood with which to make Passover matzoh, was a popular superstition throughout Britain and Europe in the middle ages. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives," the plaque reads, [and] do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Lord, forgive what we have been, amend what we are, and direct what we shall be."