Word: libelous
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...inch. Scarcely two hours after the Rosh Hashanah observances ended Sunday evening, he called a Cabinet meeting that issued a statement briefly expressing "grief and regret" concerning the killings, but mainly trying to refute accusations of Israeli guilt. The statement declared that Israel was the victim of a "blood libel" and that "malicious and evil" allegations were being made against the nation. The Israeli government took out a full-page ad in several U.S. papers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, to stress Israel's innocence. In an effort to absolve the Israeli forces of guilt...
Mozart's death has been variously ascribed to rheumatic fever, uremia and even murder by poisoning. Alexander Pushkin wrote a play that pinned the guilt on Mozart's musical rival Antonio Salieri, and Rimski-Korsakov turned the literary libel into a miniopera. Playwright Peter Shaffer recently gave the Salieri legend a new stage life with Amadeus, in which Mozart has the sex habits of a randy poodle and the court manners of John McEnroe...
...true, and 2) it is certainly not for the rest of the world, meaning, implicitly, the historical tormentors of Jews, to presume to give moral instruction to the Jewish people. Begin in his combative mode strikes ugly notes. Last week his government even used the dark phrase "blood libel" to dismiss condemnations of the Israeli army's behavior at the camps. The phrase invidiously linked the critics to the medieval anti-Semites who accused Jews of crucifying Christian children and drinking their blood at Passover...
...also hit by a potentially more costly problem last week: a $ 120 million libel suit filed by General William Westmoreland. The suit is the latest upshot of a controversial Jan. 23 documentary titled The Uncounted Enemy: A Viet Nam Deception. The 90-min. program charged that Westmoreland, while commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, joined in "a conspiracy at the highest levels of American military intelligence" to misrepresent enemy troop strength during the year leading up to the January 1968 Tet offensive. In July, CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter, responding to criticism, admitted that the documentary, produced...
Meanwhile, the verdict puts new pressure on journalists to play it safe. In the past two years, multimillion-dollar libel verdicts have been returned against the National Enquirer, Penthouse and the tiny (circ. 37,557) Alton (Ill.) Telegraph, which had to file for bankruptcy protection while it negotiated a settlement of the $9.2 million award against it. For such small press enterprises in particular, even the legal fees involved can be destructive. The Tavoulareases so far have spent $2 million on lawyers to fight the case, and the Post's defense has cost $1 million. Bills on such...