Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan was grilled yesterday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, over anti-Semitic comments he made in an interview with a Lebanese TV network.

Speaking to Al Quds TV, Hamdan had repeated as "fact" the notorious anti-Semitic blood libel accusations made by the Church in the middle ages, in which Jews were falsely accused of murdering Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. The accusations never involved any evidence, and were used by Christian religious leaders to incite deadly pogroms against European Jews, slaughtering many thousands.

"We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of the imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and historical evidence," Hamdan claimed.

When challenged about the comments, he claimed the clip - translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) - had been "cut" by "the Israelis, by MEMRI" to edit out "facts" concerning what he termed "the genocide of the Palestinian people."

In an attempt to deflect criticism, he then attacked Likud MK and Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin, falsely claiming Feiglin had advocated for Gazans to be placed in "concentration camps."

Feiglin certainly took a much more hard-line stance than the government on Operation Protective Edge, but has never made any such calls.

Blitzer, who remained impassive during Hamdan's tirade, was far from impressed,.

"I was hoping to get a flat denial from you that you would utter such ridiculous words... that is an awful smear," he said.