Now Palin blunders into race row over shootings.(News)

Byline: From Tom Leonard In Tucson, Arizona

SARAH PALIN broke her silence over the Arizona shootings yesterday, angrily accusing critics of a 'blood libel' after they linked her heated political rhetoric to the tragedy.

But the former Republican vice-presidential candidate left herself open to ridicule - and accusations of anti-Semitism - with her bizarre choice of language.

The seven-minute video that Mrs Palin posted on her Facebook page has proved controversial because the phrase 'blood libel' refers to a medieval slur, which claimed Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for religious practices.

The libel was often instigated by the local clergy and resulted in executions, massacres, and expulsions of Jews throughout Europe over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

It did not help Mrs Palin that Gabrielle Giffords - one of the 14 people wounded by gunman Jared loughner, who also killed six others - is Arizona's first Jewish congresswoman. in the aftermath of the shootings, many left-wingers were quick to link the targeting of a Democrat politician to the sometimes violent language of the Tea Party protest movement, of which Mrs Palin is a leading light.

She was singled out for a controversial website graphic last year in which gunsightstyle cross hairs were used to pinpoint 20 Democrats - including Miss Giffords - who Mrs Palin wanted supporters to vote out of office.

The video released yesterday expressed Mrs Palin's sadness over the tragedy.

But she went on to say: 'Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them.

'Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is just reprehensible.'

Last night, Barack and Michelle Obama headed to Tucson for a memorial service at which the U.S. President called for national unity.

Meanwhile, new details emerged about the disturbed state of loughner's mind in the run-up to the shooting.

Investigators searching his home found a note from Miss Giffords's office over which he had scrawled 'Die B****' and 'Die Cops'.

A trawl through his postings to an internet gaming forum in 2010 revealed rambling rants about hitting disabled children, why women students enjoyed being raped and even cannibalism.

'I bet your [sic] hungry... Because i know how to cut a body open and eat you for more than a week,' he wrote in a posting last May.

Police said that on the day of the shooting, a mumbling loughner ran into the desert near his home pursued by his father after the latter had asked him why he was removing a black bag from the boot of their car.

It also emerged that loughner had been stopped by the authorities just three hours before he went on the rampage for jumping a red light.

He was let off by officers with a warning.

reporter@dailymail.ie