It’s back. The lie that led to the slaughter of so many Jews has returned to public life. The calumny that caused so much anti-Jewish persecution, expulsion and bloodshed has stirred, zombie-like, from its historic slumber. Jews drain the blood of Christians and use it to make bread – incredibly, unconscionably, this most appalling falsehood has returned.
It is obscene that such words are being uttered on a university campus in 2025
At University College London (UCL) this week, a lecture was given in which it was allegedly suggested that Jews murder Gentiles and use their blood in perverse rituals. The comments were made by Samar Maqusi, a US academic. She was speaking with UCL’s Students for Justice in Palestine. Some of what she allegedly said was positively medieval.
She reportedly regaled her audience with the story of the Damascus Affair. This involved the disappearance of a monk called Father Thomas in 1840. Jews were blamed. They were said to have kidnapped Father Thomas and used his blood to make bread for a religious feast. The Jews of Syria suffered unimaginable persecution on the back of these allegations.
What Ms Maqusi failed to tell the students is that the Damascus Affair was a rancid lie. Instead, she encouraged them to ‘investigate’ and ‘draw your own narrative’. It is believed, she allegedly said, that Jews require ‘drops of blood from someone who’s not Jewish’ to be ‘mixed in [their] bread’. And Father Thomas possibly fell victim to this mad bloodlust. He might have been seized, she said, so that Jews could get ‘drops of blood’ for ‘the holy bread’.
It is obscene that such words are being uttered on a university campus in 2025. It is a stain on our education system that a classic blood libel was allegedly stated out loud at one of our top universities.
It should go without saying that the Damascus Affair is pure anti-Semitic defamation. As Alex Ryvchin writes in his excellent book, The Seven Deadly Myths, it was swiftly debunked at the time. The then Sultan of Damascus decreed that it was fuelled by ‘pure calumnies’. We must never allow ‘the Jewish nation…to be vexed and tormented upon accusations which have not the least foundation in truth’, he said. How remarkable, how horrifying, that a murderous lie that was slammed by a sultan almost 200 years ago has discovered a new lease of life at a university in 21st-century Britain.
Britain, tragically, is the birthplace of the blood libel. It is widely believed that the first ever accusation of blood-eating made against Jews occurred in Norwich in 1144, when a Christian child by the name of William was murdered and the local Jews were blamed. It should shake the conscience of every decent Briton that almost 900 years later England’s Jews must once again endure whispers about their blood-draining wickedness.
UCL, to its credit, has responded firmly. The provost, Michael Spence, says he is ‘utterly appalled by these heinous anti-Semitic comments’. Maqusi has been reported to the police. And UCL has forbidden Students for Justice in Palestine from holding anymore meetings until the investigations are complete. Good. It is entirely right that there should be severe consequences for any attempt to resuscitate ancient anti-Jewish hatreds.
And yet it is important we do not write off this vile spectacle as a ‘one-off’. Some will say these comments are not reflective of the broader ‘pro-Palestine’ movement. I’m sorry, but I disagree. If the recordings of Ms Maqusi’s remarks are accurate, then she only said more frankly what others in the anti-Israel lobby prefer to say with euphemism – namely, that the Jewish nation is a uniquely bloodlusting entity.
The truth is that echoes of the blood libel can be heard across the activist class today. Their feverish animus for the world’s only Jewish state is riddled with blood obsession. They speak of Israel’s ‘bloodletting’ in Gaza. They are maniacally convinced that the Jewish state intentionally murders children. ‘Baby killers!’, they scream in the faces of British Jews who support Israel.
Earlier this year there was a march in Essex at which ‘pro-Palestine’ activists carried dolls in bloodied shrouds and hollered ‘Stop killing babies!’. Their words fell on the ears of local Jews who were making their way home from Sabbath prayers for Passover. Holding up bloodstained babies to register your implacable disgust with the Jewish nation – tell me that isn’t the blood libel dolled up as politics.
We continually hear that Israel is uniquely barbarous, uniquely invested in the murder of babies, uniquely determined to ‘let’ the blood of innocents. The alleged comments at UCL were not a departure from such frenzied Israelophobia, but the logical conclusion to it.
Next time I hear someone damn the Jewish state as ‘genocidal’, and Zionist Jews as ‘baby-killers’, I’m going to quote that Sultan of Damascus: stop ‘vexing and tormenting’ the Jewish nation with accusations that ‘have not the least foundation in truth’.
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