A top UK university has apologised after a lecture on the history of Zionism cited uncritically the 1840 Damascus Affair—when Jews were defamed for murdering a priest to make bread with his blood.
The November 11th talk, which was since circulated online, prompted the Jewish Leadership Council to post on X:
This video is yet another demonstration of the ongoing normalisation of antisemitism on campus. For a lecturer at one of the UK’s leading academic institutions to present medieval blood libels about Jewish practice as fact is truly appalling. These lies have fuelled centuries of violent persecution of Jews.
The remarks follow University College London’s Justice in Palestine Society hosting Dr. Samar Maqusi, who described how
part of the holy ceremony is that drops of blood from someone who’s not Jewish […] has to be mixed in that bread …. [The priest] was found murdered, and a group of Jews who lived in Syria admitted to kidnapping him and murdering him to get the drops of blood for making the holy bread.
Maqusi’s one-sided account of the Damascus Affair omitted to mention that the seven Jews arrested for supposedly killing a Capuchin priest named Thomas were all tortured into confessing, two dying in the process. A further 63 Jewish children were taken from their parents, in an attempt to coerce confessions as to the storage location of the ‘stolen’ blood. The incident triggered widespread antisemitic violence in the Middle East and Europe.
Before the lecture, Maqusi was billed as a “former fixed-term researcher” at UCL. Her profile page now appears to have been removed from the university website.
The incident at UCL follows confirmation this summer of rampant Jew hatred at leading art college Goldsmiths, University of London.
