A prestigious London university has banned an academic from its facilities after a video emerged online of her apparently recounting uncritically an antisemitic blood libel in a lecture to students.
“I am utterly appalled by these heinous antisemitic comments,” the president of University College London, Michael Spence, said last week in response to the footage. “Antisemitism has absolutely no place in our university, and I want to express my unequivocal apology to all Jewish students, staff, alumni, and the wider community that these words were uttered at UCL,” he added.
The comments in question were made by Samar Maqusi, a former employee of the U.N. aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, on Nov. 11 to members of the UCL chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and involved the so-called Damascus Affair.
The affair, which led to antisemitic pogroms in the Syrian capital, began with the disappearance of an Italian monk, whose body was later found. Jews were accused of murdering him for ritual reasons—an antisemitic trope common in past centuries, and in some places still today.
“So the story is that a certain investigation was undergoing to try and find where Father Thomas is—he was found murdered and a group of Jews who lived in Syria said they admitted to kidnapping him and murdering him to get the drops of blood for making the holy bread,” says Maqusi in the video.
The lecture, titled, “The Birth of Zionism,” was the first in a five-part series called “Palestine: From Existence to Resistance.” The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter that hosted the series has been temporarily banned from holding campus activities, The Jewish News of London reported.
While in the video Maqusi suggests that “these are things that you read, and again, as I said, do investigate. Draw your own narrative,” she adds: “But the story is that during this feast [Passover] they make these special pancakes, or bread. And part of the holy ceremony is that drops of blood from someone who’s not Jewish, which is the term gentile,” are used.
The video does not show her contradicting the blood libel.
Maqusi did not reply to a query sent to her by The Jewish News seeking comment on the controversy.
