Britain last week witnessed the reigniting of one of the most vicious blood libels in history, as a guest lecturer at an elite university peddled blatant lies about Jewish culpability in the 1840 Damascus Affair.
The guest lecturer, Dr. Samar Marqusi, told the assembled students, with a blend of ludicrous ignorance and brazen falsehoods, that “during the Feast of Tabernacles… Jews make special pancakes or bread,” and that “drops of blood from someone who’s not Jewish… has to be mixed in that.”
She then repeated the accusation that Jews murdered a Christian priest in Damascus in 1840 to obtain gentile blood for this supposed ritual, as the students nodded along.
This wasn’t an academic lecture, it was the resurrection of a grotesque blood libel—long repudiated by historians—that has been used with multiple variations to demonize the Jews for close to a thousand years.
In the 1840 Damascus atrocity cited by Marqusi, four Jews were tortured to death after being fraudulently accused in the “ritual murder” of a Christian cleric who had gone missing.
Jewish children were held hostage while several men were tortured into confessing to things they did not do; taking part in the murder and using the victims’ blood in the baking of matzahs for Pesach. In the wake of this hideous lie, terror and violence against the Syrian Jewish community spread like wildfire.
In an effort to stem the violence, the Damascus allegations were decisively debunked by the then-Sultan of Damascus, who decreed that the blood libel was fueled by “pure calumnies.”
“We must never allow ‘the Jewish nation to be vexed and tormented by accusations which have not the least foundation in truth,” he said, quoted by Alex Ryvchin in “The Seven Deadly Myths.”
“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,” writes The Spectator.
The UCL speaker who sought to rekindle the libel was sponsored by SJP, a radical anti-Israel group that has persecuted and harassed Jewish students at hundreds of college campuses, and has been banned by many U.S. universities as a result.
The guest speaker, Dr. Marqusi was formerly employed by UNWRA, the UN Relief Agency that has been notoriously exposed for being a virtual arm of Hamas, reported the Jerusalem Post.
UNWRA has not only been aligned with Hamas ideologically, through the publication of textbooks glorifying terrorism and martyrdom, but through the active participation of UNWRA employees in the October 7th massacre, and in the kidnapping and holding of Israeli hostages.
The incident at UCL, filmed by someone in the room, captures the former UNRWA employee casually unleashing some of the most virulent antisemitic falsehoods in history before a group of SJP students—without a trace of hesitation or shame.
By reviving the Damascus blood libel for a radical Islamist audience, Marqusi was arming them with a poisonous new weapon, cloaking an ancient anti-Jewish slander in the guise of modern rhetoric.
To the university’s credit, after receiving reports of the speech, UCL’s administrators barred Marqusi from any further lectures and ordered SPJ to suspend its activities “pending an investigation.”
Same Lie, New Packaging
“If UCL gave us a lecturer reviving the blood libel, Glasgow University went one better and elected a man amplifying the modern version of it,” writes Leo Pearlman in The Spectator.
The current head administrator of the University of Glasgow is Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a man who has accused Israel of “organ harvesting” from dead Palestinians in an article in Al Jazeeera, a Qatari propaganda organ, the author notes.
“The claim that Jews harvest the organs of non-Jews is not an ‘allegation.’ It is the modern incarnation of the medieval accusation that Jews kill Christian and Muslim children as part of a satanic ritual. It is the same lie, repurposed for modern audiences, designed to achieve the same result: the dehumanization of Jews.
The fact that the symbolic head of the entire student body at a respected university would make these allegations should shock the conscience, the author writes.
“But it doesn’t, not anymore. Not at a university where, only last month, students gathered proudly under a banner proclaiming “Glory to Our [Palestinian] Martyrs. Not among students who declare, openly and without shame, that they exist to ‘celebrate the glorious Al Aqsa Flood,’ the Hamas codename for the October 7 massacre.”
“Yes, students at a British university are celebrating the murder, assault, torture and kidnapping of 1,200 Jews. This is what our universities have become, places where higher learning has been replaced with the celebration of anti-Jewish hate.”
Open Season on Jews in Britain
Critics say that vicious libels that sparked atrocities against a Jewish community hundreds of years ago, and are now being resurrected at top British universities in 2025, is not a shocking aberration.
“This is the predictable outcome of what British universities and the British government have allowed to fester,” writes British columnist Melanie Phillips.
“For the past two years, since the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7, it’s been open season on Jews in Britain,” the author attests. “An already very dangerous atmosphere has been whipped up into rampant Jew hatred and an absolutely toxic atmosphere.”
The article goes on to detail how British Jews feel besieged and unprotected. “Orthodox Jews [who are visibly Jewish] are regularly attacked. Students on campus have been forced to conceal their meetings, both the venues and timings of their get-togethers because they are so frightened of being attacked,” the author writes.
“And yet the university authorities and government authorities have done absolutely nothing to stop this intimidation.”
“This is what happens when raucous protests chanting ‘From the river to the sea’ are allowed to take over the streets for months on end. When Jewish students’ pleas for safety are ignored, dismissed, minimized,” the op-ed asserts.
“When these demonstrators chant ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ what does the Starmer government think that means?” the author demands. “It meant precisely what happened in Manchester in October. ‘Globalize the intifada’ means killing Jews across the world.”
Terrorist Attack in Manchester
The writer was referring to the terrorist attack in Manchester on October 2, the day of Yom Kippur, when a terrorist drove a car into people outside a shul and then began stabbing them, killing two and seriously wounding four.
The terrorist, Jihad Al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian origin tried to force his way into the shul building before being shot dead by police.
Expressions of shock and sympathy immediately poured forth from Labor politicians, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer who denounced the “vile” assailant who “attacked Jews because they are Jews.” He promised the Jewish community that he would do “everything in my power to guarantee you the security that you deserve, starting with a more visible police presence.”
“I promise you that over the coming days, you will see the other Britain, the Britain of compassion, of decency, of love,” Starmer vowed. “I promise you that this Britain will come together to wrap our arms around your community and show you that Britain is a place where you and your family are safe, secure and belong.”
“His words are stomach-curdling,” scoffed Phillips in her op-ed, pointing out how hollow and insincere Starmer came across, “when British Jews have been warning about the lethal incitement against them for a long time, but have been totally ignored.”
“Keir Starmer says now he will do everything possible to keep British Jews safe. The fact is he has done nothing to keep British Jews safe. On the contrary, he and his party have been fueling hatred of Jews and Israel.”
Antisemitic incidents in Britain have risen sharply since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza, according to the NY Times.
The article reported that 1,521 antisemitic acts were committed between January and June of this year. Those included physical assaults, property damage, graffiti, online abuse and cases of “extreme violence.”
“Jews in Britain have been unsafe for years,” noted Melanie Phillips in the British Times. “All synagogues and communal events have long been guarded. Some Jewish schools have been forced to erect barbed wire. But for the past two years since the October 7 massacre in Israel, Keith Starmer’s government has allowed gross incitement against Jews to run riot, unchecked.”
“The demonstrations against Israel supported by many of Starmer’s MPs, have heard a constant chanting not only to destroy Israel but also to kill Jews. And yet the police have done absolutely nothing to arrest these people, to charge them, even though these are examples of clear criminality.”
Recognizing a ‘Palestinian State’ Emboldened Jew-Haters
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recognition of a Palestinian state last month has undoubtedly emboldened antisemites, critics say. British Jews were outraged at the policy of appeasement by Starmer and his government. Their fury was evident at a recent vigil for victims of the attack in Manchester.
As Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy began to address the crowd, he was interrupted by boos and shouts of “Shame on you!” for caving in to terrorists.
“Surprised that Keir Starmer is rewarding Hamas for October 7 by ‘recognizing’ the malevolent fantasy ‘State of Palestine?’ Are you swayed by his hand-on-heart declaration that he remains utterly opposed to Hamas? Don’t be,” writes columnist Melanie Phillips.
“One year after the UK government outlawed Hamas and said contact and cooperation were ended, UK diplomats met Hamas operatives to pledge sustained dialogue, co-operation and funding,” the author wrote.
“In other words, it’s business as usual for the UK in siding with Arab genocidists against the Jewish state.”
“It was British Prime Minister Starmer and French President Macron whose governments led the unilateral Palestine recognition stunt,” Phillips wrote in a scathing critique. Starmer and Macron did this, she said, “partly to appease the ever-more powerful Muslim blocs in Britain and France, and partly to save their own skins from their political enemies.”
“You don’t solve a problem, a war of extermination, by compromising with the exterminators – that is a form of surrender!” The Times columnist exhorted.
The article accused Starmer’s government of repeatedly recycling Hamas propaganda lies: about Israel deliberately stopping food supplies into Gaza, causing starvation and famine and killing children indiscriminately.
“This is not simply hostility to Israel. This is framing Israelis as evil, as diabolical. No different from Nazis. Enemies of humanity. And what do you do with enemies of humanity? You justify killing them in a war.”
“And if it follows that Israelis are evil Nazis, any British Jews who support Israel are no less evil. And deserve to be removed from the earth as well,” the article continued.
“In other words, what Starmer has done, among many others who have participated in this terrible incitement against Israel and the Jews, is to paint an enormous target on the back of every British Jew.”
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From Medieval Myth to Modern Day Malice
The blood libel is more than a monstrous myth; it represents a historical record soaked in blood, torture and death of innocent Jewish men, women and children spanning continents and centuries.
It first reared its head in 12th-century England with the fabricated martyrdom of William of Norwich. From there it spread across Europe, always with lurid ritual murder allegations minted from the same general script.
In 1253, a declaration from the papacy in Rome declared that blood libels were false. Yet this did not halt their spread. Two years after the Norwich horror, the discovery in Lincoln of a small boy named Hugh at the bottom of a well resulted in 90 Jews arrested for the murder, on the orders of the king himself.
Eighteen people were hanged. The murdered boy was hailed as a martyr.
In the following decades, in the French city of Blois, in the Italian city of Trent in 1475, in Prague and in Damascus, blood libels continued to incite Christian populations against the Jews in their midst, igniting pogroms, expulsions and massacres.
The age of “enlightenment” made no dent on this ghastly perversion. Instead of being consigned to the annals of history alongside other barbaric beliefs and practices, the blood libel persists to this day—but in a modern and even more deadly re-incarnation.
Today, the myth has been repackaged by Islamic groups and the far left who have reworked it from ritual-murder allegations against individuals or communities, to casting the Jewish state collectively as a wicked child-killer regime.
“Allegations that Israel deliberately murders Palestinian children resurface with tragic predictability during every conflict,” writes the Spectator.
“The language may have changed, the targets shifted, but the essence is the same: the portrayal of Jews—now collectively represented by their nation-state—as bloodthirsty villains who thrive on the suffering of the innocent.”
When left-wing commentators—and increasingly, some right-wing voices as well—make use of this imagery, they are not merely airing criticisms of Israeli policy, or engaging in political discourse, the writer notes.
“They are perpetuating a monstrous narrative that demonizes an entire people.”
Ghosts from the Dark Ages Still Lurk
The blood libel against Israel resurfaced this past April, during Pesach, in a part of Essex County with a sizable British Jewish population, an article in Spiked reported.
Here the ugly relic of the Dark Ages that cast Jews as baby-killers flared to life again, as pro-Palestinian demonstrators, “armed with dolls in funeral shrouds stained with fake blood, marched down the streets, shrieking ‘Stop killing babies!’ ‘Stop the genocide!’”
“Hollering and chanting, they waved their blood-spattered dolls in onlookers’ faces, many of them Jewish families walking home from synagogue.”
“It is nearly 900 years since Jew-haters in Norwich, England spawned the sick calumny about the bloodthirsty Jew draining blood from Gentile children,” the article noted. “It is deeply shaming, intolerable in fact, that England’s Jews once again find themselves facing mobs of people howling about child slaughter and waving bloodied shrouds.”
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Where It Began: England’s Long Anti-Jewish Heritage
A brief look at the history of Jews in medieval England reveals the deep roots of antisemitic sentiment in this country—a legacy that still echoes today.
After the death of the relatively benign Henry II in 1189, the crown passed to his eldest son, the malevolent “Richard the Lionheart,” ushering a period of harsh persecution for the Jewish community.
Incited by Richard, Crusade fever swept the country, igniting a sharp rise in Jew-hatred and spawning vicious blood libels which led to the lynching and burning at the stake of many innocent Jews.
Over the next few decades, Jews across the country were attacked, treated brutally and financially ruined. And when they had nothing left, they were heartlessly expelled from the country. It was the first time in European history that an entire Jewish community was driven out.
Already in 1218, Henry III of England had proclaimed the Edict of the Badge, a royal decree requiring England’s Jews to wear the “Jew Badge,” shaped the way Christians imagined the luchos bearing the Ten Commandments looked. In some cities, a “Statute of Jewry” required a yellow pointed badge, a precursor to the yellow star European Jews were forced to wear centuries later under Nazi occupation.
The second half of the 13th century saw violent attacks on Jews escalating throughout England. In 1262, some 700 Jews were killed in London when a mob attacked a synagogue on Lothbury Street.
In 1282, the Bishop of London ordered attacks on all synagogues. One year later, on 1283, Jews were accused of “coin-clipping” – shaving bits of silver off the edges of coins. In a heinous atrocity, 600 Jews were imprisoned in the Tower of London and 293 were hanged.
Harsh taxation impoverished the Jews further and finally, on July 18, 1290, King Edward I signed an Edict of Expulsion. All Jews were ordered to leave England or face execution.
Their property and remaining debts owed to them were signed over to King Edward, a strategy to legalize the enormous plunder. Around 16,000 Jews, out of a total English population of two million, left English shores, not to return for four centuries.
It was a final act of dispossession that sealed one of the darkest chapters in England’s treatment of its Jewish citizens.
