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From Wikimedia Commons: Blood Libel (Karol de Prevot, 18th Century)

On the evening of November 11, 2025, University College London provided a lecture theatre and official student-society imprimatur for an event at which Dr. Samar Maqusi, a former fixed-term researcher at UCL and previously employed by the UNRWA for Palestine Refugees, delivered the opening lecture in a five-part series entitled “Palestine: From Existence to Resistance”, organized by the university’s recognized Justice in Palestine Society. From the very beginning, there was no hesitation or pretense. On the contrary, the darkest prejudices of the past were brought to life. The lecturer was undaunted.

In the course of her talk, “The Birth of Zionism”, Dr. Maqusi meticulously recounted the 1840 “Damascus Affair” as though it were historical fact: that Jews in Damascus had kidnapped a Capuchin monk, Father Thomas, drained his blood, and used it to bake “special pancakes or bread” for a “holy ceremony”. She stated explicitly (a) that “part of the holy ceremony is that drops of blood from someone who’s not Jewish… has to be mixed in that bread”, and (b) that the accused Jews, who were tortured to the extreme, had “admitted” to the murder. The Damascus blood libel—one of the most notorious antisemitic fabrications in history, which triggered pogroms across the Middle East and Europe—was thus revived on a UCL platform eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz.

Only after video footage of the lecture went viral on social media on November 13, and only after sustained pressure from Jewish students, the Community Security Trust, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and numerous public figures, did UCL at last find the courage to act. That very same day, the Provost, Dr. Michael Spence, issued an “unequivocal apology”, describing the remarks as “heinous antisemitic comments” and affirming that “antisemitism has absolutely no place in our university”. Dr. Maqusi was banned from campus, the........

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