It’s the 12th century again
One of those genuine dropped jaw moments. From Commentary:
“The Damascus Affair” may sound like a John le Carré novel to today’s university students, but it was in fact a 19th-century blood libel with international implications and diplomatic intervention by the president of the United States.
Fortunately, some university students are being taught about the affair today. Unfortunately, they are being taught that it was true—that Jews killed a Syrian monk and sprinkled his blood onto their Passover matzah.
Welcome to University College London.
Samar Maqusi is a fanatical anti-Zionist academic who has been rewarded for her fanaticism with a research fellowship at University College. Earlier this week, according to a recording posted by StandWithUs, Maqusi gave a lecture on “the birth of Zionism” that was sponsored by the hate group Students for Justice in Palestine. Here are Maqusi’s comments:
“In 1838… there is a Christian priest called Thomas. He disappears in Damascus during what is called the Feast of the Tabernacles. So this is a Jewish feast. And the story goes—and, you know, again, these are things that you read, and again, as I said, do investigate, draw your own narrative. But the story is that during this feast they make these special pancakes, or bread, and part of the holy ceremony is that drops of blood from someone who is not Jewish, which the term is ‘gentile,’ has to be mixed in that bread. 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 that—admitted to kidnapping and murdering him to get the drops of blood for making the holy bread.”
And we can actually watch and hear her saying it.
I’m genuinely amazed too.
Updating to add: see Enzyme’s comment @ 6. “this wasn’t UCL teaching: she was invited to address a student society by that society.”
I mean, not to go there, but let’s go there.
That’s the classic way to introduce a controversial take while at the same time keeping it at arms length.
So, NO. Scratch that and let’s start more bluntly instead:
Religious sects have all kinds of crazy rituals, and by definition, they’re all about distinguishing those within from those without. Some of them are deeply unpalatable from our modern perspective. And you can find examples of such sects in every single religion on Earth.
This is perhaps an unorthodox, roundabout way of addressing what that woman was saying, and by doing so, it’s perhaps a better way of addressing the antisemitism she’s clearly espousing:
What I won’t do is DENY her historical anecdote, which revolves around some purported tiny sect of Jewish-identifying people over a century ago who purportedly did some weird shit with the blood of their enemies.
Here’s an array of radical ideas: What if it was true? What if it wasn’t true? What if it doesn’t matter, because it’s beside the point?? What if some weird isolated long-gone culty practice you’ve dug up through sheer academic doggedness and determination has nothing to fucking do with the real-life 20 million people alive today who happen to have an identity affiliation (Jewish) that happens to share its name?
The weirdest thing about antisemitism from my perspective, where the difference between Jews and Gentiles is almost entirely arbitrary — we’re equally atheistic, equally liberal or conservative, equally rich and poor, equally nice and not-nice — is that it matters so much to outsiders.
I mean, Israel is a complication, yes. Most of my Jewish friends have never been to Israel, and they have nothing to do with it. But some do associate that unusual ethno-state with their identity. OK. Historical reasons for that. Still, you can’t coulple Jewishness with Israeliness, still less with affiliation with Netanyahu and Israel’s current far-right government. Most Israeli Jews I know are, perhaps surprisingly, the most sympathetic people to the Palestinians. (Or perhaps not surprising: they are neighbours who’ve had human connections in the real world, after all.)
Do you know how easy it is to dig up barbaric practices among Muslim tribes and communities? SOME OF THEM ARE LITERALLY PUBLISHED IN THE QURAN. Same with Christians. Any religion: you can find weird outliers.
NO, the day-to-day Jews alive today aren’t thirsting for their Arab enemies’ blood. But also: no, the day-to-day Muslims alive today aren’t thirsting to rape Jewish women. It’s so ridiculous.
But it’s not ridiculous, because academics like that woman aren’t getting the picture. This is all a roundabout way of tamping down the theoretical rebuttals to her bullshit (“but what she was saying is historically true”) by putting it in its proper context (“so fucking what, the same can be said about any ethnic group if you go back far enough in history”). The way she’s trying to contextualize it is what matters. It’s bog-standard racism in that light. Same as Jim Crow or anything else.
Sounds tedious to spell it all out. BUT WE HAVE TO, or our opponents will accuse us of being sheeple. WE HAVE TO RUN IT DOWN AND SPELL IT ALL OUT!
She’s careful to *not* say she thinks it is true (or not). “Here, let me pass along this anti-semitc rumor”.
As an amuse-bouche.
@Artymorty: I don’t really understand your point, but I am very confident that this story is a blood libel and untrue. When I checked Wikipedia I found as I expected I would that the Jews who “confessed” were tortured. A little knowledge of Judaism would make it clear that the alleged practice would run atrociously counter to the core values of the religion.
I think those spreading the blood libel should be called out, because along with other similar ones it has motivated the persecution of Jews for centuries. It would be great if people didn’t generalize and treat misbehaving members of a group as representative, but that doesn’t seem the most important consideration here, not least because there were no group members practicing some deviant and vile version of the religion.
This special bread would presumably be matza, which is prepared for Pesach (Passover) and was the traditional reason given in the blood libels for the claimed used of gentile blood. The “Feast of Tabernacles” (Sukkot) comes at a different time of year and does not involve any special kind of bread. That is how confused this person is; she can’t even get the details of her blood libel lies straight.
Some important clarifications are in order, I think.
She had been a fixed-term fellow, but that fellowship is over. So she wasn’t a member of staff. Even if she had been a member of staff, and granted that the evidence would seem to be that she’s a nutter, she was not “rewarded for her fanaticism” by being given a job. And this wasn’t UCL teaching: she was invited to address a student society by that society, which – one must assume – booked the room on exactly the same basis as any other student society would have.
It’s bad enough on its own terms; we don’t need inaccurate reporting to make it worse.
Let’s think about this skeptically, for a minute, to examine whether or not Jews would want blood in their matzah. The Kosher method of butchering (similar to halal,) is practiced to prevent the blood from pooling in the meat and contaminating it. It is meticulous and the meat is washed with care, so as not to include blood. Does that sound, to anyone, like the people who would add drops of blood to bread?
But when you hate people merely for their race or cultural affiliation, it’s easy to believe anything about them.
That’s probably part of the point, right? Like kids accusing each other of eating poop or mud or whatever. Ewwww them Jews over there eat blood ewwww.
@MikeH, not to mention the fact that humans are not kosher (as we neither divide the hoof, nor chew the cud), so the matzo would be doubly contaminated.