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How the Pro-Hamas Campus Protests Are the Latest Version of the Blood Libel
Pro-Hamas protesters outside Hamilton Hall barricading students inside the building at Columbia University, despite an order to disband the protest encampment supporting Palestinians or face suspension, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Of the analytical frameworks into which to fit the eruption of anti-Israel protests on college campuses, there is no shortage. There’s the “free speech on campus” concept, the Arab-Israeli conflict paradigm, the lawless-university-radicals-of-the-1960s pattern.
The framework that fits the situation most neatly, though, is one that hasn’t been elaborated much. That is the “blood libel,” which a six-page entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica defines as “the allegation that Jews murder non-Jews, especially Christians, in order to obtain blood for Passover or other rituals.”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica also calls it “a complex of deliberate lies, trumped-up accusations, and popular beliefs about the murder-lust of the Jews and their bloodthirstiness.” The Judaica traces the origin of the story all the way back to Apion, an Egyptian who lived during the first century of the Common Era.
The historian Josephus writes in “Against Apion” that this claim that Jews deliberately sacrificed a non-Jew is “a most tragical fable … full of nothing but cruelty and impudence” and motivated by “an extravagant love of lying.” Josephus, writing in about 100 CE, calls Apion’s tale “a voluntary lie” that operated “to the delusion of those who will not examine into the truth of matters.”
Two thousand or so years later, we’re at it all over again, with the Jews yet again facing a Passover-season lie about deliberately killing non-Jews. So, at Columbia University, the anti-Israel mob renamed Hamilton Hall as “Hind’s Hall,” after a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who Israel has been blamed without evidence for killing.
To anyone who knows history, an Easter or Passover-season tale of Jews intentionally killing a child is familiar. The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives the places and dates: Norwich, 1144; Gloucester, England, 1168; Blois, France, 1171; Saragossa, Spain, 1182; Trent, Italy, 1475; Lublin, 1636.
By setting up the pro-Hamas university encampments on the first day of Passover, the anti-Israel protesters provided useful clarity that their false accusations of “genocide” against Israel fell squarely within this age-old tradition of groundlessly accusing Jews of using the blood of Christian children to bake matzo. The protesters also help by making explicit references to “blood.” The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for example, advertised a series of events with a social media post headlined, “Palestinian blood is on Israel’s hands.”
Elisha Wiesel, son of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, writes that his father would ask, “Where are the history lessons on the blood libel, the historical precedent for accusing Jews of murder?”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry is by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a professor of history who taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The entry ends with a reference to an essay by Ahad Ha’am, who lived between 1856 and 1927 and was a champion of cultural Zionism.
That essay, “Some Consolation,” was written in Hebrew in 1892. It was brought out in English translation by Leon Simon in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Society, as part of a collection of selected essays by Ha’am. The essay contemplates the possibility that, just as on today’s campuses, some individuals of Jewish background will side with the enemies.
“Since everybody hates the Jews, can we think that everybody is wrong, and the Jews are right?” he quotes a Russian writer as asking. “There are many among us Jews on whom a similar question half-unconsciously forces itself. Can we think, they ask, that all the vicious characteristics and evil practices which the whole world ascribes to the Jews are sheer imagination?”
Ha’am writes that the “useful lesson” of such a baldly false accusation is that it may strengthen Jewish confidence and prevent unwarranted guilt.
“There is nothing more dangerous for a nation or for an individual to plead guilty to imaginary sins,” he says. “Where the sin is real, there is opportunity for repentance; by honest endeavor the sinner may purify himself. But when a man has been persuaded to suspect himself unjustly, how can he get rid of his consciousness of guilt?”
The blood-libel accusation, he writes, “is the solitary case in which the general acceptance of an idea about ourselves does not make us doubt whether all the world can be wrong, and we right, because it is based on an absolute lie.”
He adds, “This will make it easier for us to get rid of the tendency to bow to the authority of ‘everybody’ in other matters.”
Today, the Jews aren’t entirely alone; we are blessed with many allies. Yet it can sometimes, in the media or on campuses or at the United Nations, feel again like everybody is against us. That does not make the accusations true.
Ha’am wrote: “‘But’ — you ask — ‘is it possible that everybody can be wrong, and the Jews right?’”
And here is how the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on “blood libel” by Ben-Sasson concludes, quoting the Ha’am essay in words that ring as true today as in 1892: “Yes, it is possible: the blood accusation proves it possible. Here, you see, the Jews are right and perfectly innocent.”
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post How the Pro-Hamas Campus Protests Are the Latest Version of the Blood Libel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Eyes Bringing Azerbaijan, Central Asian Nations into Abraham Accords, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter.
As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump’s first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Such an expansion would reflect Trump’s openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration’s goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel while war rages in Gaza.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps towards Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.
Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said.
While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks.
Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said.
As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia – which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – were contacted.
The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. “We are working to get more countries to join,” said a US official.
The Azerbaijani government declined to comment.
The White House, the Israeli foreign ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel.
OBSTACLES REMAIN
The original Abraham Accords – inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand US and Israeli soft power.
Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region.
Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to a president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories.
Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic – but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced.
But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh – an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population – broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict.
Primarily Christian Armenia and the US have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan.
Still, US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there,” Trump told reporters earlier in July. “And it’s pretty close.”
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Trump Reaffirms Support for Morocco’s Sovereignty Over Western Sahara
A Polisario fighter sits on a rock at a forward base, on the outskirts of Tifariti, Western Sahara, Sept. 9, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Zohra Bensemra / File.
US President Donald Trump has reaffirmed support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, saying a Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory was the sole solution to the disputed region, state news agency MAP said on Saturday.
The long-frozen conflict pits Morocco, which considers the territory as its own, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which seeks an independent state there.
Trump at the end of his first term in office recognized the Moroccan claims to Western Sahara, which has phosphate reserves and rich fishing grounds, as part of a deal under which Morocco agreed to normalize its relations with Israel.
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made clear in April that support for Morocco on the issue remained US policy, but these were Trump’s first quoted remarks on the dispute during his second term.
“I also reiterate that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supports Morocco’s serious, credible and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute,” MAP quoted Trump as saying in a message to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.
“Together we are advancing shared priorities for peace and security in the region, including by building on the Abraham Accords, combating terrorism and expanding commercial cooperation,” Trump said.
As part of the Abraham Accords signed during Trump’s first term, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
In June this year, Britain became the third permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to back an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty for the territory after the U.S. and France.
Algeria, which has recognized the self-declared Sahrawi Republic, has refused to take part in roundtables convened by the U.N. envoy to Western Sahara and insists on holding a referendum with independence as an option.
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Israel Says Its Missions in UAE Remain Open Despite Reported Security Threats
President Isaac Herzog meets on Dec. 5, 2022, with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. Photo: GPO/Amos Ben Gershom
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that its missions to the United Arab Emirates are open on Friday and representatives continue to operate at the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai in cooperation with local authorities.
This includes, the statement underlined, ensuring the protection of Israeli diplomats.
On Thursday, reports appeared in Israeli media that Israel was evacuating most of its diplomatic staff in the UAE after the National Security Council heightened its travel warning for Israelis staying in the Gulf country for fear of an Iranian or Iran-sponsored attacks.
“We are emphasizing this travel warning given our understanding that terrorist organizations (the Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Global Jihad) are increasing their efforts to harm Israel,” the NSC said in a statement.
After signing the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, the UAE has been among the closest regional allies of the Jewish state.
Israel is concerned about its citizens and diplomats being targeted in retaliatory attacks following its 12-day war against Iran last month.
Earlier this year, the UAE sentenced three citizens of Uzbekistan to death for last year’s murder of Israeli-Moldovan rabbi Zvi Cohen.