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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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North London Synagogue, Nursery Targeted in Eighth Local Antisemitic Incident in Just Over a Week
Demonstrators against antisemitism in London on Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: Campaign Against Antisemitism
A synagogue and its nursery school in the Golders Green area of north London were targeted in an antisemitic attack on Thursday morning — the eighth such incident locally in just over a week amid a shocking surge of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the area.
The synagogue and Jewish nursery were smeared with excrement in an antisemitic outrage echoing a series of recent incidents targeting the local Jewish community.
“The desecration of another local synagogue and a children’s nursery with excrement is a vile, deliberate, and premeditated act of antisemitism,” Shomrim North West London, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group, said in a statement.
“This marks the eighth antisemitic incident locally in just over a week, to directly target the local Jewish community,” the statement read. “These repeated attacks have left our community anxious, hurt, and increasingly worried.”
Local law enforcement confirmed they are reviewing CCTV footage and collecting evidence to identify the suspect and bring them to justice.
This latest anti-Jewish hate crime came just days after tens of thousands of people marched through London in a demonstration against antisemitism, amid rising levels of antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In just over a week, seven Jewish premises in Barnet, the borough in which Golders Green is located, have been targeted in separate antisemitic incidents.
According to the Metropolitan Police, an investigation has been launched into the targeted attacks, all of which involved the use of bodily fluids.
During the incidents, a substance was smeared on four synagogues and a private residence, while a liquid was thrown at a school and over a car in two other attacks.
As the investigation continues, local police said they believe the same suspect is likely responsible for all seven offenses, which are being treated as religiously motivated criminal damage.
No arrests have been made so far, but law enforcement said it is actively engaging with the local Jewish community to provide reassurance and support.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, condemned the recent wave of attacks and called on authorities to take immediate action.
“The extreme defilement of several Jewish locations in and around Golders Green is utterly abhorrent and deeply distressing,” CST said in a statement.
“CST is working closely with police and communal partners to support victims and help identify and apprehend the perpetrator,” it continued.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also denounced the attacks, calling for urgent measures to protect the Jewish community.
“These repeated incidents are leaving British Jews anxious and vulnerable in their own neighborhoods, not to mention disgusted,” CAA said in a statement.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the United Kingdom has experienced a surge in antisemitic crimes and anti-Israel sentiment.
Last month, CST published a report showing there were 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June of this year. It marks the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following the first half of 2024 in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded.
In total last year, CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, the country’s second worst year for antisemitism despite being an 18 percent drop from 2023’s record of 4,296.
In previous years, the numbers were significantly lower, with 1,662 incidents in 2022 and 2,261 hate crimes in 2021.
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Germany to Hold Off on Recognizing Palestinian State but Will Back UN Resolution for Two-State Solution
German national flag flutters on top of the Reichstag building, that seats the Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany, March 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
Germany will support a United Nations resolution for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but does not believe the time has come to recognize a Palestinian state, a government spokesman told Reuters on Thursday.
“Germany will support such a resolution which simply describes the status quo in international law,” the spokesman said, adding that Berlin “has always advocated a two-state solution and is asking for that all the time.”
“The chancellor just mentioned two days ago again that Germany does not see that the time has come for the recognition of the Palestinian state,” the spokesman added.
Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and Belgium have all said they will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly later this month, although London said it could hold back if Israel were to take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and commit to a long-term peace process.
The United States strongly opposes any move by its European allies to recognize Palestinian independence.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US has told other countries that recognition of a Palestinian state will cause more problems.
Those who see recognition as a largely symbolic gesture point to the negligible presence on the ground and limited influence in the conflict of countries such as China, India, Russia, and many Arab states that have recognized Palestinian independence for decades.
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UN Security Council, With US Support, Condemns Strikes on Qatar
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday condemned recent strikes on Qatar’s capital Doha, but did not mention Israel in the statement agreed to by all 15 members, including Israel‘s ally the United States.
Israel attempted to kill the political leaders of Hamas with the attack on Tuesday, escalating its military action in what the United States described as a unilateral attack that does not advance US and Israeli interests.
The United States traditionally shields its ally Israel at the United Nations. US backing for the Security Council statement, which could only be approved by consensus, reflects President Donald Trump’s unhappiness with the attack ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Council members underscored the importance of de-escalation and expressed their solidarity with Qatar. They underlined their support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar,” read the statement, drafted by Britain and France.
The Doha operation was especially sensitive because Qatar has been hosting and mediating negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
“Council members underscored that releasing the hostages, including those killed by Hamas, and ending the war and suffering in Gaza must remain our top priority,” the Security Council statement read.
The Security Council will meet later on Thursday to discuss the Israeli attack at a meeting due to be attended by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.