Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Scheduled Duke speaker claims Zionists have ‘an unquenchable thirst’ for Palestinian blood

The long-simmering dispute between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists on the Duke University campus has boiled over again, this time over paid lectures and expenses for Palestinian activists accused of antisemitism, according to the Duke Chronicle.

On March 16, the Duke student senate debated and then passed funding for the speakers at two separate events, a lecture by activist Dana Alhasan called “Palestine 101,” and another by author Mohammed El-Kurd and journalist Ahmed El-Din entitled, “Narrating Resistance and Agency: Shifting the Discourse on Palestine.”

Mohammed el-Kurd

Mohammed el-Kurd Courtesy of adl

The request for funding came from the Duke chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, according to the campus daily.

Israel supporters have vigorously objected to the funding, asserting that published comments by all speakers fell under the definition of antisemitism, which the student senators had passed unanimously in February.

One senator, Alex Dray, cited a passage from el-Kurd’s book “Rifqa,” in which he wrote that Israelis “harvest organs of the martyred” Palestinians and “feed their warriors our own.”

Another senator, Nicole Rosenzweig, quoted a tweet from el-Kurd that Zionists have “an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood,” which she said raises the infamous blood libel.

“Across the country Zionists are beating, gassing, shooting, lynching Palestinians,” El-Kurd wrote on Twitter on May 12, 2021. “They’re unhinged… The videos we’re seeing are reminiscent of the Nakba. State-settler collusion emboldening an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood & land. Terrorist, genocidal nation.”

El-Kurd and El-Din are scheduled to speak at Duke on March 31, supported by a $16,835 grant from the student government, according to The Chronicle.

Members of the SJP executive board told the Chronicle that they did not support all of the speakers’ views.

One member of the SJP, who refused to be identified by name for fear of being harassed online, defended the invitations, telling the Chronicle, “They’re both very well known, very well-renowned names,” adding, “the honorarium and invitation to speak are by no means an endorsement of everything the speaker has or ever will say.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.