Anti-Zionist activists stage blood libel display at DC train station
Performers dressed as Netanyahu and US leaders drink red liquid from wine glasses next to menu advertising ‘Gaza’s spilled blood,’ drawing shock and outrage from Jewish groups
Anti-Zionist activists staged a display at a Washington, DC, train station on Thursday that echoed a blood libel, an age-old antisemitic conspiracy that has caused repeated mass violence against Jews for centuries.
The libel falsely claims that Jews murder non-Jews to harvest their blood for ritual use or as a sacrifice.
Performers wearing the masks of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, former US president Joe Biden, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former secretary of state Antony Blinken were seen in videos of the display drinking mock blood from wine glasses at a table adorned with blue Stars of David, red drops splattered on the stars.
The video is captioned, “Israeli Friendsgiving.”
The actors gnawed on fake, bloody limbs and organ meat, red liquid dripping from their chins.
The performers, their hands stained red, wiped the blood off their faces with Israeli flags, and the characters playing Netanyahu and Biden pulled apart a heap of bloody entrails. An activist filming instructed the actor playing Netanyahu to consume skin for the cameras.
The actor playing Netanyahu, at the center of the table, stood, patted the heads of Biden and Trump, as the activists shouted that the US leaders were “loyal lap dogs.” The Netanyahu actor then extended his hands over the others.
An oversized menu that was placed next to the table was titled, “Israel’s Friendsgiving Dinner,” and its offerings included, “Gaza children’s limbs,” “stolen organs,” “illegally harvested skin,” and for a drink, “Gaza’s spilled blood.”
The bottom of the menu was signed with a heart next to Netanyahu’s name.
Blood libel was on full display today at Union Station in Washington, D.C.
Dressed up as “activism” and “performance art,” this was nothing less than the revival of one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic tropes in history.
Blood libel has fueled violence, persecution,… pic.twitter.com/YIY3hltMQA
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) November 21, 2025
The exhibit took place at Union Station in the capital, the main entryway into the city for public transportation. Videos showed the table set up both inside the station and outside its front entrance.
Another video showed Netanyahu holding the American leaders on dog leashes and leading them around, while the US leaders made barking sounds and canine gestures.
Anti-Zionist activists Hazami Barmada and Atefeh Rokhvand claimed credit for the display on social media. Barmada is a Harvard graduate and former UN staffer, according to LinkedIn, and Rokhvand is an activist with the group Teachers Against Genocide.
Jewish groups expressed shock and outrage at the display.
The American Jewish Committee said, “Blood libel was on full display today.”
“Dressed up as ‘activism’ and ‘performance art,’ this was nothing less than the revival of one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic tropes in history,” the committee said. “Blood libel has fueled violence, persecution and massacres of Jews for centuries. Seeing it resurface in our nation’s capital is both horrifying and unacceptable.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater DC said, “Just steps away from the symbols and heart of American democracy, a scene that would have been right at home in Nazi Germany played out in the United States. Seldom have we seen such a sickening display of full-throated antisemitism.”
The Anti-Defamation League said the display “was nothing less than abhorrent.”
The libel is one of the most notorious antisemitic falsehoods and has caused repeated violence to Jews in Europe and elsewhere.
The false accusation spread through Europe, causing outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in medieval France, Spain, Italy and Germany.
The libel continued into the 20th century, igniting pogroms in Eastern Europe before and after the Holocaust, and becoming a motif in Nazi propaganda.
The blood libel has appeared elsewhere, including in Syria and Iran.
The libel is most often associated with the persecution of Jews in Europe, but it also has a history in the US.
The Puritan clergyman and Harvard University president Increase Mather first introduced the blood libel into the US in the mid-1600s, the historian Pamela S. Nadell wrote in her recent book, “Antisemitism, an American Tradition.”
“The Jews lie under the guilt of blood and murder. Some have laid a most hideous fact to the charge of the Jews, that they have been wont once a year to steal Christian children, and to put them to death by crucifying out of scorn and hatred against Christians,” Mather wrote in a 1669 tract.
A blood libel in Damascus in 1840 was a formative moment for the small American Jewish community as it mobilized a response, pushing the US government to help free the Jews who were imprisoned and tortured over the libel, Nadell wrote.
The most significant blood libel in the US took place when 4-year-old Barbara Griffiths disappeared in Massena, in upstate New York, in 1928.
As town members searched for the girl, rumors circulated that the local Jews had kidnapped and murdered her for ritual purposes.
The town’s Jews were interrogated, their shops searched for the body, and a mob blamed the rabbi for sacrificing Griffiths, who was found after being lost in the woods.
Echoes of the blood libel have surfaced among anti-Zionist activists, who often levy unfounded accusations that Israel harvests Palestinian organs.
Anti-Zionists sometimes recycle age-old anti-Jewish tropes, with Israel, Zionists or Zionism taking the historical place of Jews.
Last week, a university researcher in the UK taught a blood libel to students during a lecture.
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