Two of the principal authors behind a letter in a prominent medical journal accusing Israel of massacring Palestinians were caught endorsing the views of David Duke, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and former leader of the Klu Klux Klan.

Dr. Paola Manduca, one of the co-authors of “An open letter for the people in Gaza,” forwarded an email originally written by Dr. Swee Ang, another co-author, to an Italian antiwar group. The email contained a link to a YouTube video uploaded by David Duke entitled “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix,” according to NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem based group that monitors international non-governmental organizations.

“This is shocking video please watch. This is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!,” Ang wrote in her email. “SEE THIS VIDEO BEFORE IT IS REMOVED FROM CIRCULATION – Please do pass on to others who you think would be interested and would pass on>>>The whole world needs to know.”

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The Gaza letter was published in the Lancet medical journal in July during the first weeks of Operation Protective Edge, a 50-day conflict that pitted Israel against Hamas terrorists operating in the Gaza Strip.

Penned by Ang, Manduca and three others in the scientific and medical community, the letter denounces “Israeli aggression” and asserts that the Jewish state is engaging in a “massacre” that overwhelmingly targets women and children. It makes no mention of Hamas rockets directed at civilian population areas nor does it address reports of Hamas’s use of human shields.

Ang, an orthopedic surgeon who founded the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, spoke with the British Telegraph newspaper concerning her email. “I didn’t know who David Duke was, or that he was connected to the Ku Klux Klan. I am concerned that if there is any truth in the video, that Jews control the media, politics and banking…I was worried.”

Manduca is reported to have forwarded a separate email about the 2013 Boston bombing that contained anti-Semitic undertones. “Let us hope that someone in the FBI is smart enough to look more carefully at the clues in Boston and find the real culprits behind these bombings instead of buying the Zionist spin.”

A third author of the letter, Dr. Mads Gilbert, declared in a 2001 interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet that 9/11 occurred because of Western foreign policy and that he supported terror attacks in the framework of that “context,” claiming that “the suppressed have a moral right to attack the United States.”

Despite the controversy surrounding the letter’s authors, Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet, refused to remove the letter, asserting that its detractors were engaged in a “smear campaign.”

“I don’t honestly see what all this has to do with the Gaza letter. I have no plans to retract the letter, and I would not retract the letter even if it was found to be substantiated,” the editor-in-chief said.

David Katz, a professor at University College London, accused the Lancet of “consistently using its reputation to attack Israel.”

“The Lancet is supposed to be a politically neutral medical journal. The fact that they have given proven anti-Semites a platform and not rescinded it, even when confronted with the evidence, is appalling.”

“They have allowed their hatred of Israel to blind them to the norms of medical science and the pursuit of reason.”