An investigation is underway after anti-Semitic messages were beamed onto campus buildings at the University of Pennsylvania Wednesday night.
Anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian messages were projected onto at least three campus buildings at the university, including the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” Fox News reported. Penn, which has been dealing with anti-Semitic threats since Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7, is now looking into the latest incident as Penn Police have also launched an investigation.
“Last night, vile, antisemitic messages were projected onto several campus buildings, including on Penn Commons, Huntsman Hall, and Irvine Auditorium,” Penn President Liz Magill said in a statement. “Penn Police were notified and quickly responded, and a full investigation is currently underway. We will pursue this matter to the fullest extent and take swift action in accordance with our policies.”
Another message projected onto a building stated, “Zionism is racism,” and a third message said, “Penn funds Palestinian genocide.” Magill and the university administration have taken heat recently from both those concerned with the dramatic rise in anti-Semitism and those who spew anti-Israel rhetoric. The nonprofit human rights organization The Brandeis Center said it would file a complaint against the university, alleging that “Penn has allowed its campus to become a hostile environment for its Jewish students as well as a magnet for anti-Semites.”
Magill recently addressed the rise in anti-Semitism at Penn after some on campus painted “swastikas and hateful graffiti.” Magill also said that other Hamas sympathizers were caught on camera at rallies chanting slogans “that glorify the terrorist atrocities of Hamas, that celebrate and praise the slaughter and kidnapping of innocent people, and that question Israel’s very right to exist.”
In one video, a Penn student talks about the October 7 massacre of over 1,000 Israelis, including women and children, referring to the day as “glorious.”
“I want you all to remember how you felt when you saw those images and heard the news,” the student tells a crowd of pro-Hamas demonstrators. “I remember feeling so empowered and happy, so confident that victory was near and so tangible.”
A student from UPenn is seen speaking fondly about the “joyful” images of butchered Israelis from the “glorious October 7th.”
She felt “happy” upon hearing the news of dead Jews in Israel.
In what appears to be a call for violence, she tells the crowd to “hold that feeling in… pic.twitter.com/pdygANFmtY
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) November 6, 2023
Penn’s president added in her statement on Thursday that the open anti-Semitism on campus is “reprehensible.”
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“For generations, too many have masked antisemitism in hostile rhetoric,” Magill said. “These reprehensible messages are an assault on our values and cause pain and fear for our Jewish community. Penn has a long and rich history of robust debate about complicated issues of the day. Projecting hateful messages on our campus is not debate, it is cowardice, and it has no place at Penn.”
Penn is just one of the dozens of universities across the country witnessing anti-Semitic threats and harassment being carried out on their campuses. Anti-Semitic acts have been reported at numerous elite American universities including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford in the past month.