UPenn anti-Israel group falsely blames Jewish state for bombing it didn’t commit
‘This is what happens when the US gives its precious ally a carte blanche. I’s war has spread to Lebanon,’ the group wrote.
The picture shared was from a 2020 Beirut explosion that had no connections to Israel.
An anti-Israel faculty group at the University of Pennsylvania accused Israel of a bombing in Lebanon that took place several years ago and had no Israeli involvement.
The group, Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), posted a picture of an explosion that took place in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in 2020. There is no evidence tying Israel to the incident.
The FJP captioned the post: “This is what happens when the US gives its precious ally a carte blanche. I’s war has spread to Lebanon.”
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UPenn’s FJP was founded this January in what the group called a “solidarity chapter formation.” The announcement appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian, the school’s student-run newspaper, and condemned the Jewish state’s counterattack against the terror group, Hamas, following the Oct. 7 massacre.
“The Israeli occupation of Palestine is one of the great moral and political issues of our time,” the announcement said. “At this moment, Palestinian life in Gaza is in dire crisis; the sheer scale of destruction demands an ethical response from all educators and concerned citizens. University trustees and administrators, under extreme pressure from private donors and right-wing federal legislators, are now subjecting teachers and students who are members of different Palestine solidarity movements to surveillance and, in some cases, to criminalization.”
Faculty members at other schools have also engaged in anti-Israel activism. In August, ninety faculty members and staff at the University of Florida expressed their support for anti-Israel protesters who were detained by police and suspended by the school for participating in disruptive behavior during their demonstrations against the Jewish state.
On Sept. 10, UPenn’s leadership announced that the school will adopt “institutional neutrality,” meaning that the university will refrain from speaking officially regarding controversial subjects and events.
Numerous other schools have also seen professors establish FJP groups.
Campus Reform contacted the University of Pennsylvania for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.
