UPenn student removing posters of kidnapped Israelis
A University of Pennsylvania law school library staffer was caught on camera ripping down posters featuring hostages in the Israel-Hamas war in a widely shared video that has spurred outrage and calls for his firing.
In a video shared online by the nonprofit Stop Antisemitism, a man walking across a pedestrian bridge on the university’s campus can be seen tearing down posters of civilians, including children, who were kidnapped after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
“Why are you tearing them down?” the person recording the video asks, to which the man replies “Get the f*** out of my face.”
As he crumples up the posters the videographer tells him, “Innocent people were killed.”
“There were people killed in the hospital bombing,” he replied, referencing a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital Tuesday night.
Officials in Gaza say the strike killed at least 500 Palestinians while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that “the other team” was behind the deadly attack.
The man in the video was identified as Matthew Carson Wranovics, the Library Assistant for Circulation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, by The Post Millenial.
Wranovic’s photograph was also apparently scrubbed from the university’s website following the incident, the outlet reported.
Penn Carey Law School spokesperson Meredith Rovine told The Post on Wednesday the incident was “a personnel matter that is being investigated.”
Wranovics did not return The Post’s emailed request for comment and could not be reached by phone.
The kidnapped posters, which have been plastered across several major cities to shine a light on those who have been kidnapped since Hamas attacked Israel.
The on-campus incident is seemingly not Wranovic’s first foray into far-left activism. While studying at the University of California Santa Cruz in 2014, he and 19 other students were arrested during a strike held by the university’s graduate student employees to protest of unfair labor practices and intimidation of workers.
Similar incidents have unfolded across the country, as posters featuring the faces of missing Israeli adults and children have been vandalized or ripped to shreds.
Earlier this week, three NYU students were caught on video tearing down similar posters taped up outside the university’s Tisch Hall.
One of the students involved, Yazmeen Deyhimi — a junior at the top university who once worked for the Anti-Defamation League — admitted to ripping down the posters in a since-deleted Instagram apology.
“In this age of social media and digital footprint, these moments of anger are selfish and self-absorbed, and not reflective of who I am as a person or who my family had raised me to be,” she wrote.
Her accomplice was doxxed as a freshman at the university who serves as a Muslim Youth Leadership Council member at Advocates for Youth, according to her online profile, while a third student — a male wearing a dark hood — has not yet been identified.
Stop Antisemitism also shared a photo taken in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, of posters that were vandalized Monday night.
“Posters for the 199 kidnapped Israelis (including Americans) by Hamas terrorists into Gaza were vandalized last night with graffiti spelling out ‘apartheid’ — a letter on each poster,” the organization wrote.
At least 1,400 people in Israel and over 3,000 in Gaza have been killed since Hamas launched its surprise attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7, prompting Israel’s military to prepare an anticipated “integrated and coordinated attack from air, sea and land” in response.
Thirty US citizens have been killed since the conflict broke out, while another 13 remain missing.
President Biden said he was “outraged” by the Gaza hospital bombing as arrived in Israel on Wednesday.
His trip comes as the Israel Defense Forces prepares to invade Gaza to clear out Hamas.
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