Video reportedly shows UPenn student speaking fondly of ‘glorious Oct. 7’ at pro-Palestinian rally
A reported University of Pennsylvania student said she felt “so empowered and happy” that Palestinian independence felt within reach on the same day Hamas militants invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to a video.
The clip, circulating online and reshared by Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres, shows the back of a woman — reportedly a junior at the Ivy League college — draped in a keffiyeh as she passionately speaks into a microphone to a crowd of people at a pro-Palestinian rally in Philadelphia.
She asked the rally-goers to remember the photo of Palestinians bulldozing the barb-wired fence between Israel and Gaza as well as other “joyful and powerful images which came from the glorious October 7th” — when bloodthirsty Hamas terrorists crossed the border into Israel and shot and killed dozens of families in their homes and hundreds of young people at a music festival.
She asked the cheering crowd to hold the images in their minds and remember how they felt when they first saw images and heard the news.
“I remember feelings so empowered and happy, so confident that victory was near and so tangible, “she said. “I want all of you to hold that feeling in your hearts. Never let go of it. Channel it through every action you take. Bring it to the streets.
“Go down to the streets every day and don’t ever let them feel that you quietly accept this genocide,” the student said of Israel’s relentless airstrikes.
Israel’s bombardment has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, including over 4,100 children and 2,640 women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, run by Hamas.
The speaker only mentioned two images — a photo of men and children smiling as they sat on top of an Israeli military jeep captured by “freedom fighters and the image of a bulldozer breaking through “the deadly border.”
However, Torres added commentary claiming the student spoke “fondly about the ‘joyful’ images of butchered Israelis” and that she felt happy learning the news that thousands of Jews in Israel were dead.
“This is not a patient at a psychiatric hospital. This is a student at an Ivy League,” he tweeted.
The Post was unable to confirm if the person in the video is a student at UPenn.
A spokesperson for the university declined to comment but referred to the president’s recent remarks denouncing antisemitism at a trustees meeting.
UPenn President Liz Magil acknowledged a rise in antisemitic acts on campus including “swastikas and hateful graffiti” as well as “chants at rallies, captured on video and widely circulated, 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.”
Magil said she was sickened, horrified and angry.
“I condemn personally these hateful – hateful – antisemitic acts and words, which are nothing but inhumane,” she said at the meeting last Friday. “And I assure you that Penn has and will investigate any act of hate on our campus and take full action in accordance with our policies and our laws.”
Her remarks came two days after more than two dozen Congress members sent her a letter condemning the university’s alleged lack of a prompt and unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas attack.
On Monday, several UPenn staffers received targeted, antisemitic emails threatening violence against members of the university’s Jewish community, including Penn Hillel and Lauder College House.
The college’s public safety officers found no credible threat and have increased security around campus.
The university notified the FBI of the potential hate crime and is investigating the threats.
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