Ania Loomba
Overview
Ania Loomba spoke at an anti-Israel rally in October 2023 after the Hamas terrorist organization committed war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, on October 7, 2023.Loomba also expressed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Penn, called the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
Loomba is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and wrote a personal statement encouraging the Modern Language Association (MLA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions in 2016.
Loomba is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and wrote a personal statement encouraging the Modern Language Association (MLA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions in 2016.
In September 2023, Loomba signed a faculty letter in support of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, an event that reportedly “featured several activists who promoted conspiracies about Jewish power and called for violence against Israel.”
As of December 2023, Loomba was listed as the Catherine Bryson Professor of English and Chair of the English department at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Penn is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
As of the same date, Loomba was listed as faculty in the departments of Comparative Literature, South Asian Studies, and Women's Studies at Penn.
As of December 2023, Loomba’s Facebook page said she lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In the letter, Loomba said: “...The students are therefore calling for the university to disclose its financial holdings and institutional and operational ties with the state of Israel, and to amend its investment policy to divest from companies that consistently, knowingly, and directly profit from Israel’s war on Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian territories…”
On April 25, 2024, anti-Israel activists from Penn, Temple University and Drexel University set up the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the Penn campus to protest Israel's war against Hamas.
Close to 200 anti-Israel college encampments were set up in North America in the spring of 2024. The first took place at Columbia University. Protesters harassed Jewish students, blocked Jews from campus facilities, used anti-Semitic language in their activism, promoted BDS and protested Israel’s war against Hamas.
On October 16, 2023, Penn professors and students staged a “walkout” in support of a Hamas invasion of Israel earlier that month, where Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people and executed war crimes against civilians. One professor led [00:00:03] the chant: “When people are occupied, resistance is justified!” Palestinians and anti-Israel activists often use the term “resistance” as a euphemism for nationalistic terror and to glorify anti-Semitic violence.
Another professor claimed [00:00:07] Israel “desecrates the memory of the Nazi Holocaust” and “humiliates every Jewish person.” At least one speaker accused [00:00:48] Israel of “genocide.” Penn Against the Occupation (PAO) organized the protest, titled: “Collective Walkout for Palestine,” where participants walked out of classes to the rally on campus. The protest aimed to “protest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and stand in solidarity with Palestine.”
At the rally, Loomba blocked [00:07:27] a Jewish student from participating in the protest. As Loomba motioned [00:00:01] with her arms that the student was to move away, the protesters chanted: “Free, free Palestine!”
Loomba applauded [00:01:02] fellow Penn professor Eve Troutt Powell who said [00:00:30], referring to a statement issued by Penn president Liz Magill: “You cannot write a statement that shows you have only been listening to some trustees and alums. You cannot write a statement and assume that there’s no protection for all of us on this campus. This is the University of Pennsylvania. This is our university, too!”
On October 15, 2023, Penn president Liz Magill issued a statement in which she wrote:“I, and this University, are horrified by and condemn Hamas’s terrorist assault on Israel and their violent atrocities against civilians. There is no justification—none—for these heinous attacks, which have consumed the region and are inciting violence in other parts of the world.”
Hamas intentionally targeted youth centers and elementary schools to execute and kidnap children. They also took stimulant drugs to give added energy to murder and maim. Nazis also took drugs during World War II to fuel their anti-Semitic massacres.
Loomba also compared Israel’s relationship to Palestinians with India and its conflict with Kashmir, writing that “[t]he recent use of pellet guns on ordinary citizens including children has been compared to Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians.”
On January 4, 2017, Loomba wrote on Facebook that “The anti-BDS defense of progressive Israelis, much like the charge of antisemitism that often accompanies it, is disingenuous. Its purpose is to frustrate efforts to advance Palestinian human rights, and it should be recognized as such.” Loomba’s post also included a statement allegedly written by anonymous Israelis urging the MLA to adopt BDS.
During the annual MLA meeting in January 2017, MLA’s delegate council rejected the BDS resolution and instead voted to support Resolution 2017-1 (2017-1), which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS.
In June of 2017, the MLA adopted 2017-1 by a 2-1 margin following a full membership vote.
University Website:https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/ania-loomba
University Website 2:https://web.sas.upenn.edu/endowed-professors/loomba/
As of December 2023, Loomba was listed as the Catherine Bryson Professor of English and Chair of the English department at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Penn is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
As of the same date, Loomba was listed as faculty in the departments of Comparative Literature, South Asian Studies, and Women's Studies at Penn.
As of December 2023, Loomba’s Facebook page said she lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Support for Pro-Hamas Encampment at Penn
On May 7, 2024, Loomba wrote a letter in support of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Penn titled: “We’re Doing This for Gaza.”In the letter, Loomba said: “...The students are therefore calling for the university to disclose its financial holdings and institutional and operational ties with the state of Israel, and to amend its investment policy to divest from companies that consistently, knowingly, and directly profit from Israel’s war on Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian territories…”
On April 25, 2024, anti-Israel activists from Penn, Temple University and Drexel University set up the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the Penn campus to protest Israel's war against Hamas.
Close to 200 anti-Israel college encampments were set up in North America in the spring of 2024. The first took place at Columbia University. Protesters harassed Jewish students, blocked Jews from campus facilities, used anti-Semitic language in their activism, promoted BDS and protested Israel’s war against Hamas.
October 16, 2023 - Speaking at a Rally in Support of Hamas
On October 16, 2023, Loomba spoke at a walkout and rally held at Penn in support of Hamas terrorist war crimes, titled: “Collective Walkout for Palestine.”On October 16, 2023, Penn professors and students staged a “walkout” in support of a Hamas invasion of Israel earlier that month, where Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people and executed war crimes against civilians. One professor led [00:00:03] the chant: “When people are occupied, resistance is justified!” Palestinians and anti-Israel activists often use the term “resistance” as a euphemism for nationalistic terror and to glorify anti-Semitic violence.
Another professor claimed [00:00:07] Israel “desecrates the memory of the Nazi Holocaust” and “humiliates every Jewish person.” At least one speaker accused [00:00:48] Israel of “genocide.” Penn Against the Occupation (PAO) organized the protest, titled: “Collective Walkout for Palestine,” where participants walked out of classes to the rally on campus. The protest aimed to “protest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and stand in solidarity with Palestine.”
At the rally, Loomba blocked [00:07:27] a Jewish student from participating in the protest. As Loomba motioned [00:00:01] with her arms that the student was to move away, the protesters chanted: “Free, free Palestine!”
Loomba applauded [00:01:02] fellow Penn professor Eve Troutt Powell who said [00:00:30], referring to a statement issued by Penn president Liz Magill: “You cannot write a statement that shows you have only been listening to some trustees and alums. You cannot write a statement and assume that there’s no protection for all of us on this campus. This is the University of Pennsylvania. This is our university, too!”
On October 15, 2023, Penn president Liz Magill issued a statement in which she wrote:“I, and this University, are horrified by and condemn Hamas’s terrorist assault on Israel and their violent atrocities against civilians. There is no justification—none—for these heinous attacks, which have consumed the region and are inciting violence in other parts of the world.”
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation. Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
As of November 10, 2023, approximately 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.
As of December 25, 2023, Hamas had fired over 10,600 missiles from Gaza at Israeli communities, with Hamas claiming 5,000 the day it launched the attack. While Hamas was the main group involved, members of other terror groups also joined in the atrocities.
Many Palestinian civilians, including women and children, also participated in the attack. In several instances, Gazans who worked in the targeted Israeli communities gave intelligence to Hamas on where to strike.
In a December 2023 poll, 57% of Gazans and 82% of Palestinians in the West Bank supported the terror attacks. 42% of Gazans were supportive of Hamas rule, up from 38% before the attacks, and 44% in the West Bank supported Hamas, up from 12%.
Hamas began by launching thousands of rockets at Israel and using motorized paragliders “to infiltrate Israeli territory and secure terrain.” Terrorist ground forces destroyed parts of the border fence with Gaza, murdering and kidnapping soldiers.
Terrorists then turned their attention to 22 communities around Gaza, where they went house to house to savagely murder, mutilate and kidnap anyone they found. They executed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children.
Terrorists beheaded children and babies, and massacred entire families, burning some alive who hid in their homes. Hamas terrorists kicked around the heads of beheaded victims like soccer balls. Israelis as young as an infant of nine months and as old as 85 were kidnapped and taken forcibly to Gaza. Hamas has not allowed the Red Cross access to the hostages.
Over 360 unarmed young men and women were surrounded and slaughtered at one music festival alone. Bodies were publicly desecrated, with some dragged through the streets of Gaza, then beheaded.
Women were raped next to the bodies of dead friends. Some were raped and then shot in the head. Others, including young girls, were raped and murdered or mutilated in other ways. Israeli officials opened an unprecedented investigation into the widespread sexual assault. Forensic analysis of corpses showed evidence of torture and rape. Hamas terrorists said they were given explicit orders to carry out the atrocities, including chopping off legs and raping the corpses of murdered victims.
A terrorist detained by Israel admitted he raped an Israeli woman when he broke into a kibbutz house during the October 7, 2023 attack. In March 2024, a former hostage of Hamas publicly stated she was sexually abused and tortured while in captivity.
Hamas intentionally targeted youth centers and elementary schools to execute and kidnap children. They also took stimulant drugs to give added energy to murder and maim. Nazis also took drugs during World War II to fuel their anti-Semitic massacres.
The atrocities were acknowledged as the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, including by U.S. President Joe Biden, who also compared Hamas to ISIS. Hamas attacked on the annual holiday of Simchat Torah, which that year was on Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath.
The Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians are crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The mass murder generated great sympathy for Israel from many countries but led to countless celebrations among Palestinians and anti-Israel organizations in America that back the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Hamas called the October 7, 2023 terror attacks “Al-Aqsa Flood,” a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the mosque has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before Israel was founded in 1948. Such propaganda has led to multiple periods of violence against Israeli civilians.
Hamas is a designated terrorist organization founded in 1987 that is dedicated to destroying Israel and killing Jews. Since 2001, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at Israel and on October 7, 2023, Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped over 200 hostages, including children and the elderly.
Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)
As of May 2025, Loomba signed a US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
In 2014, Loomba signed a petition demanding Professor Steven Salaita’s reinstatement at the University of Illinois (U of I) and calling for a boycott of U of I until it complied with the petition’s demands.
On July 26, 2016, Loomba shared an article on Facebook criticizing musician Carlos Santana for performing in Israel.
In August 2016, Loomba submitted a personal statement urging the MLA to adopt a resolution, to which Loomba was a signatory, that would boycott Israeli academic institutions.
In her statement, Loomba compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and claimed that Palestinian women need “protection from the ‘constant attacks, excessive and indiscriminate use of force used by the Israeli oppressive apparatus, acts of violence and daily terror committed by Israeli Jewish civilians, including settlers.’”
In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.
On July 26, 2016, Loomba shared an article on Facebook criticizing musician Carlos Santana for performing in Israel.
In August 2016, Loomba submitted a personal statement urging the MLA to adopt a resolution, to which Loomba was a signatory, that would boycott Israeli academic institutions.
In her statement, Loomba compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and claimed that Palestinian women need “protection from the ‘constant attacks, excessive and indiscriminate use of force used by the Israeli oppressive apparatus, acts of violence and daily terror committed by Israeli Jewish civilians, including settlers.’”
Loomba also compared Israel’s relationship to Palestinians with India and its conflict with Kashmir, writing that “[t]he recent use of pellet guns on ordinary citizens including children has been compared to Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians.”
On January 4, 2017, Loomba wrote on Facebook that “The anti-BDS defense of progressive Israelis, much like the charge of antisemitism that often accompanies it, is disingenuous. Its purpose is to frustrate efforts to advance Palestinian human rights, and it should be recognized as such.” Loomba’s post also included a statement allegedly written by anonymous Israelis urging the MLA to adopt BDS.
During the annual MLA meeting in January 2017, MLA’s delegate council rejected the BDS resolution and instead voted to support Resolution 2017-1 (2017-1), which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS.
In June of 2017, the MLA adopted 2017-1 by a 2-1 margin following a full membership vote.
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ania.loombaUniversity Website:https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/ania-loomba
University Website 2:https://web.sas.upenn.edu/endowed-professors/loomba/
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Illinois
- Organizations:
- BDS
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- Ian Lustick,
- Anne Norton,
- Abdulrahman Alwattar,
- Aziz Jalil,
- Robert Vitalis,
- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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