Illustrative: Hundreds of people participated in a rally and march in support of the Palestinians on 42nd Street in Manhattan in New York City on May 11, 2021. Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

One week after the Palestinian terror group Hamas invaded Israel and massacred over 1,400 Israelis, University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill expressed regret for not promptly condemning an anti-Zionist festival hosted by the university that featured several activists who have promoted conspiracies about Jewish power and called for violence against the Jewish state.

“Many have voiced their anger and frustration about this event. Please know that I hear you,” Magill said in a statement on Sunday. “I know how painful the presence of these speakers on Penn’s campus was for the Jewish community, especially during the holiest time of the Jewish year, and at a university deeply proud of its long history of being a welcoming place for Jewish people. The university did not, and emphatically does not, endorse these speakers or their views. While we did communicate, we should have moved faster to share our position strongly and more broadly with the Penn community.”

The “Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which was held last month, was sponsored by the school’s Wolf Humanities Center, as well as its Department of Cinema and Media Studies. Middle East experts and nonprofit leaders previously described the event to The Algemeiner as an “Israel hate fest.”

Among the speakers was City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center professor Marc Lamont Hill, a former associate of Louis Farrakhan who has accused Israeli police of training American officers to kill Black people.

Another speaker listed on the festival’s itinerary, Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, previously said during an interview that “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.”

Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, was also a scheduled speaker. Last month, a new documentary revealed fellow musicians detailing Waters’ long record of anti-Jewish barbs. In one instance, a former colleague recalled Waters at a restaurant yelling at the wait staff to “take away the Jew food.”

The festival itinerary included a host of other speakers who have praised terrorism against Israel and spoken out against Zionism.

The event’s executive director, Susan Abulhawa, has accused Israel of committing “a dozen kristallnachts [sic],” referring to the infamous pogrom carried out against Jews in Nazi Germany in November 1938.

After Hamas murdered over 200 young people attending a music festival in Israel last weekend, Abulhawa appeared to justify Hamas’ massacre on her Facebook page.

“For those still prattling about ‘innocent Israelis at a music concert,’ keep in mind that these people were literally dancing and partying just outside a concentration camp where 2.3 million Palestinians have been trapped for 17 years in dire circumstances…there is nothing innocent about such moral depravity,” Abulhawa wrote.

Magill’s statement, which included a strong condemnation of Hamas’ terror campaign, came after she opted to let the controversial campus festival go on as planned. She had sent a letter to the Anti-Defamation League saying she would not directly intervene in the matter due to the school’s “commitment to open expression and academic freedom.”

Regarded as one of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, the University of Pennsylvania received an onslaught of complaints from nonprofits, students, and alumni for refusing to move the event off campus, with many arguing that it had given sanctuary to anti-Jewish hate. The Jewish community’s dismay continued when, one day before “Palestine Writes” took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner.

Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a giant swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.