Posted on 07/17/24
| News Source: Arutz-7
A California chapter of the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine organization claimed that the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump was staged in order to distract from alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza, the College Fix reported.
The University of California San Diego SJP chapter posted the conspiracy theory on its Instagram page following the deadly shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
While the post was automatically deleted after 24 hours, a screenshot of the post shows that it read, “There was a horrific massacre of close to 100 Palestinians in Khan Younis today and people won’t be talking about it at all because we just have to accept that apparently people care more about Trumps staged assassination attempt!!!!!! WAKE UPPPP"
The post appears to be referring to the IAF airstrike that targeted Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif. Rafa Salama, the commander of Hamas's Khan Yunis Brigade, has been confirmed to have been killed in the airstrike. Israeli officials believe that Deif, one of the masterminds of the Hamas massacre of October 7, was also killed in the airstrike, though Hamas claimed that he survived.
Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. The former president avoided death by inches when he turned his head just before he was struck. Three bystanders were shot, one of whom was killed. The other victims were seriously wounded.
The attempted assassination prompted an outpouring of antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media. Some on the far-left echoed the SJP conspiracy theory that the assassination attempt was staged to distract from the war between Israel and Hamas. On the far-right, some have claimed that Israel, Zionists, or the Jewish people as a whole were behind the attempt on Trump's life.