A teaching professor in the UC Merced School of Engineering is the owner of a recently deactivated Twitter account that had a pattern of antisemitic posts, The Jewish News has discovered. The content was described by the Anti-Defamation League as “repulsive” and promoting “antisemitic tropes.”

On June 14, Abbas Ghassemi tweeted “… reality bites!!!!!!” along with a photo of a “Zionist brain” with labels such as “frontal money lobe,” “Holocaust memory centre” and “world domination lobe.” That same image can be found on the website “Jew World Order,” which peddles antisemitic conspiracy theories.

On Dec. 8, in response to Joe Biden’s election win, Ghassemi retweeted another Twitter user’s post and commented, “Surprise, surprise!! The entire system in America is controlled by [the] Zionist. Change of president is just a surface polish, change of veneer. Same trash different pile!”

Ghassemi’s account was deactivated after The Jewish News sent a request for comment on Dec. 18.

A UC Merced spokesperson said, “As the now-inactive Twitter account made clear, these were the opinions of a private individual, not the positions of the institution.”

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