 Despite having denied that he aimed the stone at an Israeli guardhouse, the Beirut newspaper As-Safir (The Ambassador) reported that a Lebanese local resident reported that Said was at less than ten metres (ca. 30 ft.) distance from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers manning the two-storey guardhouse, when Said aimed and threw the stone over the border fence; the stone's projectile path was thwarted when it struck the barbed wire atop the border fence. In the U.S., despite objections by some student groups at Columbia University and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B 'rith International (Sons of the Covenant), the university provost published a five-page letter defending Said's action as academic freedom of expression:
