George Washington University, a private university in Washington, D.C., witnessed anti-Israel protests on the very first day of classes late last week.
Nick Baker, senior investigative reporter with Young America's Foundation, tells AFN the protest was led by a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
“Even though it was the first day of school on Thursday," he says, “they were out there marching and yelling antisemitic rallying calls.”
The students also targeted the university president, Ellen Granberg, even though Baker says Granberg has been “pretty lenient” with the mob-like protests despite their history of causing chaos and breaking rules last year.
Anticipating more trouble on its campus, GWU actually suspended the Students for Justice chapter there, and warned six other similar groups, just days before classes resumed.
Those groups were already punished with a suspension last fall for using projectors to state “Glory to our martyrs” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” on the university library, according to a Times of Israel story.
Jewish students at GWU witnessed those slogans just three weeks after the violent Hamas attack, in northern Israel, on Oct. 7.
Counter-protesters at GWU sang “Oseh Shalom,” the famous Hebrew prayer for peace, according to the Times.
According to Baker, the anti-Israel students broke numerous campus rules and local laws last year by setting up an encampment and vandalizing a campus statue of George Washington.
Meanwhile, he says YAF is a friend and and ally to Jewish students on every campus.
"Young America's Foundation is fully prepared to help any student, on any campus throughout the country, to stand with Israel and the Jewish people," he says.
