George Mason University (GMU) has reinstated Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) after a nine-month suspension, despite guns and Hamas paraphernalia having been seized from the home of the group’s leaders.
According to the terms of its suspension, SJP GMU was eligible to re-register as a student organization for the 2025 academic year, and a George Mason spokesman confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that SJP is now a “registered student organization.”
The campus’s SJP was suspended in November 2024 after police raided the home of two Palestinian American GMU students – who had both served as SJP presidents – and discovered guns, ammunition, and Hamas and Hezbollah paraphernalia.
The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time that the police seized signs that read “death to Jews” and “death to America.” The two students – sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa – were also served with criminal trespass notices and barred from campus for four years.
SJP's relaunch
To mark its relaunch, SJP posted a video to Instagram featuring a keffiyeh-clad speaker (with only the eyes visible) speaking about the repression the group had suffered.
The voice of the individual in the video was modified technologically so as to be anonymous. Behind the individual are spliced clips of the war in Gaza.
The speaker claims SJP suffered months of “surveillance and repression” and that it was suspended “unjustly and without due cause.”
The speaker added that the commitment to the Palestinian cause has not wavered and called on GMU students to carry on the fight.
“The spirit of resistance will not be quenched until we see Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea,” they concluded, before adding several words in Arabic.
“The university has been made aware of the newly posted SJP video and is requesting an evaluation from the Virginia AG’s office on whether the video is protected speech,” a spokesperson for GMU told the Free Beacon.
“University officials are meeting with the student organization to reinforce university policy and communicate a zero-tolerance enforcement approach,” added the spokesperson.
This relaunch comes amidst an ongoing investigation into GMU’s handling of antisemitism, which was opened by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in June.
The OCR said it had received complaints against GMU alleging that the university had failed to respond to a “pervasively hostile environment” for Jewish students, potentially violating its Title VI commitments.
Such incidents include an act of vandalism at GMU in August 2024, where students defaced the student center with spray-painted messages threatening a “student intifada.” The incident – which caused thousands of dollars in damage – was believed to have been carried out by the Chanaa sisters.
The Jerusalem Post reached out to GMU Hillel for comment.