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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">In the face of repression, resistance thrives: Why attacks on the Palestinian student movement are failing</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">George Washington University Student Coalition for Palestine</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">December 15, 2023<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<p>It has been over two months since the beginning of the Zionist regime
most recent stage of genocide against the steadfast people of Gaza, in
which almost 20,000 of our people have been slaughtered by occupation
forces.</p>
<p>Since the beginning of this month alone, we have watched zionist forces <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/8/video-photos-appear-to-show-detainees-stripped-to-underwear-in-gaza">abduct and parade</a>
bound Palestinian men through the streets of Beit Lahia, stripped of
their clothes, in a repulsive act of complete and utter dehumanization.
We have watched zionist forces murder over 1,000 of our people <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-witnesses-bloodiest-day-yet-israeli-massacres-enar">in a single day</a>
in massacres in Shuja’iya, Beit Lahia, and the Jabalia refugee camp —
the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the beginning of this genocide.
We have watched thousands of Gazans gather in crowds near <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67255822">UNRWA centers</a>,
demanding food to feed their families, who have been deliberately
blockaded from fuel, medical supplies, food, and clean water by the
occupation. Millions have been left to die of starvation and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/world/middleeast/gaza-health-infectious-disease.html">disease</a>, promising a slow death to the remainder of Gazans who have evaded the airstrikes.</p>
<p>Families screaming from under the ruins of their homes, fathers and
mothers desperately digging through the rubble for their children,
bodies piled into mass graves, faces burnt off, dismembered limbs, red
hospital floors, refugee camps and neighborhoods razed to the ground.
These images have been seared into our minds and the cries of our people
pierce our souls every minute of every hour of every day. </p><div id="gmail-mondo-ads-785192168">
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<p>For two months, we have felt the crushing pain of our people, and for
two months, we have been out in the streets and all over our campus
protesting for an end to this bloodbath and GW’s shameless complicity.
We have organized protests, letters, sit-ins, email campaigns and
walkouts every single week, demanding that GW terminate its investments
in the companies whose tanks, missiles, and war technology are being
used to slaughter our families and loved ones. In retaliation, this
university, whose hands are still red with our people’s blood, has
attempted to silence and attack us every step of the way.</p>
<p>These attacks culminated two weeks ago, when a <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/11/30/doxing-truck-displays-names-faces-of-pro-palestinian-students-draws-ire-from-officials/">doxxing truck</a>
operated by a far-right media organization drove through campus with
the names and faces of 12 student organizers emblazoned on the sides
with the words, “GWU’s Leading Antisemites.” The truck eventually drove
to and parked in front of the Elliott School of International Affairs,
where we were holding <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/11/30/pro-palestinian-students-hold-sit-in-at-elliott-school-disrupted-by-doxing-truck/">a sit-in</a>
demanding divestment, as a direct threat made against student
organizers. We began the sit-in silently inside the Elliott building, in
order to protect ourselves from the truck that we and administration
both knew was coming to campus that morning, yet we were forced to move
outside due to deliberately excessive restrictions from administration.
Despite the extreme mobilization of GW’s private police force and
administrative officials there to surveil and intimidate us at our
protest, it was us and our comrades who protected ourselves, holding up
banners to block the disgusting messages on the truck and keeping each
other safe from the “reporters” videotaping and harassing us. All the
while, police stood by monitoring to protect the aggressor’s private
property instead of their own students, despite the truck being parked
illegally in a construction zone for an hour. </p>
<div>
<img width="440" height="293" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mondoweiss_2-1024x683.jpg" alt="Demonstrators block the name and face of one of several students being doxxed as "GWU'S Leading Antisemites" on a truck paid for by far-right outler, Accuracy in Media on Nov. 29. (Photo: Taytum Wymer)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Demonstrators
block the name and face of one of several students being doxxed as
“GWU’S Leading Antisemites” on a truck paid for by far-right outler,
Accuracy in Media on Nov. 29. (Photo: Taytum Wymer)</div>
<p>Following this attack, The GW Hatchet’s editorial board, who has
refused to publish op-eds under SJP’s name and has cowardly abstained
from condemnation of our people’s genocide, published an <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/12/04/staff-editorial-intimidation-harassment-have-no-place-at-gw/">editorial</a>
rightfully denouncing the doxxing truck; yet they fallaciously asserted
that “Chants of, ‘You know who keeps us safe? We keep us safe’ are
cries for help” to the University.</p>
<p>Let us be clear. “We keep us safe” is NOT a cry for help. It is, in
fact, the exact opposite: a cry of dignity, resistance, and radical
community that asserts our collective power as the organized masses in
the face of the institutions orchestrating repression and violence
against us. The Hatchet’s assertion is a mischaracterization, made in
complete ignorance by those who have no understanding of our people’s
struggle or the nature of our movement. It is a falsehood based on the
erroneous premise that the administration’s greatest fault lies in their
failure to protect their students, rather than in the attacks that they
themselves have actively waged against our community. Acts of hatred
like the doxxing truck are the direct and inevitable result of the
criminal actions University administration have taken, not simply a
failure over the ones they haven’t.</p>
<p>So let us be specific. In the immediate aftermath of the start of
this genocide, University administration, particularly President Ellen
Granberg, put out <a href="https://president.gwu.edu/addressing-war-israel-and-gaza">statements</a>
condemning “the recent attack on Israel,” without so little as an
acknowledgment of the brutal genocide that has made thousands of our
people martyrs, seemingly unable to even utter the word “Palestine” for
fear of angering GW’s zionist benefactors. </p>
<p>Following a vigil, in which we as a community of Palestinians, Arabs,
Muslims, and those in solidarity, gathered to grieve our slaughtered
friends and family, President Granberg released another disgustingly
racist and Islamophobic <a href="https://president.gwu.edu/thoughts-recent-campus-events-and-war-israel-and-gaza">statement</a> in which she slandered our vigil as a “celebration of terrorism.” </p>
<p>In late October, SJP held a <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/gw-palestinian-existence-is-not-terrorism/">projector action</a>
in protest of the abhorrent statements made by President Granberg and
GW’s continued refusal to divest from the machines of Palestinian death.
Despite being originally greenlit by campus police, GWPD shut down our
action at the behest of Dean Colette Coleman, after which President
Granberg doubled down on her anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia by
<a href="https://president.gwu.edu/response-projections-gws-estelle-and-melvin-gelman-library">condemning</a>
our action’s honoring of our murdered loved ones as martyrs and calling
for liberation from oppression and colonialism from the river to the
sea as “antisemitic phrases.” </p>
<p>Following national zionist <a href="https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1716994962703724728">backlash</a> and threats of zionist donors <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/11/06/alumni-call-on-granberg-to-form-antisemitism-action-plan/">pulling funding</a>,
GW dragged SJP through formal conduct hearings, where the student
organization was found in violation of a delusory policy around
postering as well as a farcical “noncompliance” policy. SJP <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/11/14/gw-suspends-sjp-for-three-months-after-anti-israel-library-demonstration/">was placed </a>on
disciplinary probation until the end of the academic year, prohibited
from posting any communications on campus, and banned from campus for 90
days. </p>
<img width="440" height="285" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mondoweiss_3-1024x663.jpg" alt="A protester holds up a sign with the words "SILENCING STUDENTS IS FASCIST" at a Nov. 15 Student Coalition for Palestine demonstration protesting GW's 90-day suspension of SJP. (Photo: Taytum Wymer)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">A
protester holds up a sign with the words “SILENCING STUDENTS IS
FASCIST” at a Nov. 15 Student Coalition for Palestine demonstration
protesting GW’s 90-day suspension of SJP. (Photo: Taytum Wymer)
<p>We know that the doxxing truck was not an isolated attack on our
community, but the direct result of administration’s actions. When
President Granberg refuses to utter the word “Palestine” or to condemn
this ongoing genocide, she erases our people and issues tacit approval
of Palestinian death. When she weaponizes racist and Islamophobic
language against us and refers to our mourning as “celebration of
terrorism,” she further dehumanizes us by denying our right to mourn our
dead, disgracing the names of our martyrs. When Dean Coleman and
administration shut down our protests, they publicly declare that
Palestinians do not and should not have the right to free speech in the
face of our people’s ethnic cleansing. When they drag us through
kangaroo courts and ban SJP from campus, they demonstrate their resolve
to crush every last space left for Palestinians to come together as a
community.</p>
<p>President Granberg and Dean Colette Coleman put out a <a href="https://president.gwu.edu/response-doxing-truck-campus">statement</a>
after the doxxing truck left in which they “condemn[ed]” this incident,
but we see this for what it is: a transparent attempt to absolve
themselves of their responsibility in emboldening zionist hatred,
violence, and repression. We know who they are and what they stand for.
We know where their interests lie. Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim student
organizers have been getting doxxed and harassed for months to
administration’s knowledge, and they have refused to do anything. Only
when zionist intimidation results in bad press for the University are
they capable of the bare minimum of a milquetoast condemnation with no
material steps to protect students from further threats to their safety.</p>
<p>This is, again, a continuation of their policy of turning a blind eye
to violence and harassment against our community. Since the beginning
of this genocide, multiple students have reported <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/11/06/muslim-palestinian-students-call-for-university-support-amid-reports-of-islamophobia/">incidents</a>
of getting their hijabs ripped off. Palestinian students have been spat
on, and many have experienced incidents of verbal harassment. On the
night of October 7, in a disgusting incident in Kogan Plaza, Chabad
Rabbi Yudi Steiner yelled at a female Muslim student, drunkenly
screaming “Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!” Steiner even attempted to get in
the student’s face and was only held back by several other students who
afterwards tried to coerce her into not reporting the incident to “keep
this between us.” Despite being supposedly banned from campus, Rabbi
Steiner has continued to participate in on-campus events, and
administration, despite also being aware of these other incidents, has
deliberately ignored real incidents of violence against our community,
while painting even the most basic expressions of Palestinian free
speech as inherently violent.</p>
<p>Our administrators are not stupid, nor are they unaware of what they
are doing. On the contrary, they have expressed to zionist audiences
their desire to engage in scorched earth repression against
Palestinians, limited only by the unfortunate existence of legal and
university policies.</p>
<div>
<blockquote></blockquote>
</div>
<p>Recently, the Student Coalition for Palestine, which formed in the
wake of SJP’s suspension, was informed of a recording from a Nov. 16
alumni event, sent to us by an anonymous source. In the recording, parts
of which are clipped in the video below, zionist alumni and parents
expressed horrific sentiments about SJP and Palestinian students, rife
with racist, Islamophobic rhetoric and lies. Zionist attendees referred
to our Kogan Plaza sit-in where we read the names of our martyrs as a
“Hamas campus rally,” said that Palestinian students would commit “a
bombing” of the Hillel building, and claimed that our actions were
“threatening to kill” Jewish students, calling for immediate retribution
and expulsion. Instead of defending students from these racist tyrades,
Granberg doubled down on the hatred, stating that while she “can’t
promise that expulsion will happen… <em>[she] wish[es] [she] could</em>.”
Further exposing her zionist alignment, she expressed that existing
free speech policies were the only thing preventing her from openly
waging a fascistic campaign of censorship against Palestinian students.
“Would that be something that the FBI would arrest someone for?” she
said, “and if the answer is no, then it’s not speech that GW can punish.
And, you know, <em>I really wish it were, honestly I really wish it were.”</em></p>
<div>
<img width="293" height="440" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mondoweiss_4-683x1024.jpg" alt="Student holds a sign reading "GW FUNDS GENOCIDE" at a Kogan Plaza Sit-In on Nov. 9. (Photo: Jelina Liu)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;">Student holds a sign reading “GW FUNDS GENOCIDE” at a Kogan Plaza Sit-In on Nov. 9. (Photo: Jelina Liu)</div>
<p>We live in the beating heart of US empire, surrounded by the white
pillars of buildings where the war criminals orchestrating Palestinian
mass death convene. We attend a university that is deeply integrated
into the war machine, whose administrators pocket the money to be made
off our families’ corpses. Their attacks on our community are not
mistaken outliers that must be corrected, but the intended result of an
institution whose financial interests lie in militarism and the zionist
lobby. President Granberg, Dean Coleman, and other members of this
administration, who extol “the right to free speech” in their statements
but express the desire to expel and punish students for it behind
closed doors, are shameful disgraces to this school and its community.
But we know that GW has been forcibly <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/02/06/column-gws-suppression-of-palestinian-voices-violates-academic-freedom/">repressing</a> Palestinians for years, which the Office of Civil Rights is currently <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/05/12/office-for-civil-rights-to-investigate-gw-for-alleged-anti-palestinian-discrimination/">investigating</a>,
and that the source of this moral rot lies far deeper than our current
administrators — it is intrinsic to the nature of the university itself.</p>
<p>When they greedily and shamelessly accept funding from zionist institutions, and <a href="https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/message-president-leblanc-student-association-resolution">refuse</a>
to divest from the companies aiding in the killing of their students’
families, the university is not failing — it is doing what it does best
as a piece of the war machine. They cannot be separated from the system
of imperialism and militarism, because they, too, are the system. So let
us not be surprised when they attack and repress us. Let us not be
surprised when they trample over their own stated “values” to appease
the zionist institutions that line their pockets. The University does
not keep us safe because it <em>cannot</em> keep us safe, because their material interests are rooted in the lucrative business that is our people’s oppression.</p>
<div>
<img width="293" height="440" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mondoweiss_6-683x1024.jpg" alt="Student waves the flag of Palestine at Oct. 9 vigil for the martyrs of Gaza (Photo: Taytum Wymer)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;">Student waves the flag of Palestine at Oct. 9 vigil for the martyrs of Gaza (Photo: Taytum Wymer)</div>
<p>This same business underlies the entire system of American
imperialism, around which our society is organized, and our oppressors
are demonstrating, through a coordinated campaign of repression and
violence against students, the lengths they will go to protect their
bloodstained capital. Universities across the country, including GW,
Brandeis, Columbia, and the Florida State University system, have <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-push-to-deactivate-students-for-justice-in-palestine-sjp">suspended</a> or banned chapters of SJP from campus. The political charlatans of both ruling class parties have united to <a href="https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/remarks/mcconnell-terror-and-self-defense-are-not-the-same-thing">villainize</a> Palestinian student organizers and pass bills attacking students as <a href="https://www.hawley.senate.gov/senate-passes-hawley-resolution-condemning-antisemitism-college-campuses">supporting</a> “terrorists” and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/6/anti-zionism-is-antisemitism-us-house-asserts-in-dangerous-resolution">synonymizing</a> anti-zionism and anti-semitism. Just over two weeks ago, three Palestinian students in Vermont were <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/27/three-palestinian-students-aged-20-shot-injured-in-vermont-what-to-know">shot</a>
while wearing keffiyehs in an act of zionist hatred. One of the
students, Hisham Awartani, will be paralyzed from the waist down for the
rest of his life.</p>
<p>Their injustices threaten to overwhelm us, but we owe it to our
martyrs, our prisoners, and the millions of our people still resisting
the genocidal zionist occupation to continue the struggle for our
people’s liberation. They want you to feel helpless. They want you to
believe that you are wrong to demand that your institution stop funding
genocide. They want you to be afraid to speak up for fear of their
retaliation.</p>
<p>Let us not be deceived. The University thinks that they can crush us
by sanctioning students and banning our organization, but what they
don’t realize is that this movement is so much larger than one
organization or individual, and our growing movement is evidence of the
futility of their tactics.</p>
<p>We know this repression represents a weak and desperate institution
that fears the growing power of the student movement. These
administrations, whose interests are fundamentally opposed to ours, are
terrified that we will see through their spiderweb of liberal hypocrisy
and fragility and become conscious of our potential collective power. In
desperation, GW resorts to panicked repression, but these tactics are
backfiring on them. They believe repression can halt our movement in its
tracks, but in reality, it is exposing the true nature of their
interests and sharpening the contradictions, forcing even the most
liberal of students to confront our institution’s brutality and their
alignment with the zionist lobby against our community. </p>
<p>As George Jackson, imprisoned Black revolutionary, wrote, “The other
bees will understand, they do understand… even those who thought the
bear their rightful ruler see him differently when he foams at the
mouth, and bites at his own tail.”</p>
<div>
<img width="440" height="293" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Mondoweiss_5-1024x683.jpg" alt="Over 200 GW students walk out of classes and join a sit-in organized by SJP and 11 other organizations on the steps of the university's main library (Photo: Taytum Wymer)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Over
200 GW students walk out of classes and join a sit-in organized by SJP
and 11 other organizations on the steps of the university’s main library
(Photo: Taytum Wymer)</div>
<p>We are witnessing a new wave of revolutionary consciousness amongst
students who see with more clarity than ever before that the path
forward must no longer be in liberal reform, but rather in our ability
to build power as a mass movement. Not only do other students see how
desperate the administration is to silence us, they are witnessing them
fail again and again while we continue to overcome every tool weaponized
against us through the power of our coalition and our organizing. Our
movement demonstrates to students that we have the ability to protect
ourselves and resist repression, and it is only growing. The illusion of
hegemony is fading, and it is our duty to replace it with a radical
vision of solidarity, resistance, and collective liberation.</p>
<p>As SJP wrote in a November 7 <em>Mondoweiss</em> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/gw-palestinian-existence-is-not-terrorism/">op-ed</a>,
“We understand that liberation will never come from those who profit
from ethnic cleansing, imperialism, and militarism. We cannot and will
not rely on institutions that dehumanize our community and fund the
killing of our people to keep us safe.” So when we shout, “we keep us
safe,” we assert that we know our institution will not protect us, and
that we are the only ones who can build the power in our community
needed to protect and liberate ourselves.</p>
<p>They are losing, and we are winning. They are weak, but we have
power. Let their efforts fuel your resolve, because when we, the masses,
organize together, we can never be defeated. In the words of
Pan-African revolutionary, Kwame Ture, “The secret of life is to have no
fear; it’s the only way to function.” Do not lose hope. Do not be
afraid. The path to justice and return is walked hand-in-hand, guided by
our martyrs, and lit by the undying fire of our people’s resistance. </p>
<p>Liberation, undoubtedly, liberation nears.</p></div></div></div>
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