Anti-Israel Protesters Establish Encampment at George Washington University

Anti-Israeli protesters established an encampment Thursday on the campus of George Washington University (GWU), in Washington, DC.

The DMV Coalition of Students for Justice in Palestine organized a “joint encampment” that was established on GWU’s campus in University Yard on Thursday morning, according to an Instagram post from Students for Justice in Palestine at GWU (SJPGWU), a student organization.

“As our people discover mass graves of our martyrs in Gaza, it is our moral imperative to disrupt business as usual for an end to institutional cooperation in genocide,” SJPGWU wrote referring to a “mass grave” hoax that has circulated in recent days.

Nick Kristof, a radical left-wing columnist with the New York Times, circulated the “mass grave” hoax in a post on X. People such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have spread Kristof’s hoax.

Hamas, a U.S.-designated Islamic terror group claimed on Saturday that more than 200 bodies had been discovered in a mass grave at Nasser Hospital, the place of a previous raid, in Khan Younis, a city in Gaza, according to the Times of Israel.

The bodies, Hamas claimed, had been buried by Israeli forces. Officials from the United Nations also claimed some of the bodies had been “found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes.”

This allegation was considered “baseless,” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) which noted that “forces searching for Israeli hostages had examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and had returned the bodies to where they were buried after they were examined.”

“It has been documented that Palestinians buried their dead at the hospital grounds both before and while Israeli troops operated in the area,” the outlet reported.

The IDF also explained that while it had conducted an operation in the area of the hospital, IDF troops had “examined corpses that had been buried by Palestinians,” in an attempt to locate Israeli hostages.

“Each university must protect pro-Palestinian speech on campus,” a speaker could be heard saying at the protest at GWU. “Each university must divest from companies selling technology and weapons to the Zionist regime.”

Students gathered at the pro-Palestinian protest could be heard chanting, “The students united will never be defeated.”

Protesters at the encampment were reportedly told by officials that they could “protest until 7 p.m.,” and after that time, they had to “take down the encampment,” campus newspaper, the GW Hatchet, reported.

The outlet reported in an update at 9:27 p.m. that the “demonstrators have shown no indications of relocating or clearing the tents from the area.”

As of 9:43 p.m., organizers of the encampment were preparing to arrange overnight arrangements for demonstrators and “obtain more tents” if needed, according to the outlet.

The anti-Israel encampment on GWU’s campus comes after an anti-Israel encampment was established on the lawn at Columbia University in New York last Wednesday, resulting in several students, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) daughter, Isra Hirsi, being suspended from Barnard College and more than 100 protesters being arrested due to their involvement in the encampment.

Since then, anti-Israel protests, rallies, and encampments have erupted across college and university campuses in the United States, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Yale University, the University of North Carolina, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California, in support of the initial encampment at Columbia University.