By Bethania Wonagseged –
A student group suspended for vandalism and anti-Jewish speech has been reinstated and is recruiting new members at George Mason University.
Students for Justice in Palestine, with at least 350 chapters on college campuses nationwide, was suspended in November 2024 after leaders vandalized campus property in a pro-Palestinian protest.
They were eligible to reapply under Free Speech law at GMU and celebrated their reinstatement as a student group with an ominous video of a leader masked in a keffiyeh with voice scrambled threatening to eradicate Israelis “from the river to the Sea.”
“We call upon the students of George Mason University to join us in continuing the fight for Palestinian liberation,” the masked student leader says. “We have a moral obligation to carry on the legacy of our noble people, our steadfast prisoners, and our honorable martyrs. The spirit of resistance will not be quenched until we see full liberation of Palestine from the River to the Sea.”
The styling of the video and the rhetoric mimics the tactics of the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, raping and killing as they went. The phrase “from the River to the Sea” is often paired with “By any means necessary,” an unabashed justification of rape and killing of civilians.
The day after the Hamas attack on Israel, SJP nationwide initiated protests in favor of the terrorists. At George Mason University, SJP members propagated antisemitic material, removed hostage posters and committed acts of vandalism in the days following.
Sisters Jena Chanaa and Noor Chanaa, Palestinian Americans, were banned from campus for acts of vandalism for four years. Noor was co-president of SJP, and Jena was former president, at the time; they spray-painted political messages, like “student intifada.”
When Fairfax County police executed a warrant on their house they found four unsecured firearms (reportedly belonging to the sisters’ father and brother), more than 20 ammunition magazines each capable of holding 30 rounds, Hamas and Hezbollah flags and arm bands with arm patches saying in Arabic “Kill them where they stand.”
Criminal charges were never brought against the sisters, but that may be more a result of the commonwealth’s attorney’s political leanings rather than lack of evidence.
In March 2025, the Department of Education sent Mason University a letter warning it would lose its tax-payer-funded federal money if it doesn’t clean up its act on discrimination against Jews and antisemitic harassment. Another 59 schools were targeted with the letter.
So the SJP chapter at Mason is tainted with some ugly realities. But guess what? Free Speech trumps all that. They have come right up to the razor’s edge of saying things that would lead to their arrest. They just insinuated “Kill the Jews.”
So they get the re-start.
And how did they re-start. With a terrorist-looking video with pro-terrorist language. Mason University ordered them to take the video down, and SJP complied.
They’re back to agitating and indoctrinating university students who don’t know the the details of the history of the region and the intricacies of terroris and Israel’s right to defend itself.
There’s more. Mason University got hit with a legal threat from Palestine Legal, which said the university is the “most egregious example” of censorship.
