As hundreds gathered at George Washington University on Friday afternoon to take part in anti-Israel protests, Jewish students told DailyMail.com they were scared, adding that the university is “accommodating” “pro-Hamas” activists.
Demonstrations on campus have continued since the October 7 attack, but recently, taking a page from the Columbia University protesters’ playbook, students set up a pro-Gaza encampment that has yet to be demolished.
Protesters set up camp early Thursday morning and hundreds later joined the demonstrations.
And despite the university demanding that the camp be disbanded at 7 p.m. Thursday evening, the tents and their occupants were still resisting late Friday afternoon.
A protester was even seen at George Washington University (GWU) on Thursday holding a sign calling for the “Final Solution,” Adolf Hitler’s plan for the “annihilation” of Jewish individuals.
“When I hear people calling for more violence, I’m really afraid to come out of my house for fear that someone is going to hurt me or do something to me,” Skyler Sieradzky, a Jewish GWU student, told DailyMail. com during Friday’s protest.
Skyler Sieradzky, a Jewish GWU student whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, said the ongoing pro-Gaza protests on campus have scared her and that hearing the rhetoric calling for Israel’s destruction is alarming.
A protester at George Washington University (GWU) was seen on Thursday holding a sign calling for the “Final Solution,” Adolf Hitler’s plan for the “annihilation” of Jewish individuals.
Hundreds arrived on the GWU campus Thursday and Friday to protest Israel and the school’s alleged support for the war between Israel and Hamas.
Protesters set up camp early Thursday morning and hundreds later joined the demonstrations
“As someone whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, when I see people using the Holocaust as something to revisit, it makes me very sad and very scared.”
Sieradzky was one of a handful of counter-protesters who arrived at the GWU on Friday to support Israel amid calls for its destruction.
She wrapped herself in an Israeli flag, which earned her some scorn and dirty looks from pro-Gaza demonstrators.
“It is very frightening to see signs calling for the eradication of the State of Israel, calling for a new intifada,” Sieradzky said. ‘During the second intifada, one of my relatives was killed in a suicide bombing.’
“When I see signs that call for violence against the State of Israel and against more or less the Jews as a whole, I get really scared.”
“I’ve never been so afraid of being Jewish,” the student continued. ‘I see that anti-Semitic comments are made about me behind my back in my classes. It just makes me really scared.
“Seeing the sign with the final solution made me very sad,” she added.
Police had set up barricades around the student camp in Gaza to block entry and exit from the student-led protest area
Activists cheered for hours as students pondered the campus, with some evading the protest by crossing the street or finding an alternate route to their destination
Two other Jewish GWU students also shared similar concerns, though their identities have been withheld because they fear reprisals from their university colleagues if they speak out.
‘You have these chants, these slogans: anyway, you have a sign with the final solution, you have the river to the sea, resistance is justified, all these slogans that put the movement in a situation where it is more anti-political is. Far from being pro-Palestinian, Israel is more pro-Hamas than pro-Palestine,” a Jewish GWU student told DailyMail.com.
“So what I find problematic about this is that no one from the movement is condemning this, no one from the movement is speaking out against it.”
“The discourse can lead to violence and the discourse right now is not good,” he said.
Another Jewish GWU student told DailyMail.com that the university has been complicit in accommodating the protests by closing roads, not enforcing their own rules and moving final exams to other buildings away from the protests , so that students can test in a quiet environment, far away from the protests. continued demonstrations.
“They made all these adjustments specifically to make this happen, while at the same time saying they were breaking the rules,” the Jewish student said before adding, “They are singing and supporting terrorist organizations.”
“And so it seems like the government doesn’t really have the ability to enforce its own rules, which of course only gives power to those who have no respect for rules in the first place.”
“I’m definitely concerned that there will be protests at graduation, and at a time when families of graduating students are coming all the way to DC for supposedly a happy occasion.”
“People could take that opportunity to organize political protests instead and put a damper on that day for a lot of people.”
GWU protesters dressed a statue of George Washington in a Palestinian flag and a traditional keffiyeh scarf
Every pro-Palestinian GWU protester contacted by DailyMail.com for an interview declined to comment.
However, some admitted that they had been instructed by protest organizers not to speak to the press.
Jinan, a D.C.-based activist and chef who does not attend GWU, told DailyMail.com that she was there to support students’ demands that the university “disengage from the occupation and the State of Israel.”
She was also there to demand that the Biden administration remove funding from Israel.
“This is our tax money that is going to fund other wars and protect other countries while we ourselves are very vulnerable to inflation, health care, the student loan crisis and many other things.”
She praised progressive “Squad” members, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for visiting Columbia University’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which inspired the GWU Camp.
Aya, an Israeli and Jewish high school student who was touring GWU’s campus when she came across the protest with her parents, called the event “absurd.”
She was in Israel during the October 7 attack and was stunned by the conversations she had with the protesters.
‘They don’t know which river or which sea they are talking about. It’s all so stupid.’
When asked if she would attend a university that condones protests like the ones she has experienced, she told DailyMail.com: “If it continues like this, absolutely not.”