By Mike Gonzalez & Daniel Flesch via The Daily Signal | December 18, 2024
Is the Northern Virginia campus of George Mason University cultivating a nest of anti-Israel and antisemitic terrorist supporters a half-hour’s drive from the nation’s capital? News reports that three of its students, all of Middle Eastern origin, have had recent run-ins with the police over weapons and pro-terror material are troubling, to say the least.
Two of the students are Palestinian American sisters and leaders in the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the main organizers of the protests, riots, and encampments at George Mason, Columbia, and other universities over the past year. The raid of their home, which turned up guns, ammunition, and antisemitic and anti-American “hate” material, has been reported on for a few days, though the legacy media has been downplaying the story.
But it has also emerged overnight that another George Mason University student, an Egyptian national named Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, was arrested in December for, according to the charging papers, “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of the commission of a federal crime of violence” to an FBI informant.
He was arraigned for also planning “a mass casualty attack at the Consulate General of Israel [in New York City] using an explosive device and rifle.” He chose the consulate because it was “a building that represented the ‘Yahud,’” which is Arabic for “Jew.”
The charging papers said that Hassan was communicating with the FBI informant through X, which revealed that two X accounts “were both accessed via an IP address associated with a university campus in Northern Virginia, within the Eastern District of Virginia. On that same day, the FBI observed Hassan on that university campus.”
The university confirmed to us that Hassan “is enrolled at Mason.” The university was asked when university President Gregory Washington knew about Hassan’s arrest and whether he is also a U.S. citizen.
“More information will be forthcoming in a message from President Washington,” likely Wednesday, Rose Pascarell, the school’s vice president for university life, said in an email.
Pascarell added that Hassan, “to the best of our knowledge, is not connected” to Students for Justice in Palestine. The Palestinian-American sisters were very much connected to the group, which is why George Mason has suspended the chapter on an at least interim basis.
One of the two sisters, Noor Chanaa, an undergraduate, is the current copresident of Students for Justice in Palestine, while her sister Jena, a graduate student in engineering, is a past president. The guns were registered to their father and their brother, Mohammad, also a George Mason alumnus. All three children live with their parents.
Police and the FBI raided their home in November and found AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, multiple rounds of ammunition, and an explosive device. They also found signs that read “Death to the Jews” and “Death to America” and the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which the U.S. government has designated as terror organizations.
According to press reports, the FBI has not commented. But the spokesman for the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, where George Mason is located, confirmed to local press that police found the guns, the ammunition, and the pro-terror material.
The sisters apparently have been previously suspected of threatening and violent activity. According to The Jerusalem Post, “The pair were suspected of involvement in a vandalism act at GMU in August, where students defaced the student center with spray-painted messages threatening a ‘student intifada.’”
The Washington Free Beacon has reported that the Chanaa sisters were suspected of involvement in the ensuing melee, causing thousands of dollars in damage.
How exactly George Mason University—which actually has a conservative reputation despite its lavish spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion and other social justice programs that actively foment anti-Israel animus—has become a hotbed for anti-Israel and antisemitic terrorist supporters is difficult to say.
At the very least, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, to be headed by Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., should start looking into why Students for Justice in Palestine and foreign nationals on student visas appear to be fomenting much of the belligerent activity we see on our college campuses today. More specifically, an investigation should begin into whether Students for Justice in Palestine is an abettor of terrorism and therefore deserves to be shut down.
Mike is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Daniel Flesch is a Senior Policy Analyst for Middle East and North Africa at The Heritage Foundation.
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