Thirty-three people were arrested as the pro-Palestinian camp at George Washington University was broken up by police

A George Washington University student camp in Washington DC set up to protest the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza was dispersed by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers early Wednesday morning. 33 people were arrested during the evacuation of the camp.

Workers carry student tents to a dump truck after police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent camp at George Washington University and arrested protesters early Wednesday, Wednesday, May 8, 2024 (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Protesters had been camping since April 25 at University Yard, one of many protest camps at universities around the world that sprung up after New York police launched an attack on student protesters at Columbia University in April.

Students demand that the university divest from companies involved in the Gaza genocide; make all investments transparent; Protect pro-Palestinian speech on campus and drop charges against protesters who were suspended on April 26 after ignoring a demand from GWU officials to end the camp.

MPD Chief Pamela Smith referred to “a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest. …(Working closely with GW administration and police), MPD was able to clear the protesters from the GW campus and surrounding streets.” Smith said police moved in to disperse the encampment on Wednesday after repeated warnings were ignored for dissolution.

The dispersal came after about two hundred demonstrators demonstrated in front of the home of GWU President Ellen Granberg on Tuesday evening. The demonstrators had demanded that Granberg negotiate the students’ demands and lift the suspensions imposed on a number of student activists last week.

During the police attack, a group of protesters near the campus got into a conflict with police and were arrested. 29 of these arrests were for “unauthorized entry” and four were for assaulting a police officer.

A comment posted on social media by an activist said: “DC Mayor Bowser stated… that students and community members ‘attacked’ police officers this morning after hundreds of police officers raided the Gaza Solidarity Camp at 3:30 a.m. @ dmvsjp. “We have dozens of videos and recordings of MPD and GWPD assaulting, punching, shoving and pepper spraying students and community members who were supporting the arrested students.”

A social media post from one of the activist groups highlighting an incident that previously occurred with the police also shows how false the police claims of assault are:

An Arab student attempted to raise the Palestinian flag for the fifth day in a row. The GWPD attacked and injured him by hitting his hand with a metal locker. When the students attempted to raise the flag again, the GWPD pulled a knife on a group of students and alumni while desperately brutalizing and tackling the students. They threatened to arrest every single student and tore down our flag, tearing it up in the process.

GWPD would rather attack students and pull out a knife than fly the Palestinian flag…

On Thursday, camp participants held a well-attended rally across from University Yard denouncing the violent destruction of the camp. The students expressed their determination not to be intimidated and condemned the university administration for condoning police attacks on their students.

The destruction of the GWU camp is part of a nationwide counteroffensive against student protests as the Israeli government prepares to enter the city of Rafah and destroy the remains of survivors. In the three weeks since the police raid on Columbia, the number of arrests at camps across the United States is quickly approaching three thousand.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, last Saturday, state police attacked, pepper-sprayed and arrested protesters at the University of Virginia, with some of the officers pointing assault rifles at the demonstrators. 25 people were arrested for “trespassing.” Protests across the region were also attacked.

The University of Chicago ordered its private police to destroy the student camp there in an early morning raid Tuesday while students slept.

Elsewhere in Chicago, the Chicago Police Department’s SWAT team, under the supervision of Democratic Socialists of America-backed Mayor Brandon Johnson, broke up a protest at the Art Institute of Chicago and arrested 68 students within minutes of the protest beginning.

The White House is the main driver of these campus crackdowns, with President Joe Biden continuing to equate these anti-Zionist protests with anti-Semitism in his remarks during a Holocaust Remembrance Day address at the Capitol this week. Biden slandered the protests as “anti-Semitic” and “violent” and claimed that Jewish students on college campuses were “blocked, harassed and attacked as they entered class.”

On the contrary, many Jewish students took part in the anti-genocide protests alongside Muslims, Christians, atheists and students of other religions. The GWU camp was no exception. An image in the Washington DC chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace shows a well-attended ceremony described in the headline as an “anti-Zionist Shabbat.”

Contrary to claims that protesters are creating an “intimidating” atmosphere on campus, it is fascist-Zionist sympathizers who are inciting violence with the support of police. A video recorded on April 28 shows a Zionist tearing pro-Palestine posters from a bulletin board on campus while insulting protesters who tried to intervene. When called a Nazi by the video’s author, she said, “I’m a Nazi, I’m a Nazi… I’m a Jewish Nazi.”

A group of House Republicans from the House Oversight Committee toured the GWU warehouse on May 1. They walked with the administration, demanding the encampment’s removal and criticizing Democratic Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and other officials for not sending police to dismantle the encampment sooner. Representative James Comer (Republican of Kentucky) called the demonstrators “radical, anti-Semitic and unlawful” in a statement.

A House Oversight Committee hearing on the GWU camp, which Bowser and MPD Chief Smith were scheduled to attend as witnesses, was immediately canceled following the police raid on the protest camp, hours before the scheduled hearing.

Comer said in a statement Wednesday: “I had a good conversation with Mayor Bowser. I thanked her for finally driving the invaders away from the GW campus. It was unfortunate that the situation at GW forced the Oversight Committee to act; However, it was clear that the D.C. police were not going to do their job.”

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