Members of Jewish Voice for Peace chapters across the D.C. region rallied in front of University Yard before marching to the F Street House on Sunday night to decry the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian students and commemorate Passover.
Organizers from six JVP chapters around the DMV area held a “Freedom Seder” potluck at 6:30 p.m. at a “community space” in Foggy Bottom to celebrate Passover, then gathered on H Street outside U-Yard to condemn President Donald Trump’s “fascist” regime and the ongoing war in Gaza. Speakers pointed to the revocation of international students’ visas, “repression” of pro-Palestinian student organizing by universities and Israel’s continued bombing campaigns in Gaza as reasons for continued “resistance” across the country.
Chapters of JVP — a progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization that advocates for Palestinian liberation — from GW, American and George Mason universities hosted the protest as well as the University of Maryland and JVP’s D.C. metro branch.
“For a Freedom Seder should be not only a ritual of remembrance, not only a shared promise for the future, but itself a political act, as the first Passover was, when the people of Israel liberated themselves and their G-d,” the organizations wrote in their Instagram announcement of the rally — quoting Author Waskow, a rabbi and author from Baltimore, Maryland.
Passover — which this year lasted from April 12 to 20 — commemorates the Jewish people’s liberation from enslavement in Egypt and observers of the holiday often recount the story over a meal, called Seder.
During the rally, multiple speakers criticized “modern pharaohs” like Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a reference to the Egyptian pharaoh that enslaved Jewish people in the historical story of Passover.
About 100 demonstrators gathered on H Street between 20th and 21st streets at about 8:30 p.m. after the Seder, some wearing T-shirts reading “Not in our name” and keffiyehs or holding signs saying “Liberation now” and “Never again means now.”
The crowd broke into chants of “In the face of state violence, we will never be silent” between about five speeches as two organizers unraveled a banner reading “Liberation now” and “DMV Anti Zionist Jewish Students” in front of the closed gates blocking off U-Yard.
A representative from GW JVP, who requested anonymity due to safety reasons, said in an interview that organizers decided to hold the march because students have become “political prisoners” as federal agencies threaten to deport student activists.
The representative said student activists must continue to pressure by protesting universities to meet demands to financially divest from Israel and declare themselves sanctuary campuses that support undocumented and international students.
The Department of State has revoked visas from hundreds of students at universities across the country over the past few weeks due to their alleged involvement in campus protests against the war in Gaza. Officials last week said federal agencies revoked or terminated visas from a “small number” of students.
Immigration officers last month detained Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University and legal permanent resident, which he attributed to his involvement in pro-Palestinian activism on campus last spring.
ICE agents also detained Rumeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, who said the government targeted her for an op-ed she wrote denouncing the university’s response to the war in Gaza in a student newspaper.
“We have a responsibility to continue escalating pressure until our universities become sanctuary campuses, protect our students, workers and professors and also divest from corporations complicit in the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the representative said.
In a speech in front of U-Yard, a different representative from GW’s chapter of JVP said the group was protesting to remind University President Ellen Granberg that she has a “responsibility” to defend students from the Trump administration’s actions, like revoking international students’ visas in the name of combating antisemitism.
“We reject GW’s perversion of antisemitism to persecute organizers and immigrant students,” the representative said. “This was not about protecting Jewish students and it never was.”
At about 9:50 p.m., protesters marched down 21st Street to Granberg’s on-campus residence on F Street, waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
A representative from the GW Faculty for Justice in Palestine, who didn’t provide their name, said in a speech outside Granberg’s house that the University has “abdicated” its “moral obligation” to defend academic freedom by wanting students to “stop asking questions” about Palestinian territories in their activism.
“Our liberation begins and ends with those who ask a difficult question,” the speaker said. “Our liberation begins and ends with you, students, inside and outside of the University, the knowledge seekers.”
A speaker from DMV Jewish Labor Bund, a local chapter of a Jewish socialist organization, said it is “not an exaggeration” to draw comparisons between the student demonstration movement against the war in Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Nazi Germany, which took place in 1943 during the week of Passover.
During the uprising, about 700 Jews fought against Nazi officers detaining them in a ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. The speaker said student members of the Jewish Labor Bund were an “instrumental” part of the uprising.
“It is hard to believe that it was just over a year ago that many of us were back on this campus, where we had a Seder, where we occupied the park on GW’s campus in what has been called the student intifada,” the speaker said.
Organizers told the crowd to disperse and walk home with a buddy around 10:30 p.m.
“Disperse, but do not forget our eternal fight,” a representative from GW JVP told the crowd.
Tyler Iglesias contributed reporting.
