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Noor Chanaa

Noor Chanaa is a Palestinian-American student activist and Hamas sympathizer who, along with her sister Jena Chanaa, led George Mason University's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter amid the Israel-Hamas War. After they were found to have vandalized their college's student center with "intifada" rhetoric in August 2024, their home was raided by the police on 7 November 2024, resulting in the discovery of assault rifles, ammunition, Hezbollah and Hamas flags, and signs reading "Death to America" and "Death to the Jews."

Biography

The Chanaa sisters, residents of Reston, Virginia, came from a Palestinian family with roots in Taytaba, and they became deeply involved with pro-Palestinian activism in college. In response to the 7 October 2023 al-Aqsa Flood terror offensive into Israel, the Chanaa sisters shared to Instagram their support for Hamas' actions. On 31 August 2024, they took their activism to a new level when they defaced George Mason's student center with spray-painted messages warning of a "student intifada." The university identified the student activists through their self-filmed video of their vandalism, and, on 7 November 2024, police searched the home of the two students. They discovered Hezbollah and Hamas flags, an arsenal of both antique and modern weapons (including firearms and ammunition stores), and signs advertising the killing of Jews and Americans. The police confiscated assault rifles from the Chanaa residence due to heir possession of "terroristic materials," but, due to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin's policy on returning legally owned guns even to suspected terrorists, the weapons were returned to the students. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) accused law enforcement of seeking to "silence or intimidate those who seek to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza," while some faculty members and students accused the government of targeting the students for their human rights advocacy.

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