The group also sought support for two other ‘comrades Caged by US Empire’ who were convicted of violent crimes
Georgetown University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter is soliciting letters of support for “political prisoners”—namely the founders of the Holy Land Foundation, a nonprofit the Department of Justice said “existed to support Hamas,” who were convicted for funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist organization. Other recipients include criminals who torched New York Police Department cars and repeatedly attacked Jews.
The SJP chapter held a letter-writing event on April 15 to “stand in solidarity with our comrades … caged by the U.S. empire for their resistance to occupation and repression” and named Holy Land Foundation founders Ghassan Elashi and Shukri Abu Baker among the “political prisoners” the group would write to. A Thursday Instagram post, which called to abolish prisons, provided guidance for those who couldn’t attend the session, instructing writers to greet the prisoners “as a comrade” and to “honor their steadfastness and the justice of their cause.”
Elashi and Abu Baker were sentenced to 65 years in prison after being convicted in 2008 of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization. Under their guidance, the Holy Land Foundation funneled roughly $12.4 million to Hamas under the guise of charitable donations, according to the Justice Department. The Council on American-Islamic Relations was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.
Georgetown SJP, however, described the “material support” charges as charitable “zakat” to “Palestinian orphans and widows” and cast doubt on the evidence used in their convictions.
“The prison is the colonizer’s weapon against a people who refuse to disappear. It is how the carceral state cages resistance, isolates our comrades, and turns solidarity into a crime,” SJP wrote. “This is one struggle. The same US empire that bombs Gaza funds the zionist prisons and brings federal cases against our comrades here.”
The group also solicited letters to Tarek Bazrouk and Jakhi McCray, radical anti-Israel activists who were convicted of violent crimes.
Bazrouk, a 20-year-old self-described “Jew hater,” was sentenced to 17 months in prison for hate crimes after attacking Jewish protesters at three demonstrations across 2024 and 2025, including at Columbia University. Investigators found a stash of weapons and $750,000 in cash when they searched his apartment as well as pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah images on his phone, the Washington Free Beacon reported. His criminal history includes robbery, additional assaults, and operating a drug factory in Hartford, Conn.
McCray, meanwhile, pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal arson charges after setting fire to 10 NYPD vehicles and a trailer on June 12, 2025, causing approximately $800,000 in damage. The 22-year-old faces a minimum of 5 years in prison and up to 20, along with a fine and restitution. He has also been linked to instances of vandalism, including one at Columbia.
Georgetown SJP described him as a “committed anti-imperialist organizer” and called his plea deal “inherently coercive.”
Georgetown did not respond to a request for comment.
The university’s SJP chapter was not the only one to honor pro-terror “political prisoners” this month. On Monday, the University of California Berkeley law school SJP chapter hosted a virtual “teach-in” with Israa Jaabis, a convicted Palestinian terrorist released in an Oct. 7, 2023, hostage deal. In 2015, Jaabis shouted “Allahu akbar” and detonated a gas canister near an Israeli police officer, severely burning both herself and the officer. She was en route to perpetrate what authorities believed was a planned suicide bombing.
Jaabis thanked the UC Berkeley students for their support, saying their attendance as law students gave her hope that “there remains some humanity” and that they would help amplify “our call to liberate Palestinian prisoners.”
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