Washinton, ALRAY - Pro-Palestinian activists have filed a civil rights complaint against George Washington University, accusing the US institution of discriminating against its students of Palestinian origin.

The complaint was lodged after the university denied its students of Palestinian descent access to trauma.

The university also refused to regard them as cases suffering trauma following the most recent Israeli aggression on occupied Jerusalem and the besieged Gaza Strip and prevented them from voicing their solidarity with their people, as well as ordering them to remove pro-Palestine social media posts associated with the university.

The university has previously been accused of anti-Palestinian discrimination in 2015, when campus police ordered a student to remove a Palestinian flag from his window.

The complaint was filed by Palestine Legal and lawyer Benjamin Douglas on behalf of Nada El-Basha, who works in the university's Office of Advocacy and Support (OAS).

It included evidence El-Basha had offered in a social media post a “virtual processing space” for those impacted by the Israeli offensive on Gaza in May, but the university administration ordered the post be removed and the event cancelled.

The formal complaint explains how this denial of services and support for other marginalised groups on campus constituted a violation of the District of Columbia Human Rights Act (DCHRA).

"Palestinians at GW deserve to access the same services as any other students here," El-Basha said in a statement.

She continued: "To have high-level administrators cancel our support programming and threaten to close our office was a shocking declaration that GW does not care about its Palestinian students."