Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, is an activist who participated in last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests. He was arrested by U.S. immigration agents on March 8 as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to deport anti-Israel student activists. Khalil is of Palestinian descent; he grew up in Syria, and is a permanent resident of the United States. He is married to an American.
His arrest was hailed by some sectors of the American Jewish community, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that fights antisemitism. The ADL released a statement applauding the “swift and severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorists”–this, despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Khalil provided such support.
Other Jews understand what the ADL does not– that “defending” Jews and other minorities requires support for an open society where individuals are free to voice any and all opinions, even those we may find offensive. Jews are far less safe when those in authority are free to punish people who express ideas with which they disagree. And that is clearly what this Trumpian assault on the First Amendment is all about.
As Rolling Stone has reported,
The Trump administration has provided no evidence supporting a link between Khalil and Hamas — which is a U.S.-designated a foreign terrorist group — or documentation of Khalil advocating violence. Khalil has not been charged with any crime. Trump and his administration are nevertheless openly bragging that the activist was being forcibly deported and separated from his pregnant wife because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy, and that more arrests will follow.
As I’ve previously noted, the sudden concern over anti-Semitism being expressed by far-Right politicians is jarring to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the GOP fringe’s historic hatred. When Christian Nationalists suddenly express a desire to “protect” their Jewish neighbors, it’s not just disconcerting–it’s ominous. MAGA’s sudden, pious concerns over anti-Semitism are anything but good-faith. Large numbers of the prominent Republicans who have labeled campus protests “Leftist anti-Semitism” have, like Trump, mainstreamed anti-Jewish rhetoric for years.
And by the way– those pious folks claiming to “protect” us are evidently unable to distinguish between opposition to Israeli policy and anti-Semitism. Plenty of Jews–including the one who writes this blog–oppose Netanyahu and his horrific actions in Gaza. We also oppose the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.
As an in-depth article in The Guardian documented, “Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about anti-Semitism – but they’re part of a rightwing plan.” The article acknowledged the legitimate discomfort of Jewish students on campus, but noted that it has been used to justify “a powerful attack on academic freedom and First Amendment rights that long predates the student encampments – part of a longstanding rightwing project to curb speech and reshape the public sphere.”
The arrest is a flagrant and unprecedented attack on the First Amendment. Trump’s version of the federal government is claiming the authority to deport people–to revoke their green cards– for the “crime” of advocating positions that the government opposes, actions that are very obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.
Amy Pitalnick of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs–who identifies as a Zionist–understands why the ADL is on the wrong side of this debate. The New York Times quoted her as saying “Any Jew who thinks this is going to start and stop with a few Palestinian activists is fooling themselves, Our community should not be used as an excuse to upend democracy and the rule of law.”
This is not the first time the ADL has failed to understand that Jews ultimately depend for our safety and well-being on the protection of an open society that honors and respects the civil liberties of all its citizens.
There’s a great adage I once heard from Ira Glasser, who led the national ACLU for many years. It is particularly pertinent here: Poison gas is a great weapon–until the wind shifts.
The government that can shut down Mr. Khalil today can shut down the ADL tomorrow–and given the documented anti-Semitic background of Trump and his base, it wouldn’t take much of a wind shift.
Professor-I love your last sentence. So very true.
As with just about everything coming from the U.S. political right wing, their idiotic embrace of Netanyahu and his abject tyranny works to destroy a free and open society. They simply don’t care about the Constitution, its meaning, “settled law” or reconciling their hate and prejudice toward others not them.
The tyrannical right cares not a whit for the rule of law. Their total embrace of the criminal in the White House defines their utter lack of intellect too. The ADL, presumably, is filled with smart people. Surely somebody there can see a clearer path to their function.
ADL has nobly made the case for anti-semitism for decades without playing the anti-semitism card to defend Israeli policy of violent apartheid.
My wife and I lived and worked in Jerusalem 2005-2009 during the first war with Hamas and Air War over Lebanon. Until there is sovereignty for people who call the Occupied Territories home, there is no genuine sovereignty for the people of Israel.
Labels are one of the sharpest knives in the propaganda toolkit.
Words are simple enough, but we all carry many associations for each word, letter, and sound in our cranial computer. It is said that George Eastman invented the brand name ‘Kodak’ because he thought K had the right sound in many languages and carried with it part of an attractive message.
Propaganda is a tool of influence. When those who advertise, another term for propaganda, choose a message, it is crafted with thought given to labels.
Netanyahu put together an effective propaganda suite to justify the utter destruction of Palestine, which pre-dates the existence of Israel by millennia. He killed the patient to cure the cancer and sold it to the world.
Humans differ from our closest cousins, bonobos and chimpanzees, primarily because our more flexible faces, tongues, and vocal cords allowed us to associate languages spoken, sung, written, and drawn, alphabetical and numerical, with the world we knew. As a result, we developed a powerful mental abstraction engine.
Now we rule the world (for good and evil).
Pete … I need to know what brand of ‘wheaties’ you have for breakfast, because I really like the way you show up early morning.
Well you look at the crook Netanyahu, and Trump is a big admirer. Can a Jew be a Nazi? Absolutely! A Nazi is just a cult, and it doesn’t take a particular race or ethnicity to belong to a cult. Look at Kabbalah, you don’t have to be a Jew to practice Kabbalah, many ethnicities find it fascinating and delve into it wholeheartedly. The Germans loved Kabbalah, they studied it as one of their occult weapons. The zionists emulated Nazism.
DT will embrace anything that will help him entrench or ensconce his kingship. He’s grooming his youngest to take the scepter when he’s done. With all of this revoking a person’s citizenship or deporting someone who’s a citizen, it’s just like a king that would banish those who he doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with. It has less to do with ethnicity, more to do with power and control. He just uses the dummies until he reaches his goal. Then he’ll have them picking the fruit and vegetables, cleaning up the waste and fighting the wars. Welcome to the birth of a nation, and/or welcome to the 1100s!.
If in you think history doesn’t repeat until it can’t anymore, do a little more reading. It absolutely does! How there could be folks that still can’t believe it? Now, that’s an alternate reality. When everything crashes, it’s going to be a big ugly mess it cannot be cleaned up or stopped for that matter. It’s like a nuclear chain reaction, it’s going to get worse, all I could suggest, is try and be prepared as much as possible.
Thank you, Sheila, for this response!
I’ve been trying to convey your message to anyone who listens on social media. Netanyahu’s genocide is backfiring against Israel internationally. The more ADL and AIPAC try to protect the unprotectable, it’s only going to get worse. By Trump and Biden making Jews a protected class, while at the same time discarding DEI, anyone with common sense will see this boomeranging back to the messengers.
The right-wingers like Trump got censored off social media like Facebook and Twitter. Now they claim they are the warriors of free speech. Detaining Khalil for protected speech is one of Trump’s and Musk’s blind sides. As we discussed the other day, they can’t see the consequences of their decisions. This happens when you surround yourself with “yes men and women.” Nobody dares to raise their hand and question the Fuhrer. #cowards
Marco Rubio signed off on Kahlil’s detainment at the State Department, and he claims there will be many more. The number of lawyers who signed up pro bono to take on Kahlil’s case is impressive. How can you “arrest” someone who committed no crime? When the DHS was asked about it, they didn’t know the difference between a student visa and a green card. Do you think his pregnant wife might have a civil suit against the government?
Netanyahu is a war criminal that was invited to speak inside the people’s house and applauded over 50 times by all the AIPAC-owned politicians in Washington.
Did anyone notice that Duterte from the Philippines just got arrested and sent to The Hague? I guess international law for American leadership is selective.
If you think Trump is going to force young people to sit down and shut up, wait till later this Spring.
One last note on Trump, he was excellent buddies of Epstein and Maxwell. His name is all over the flight logs of Epstein’s plane. He’s not the only famous person all over the logs. Whitney Webb’s book lays the foundation for the interwoven relationship between blackmail and corporate and government leadership worldwide. It’s also interwoven with the underworld. And Epstein isn’t the only one who died mysteriously in this still pending case.
Here’s the flight log:
https://archive.org/details/epstein-flight-logs-unredacted_202304/page/12/mode/2up?view=theater&ui=embed&wrapper=false
Fighting antisemitism is a difficult battle which, like racism, is doubtful it will ever end. But when Jews vs. Jews is the situation it puts those of us fighting antisemitism in a position of being no help at all. Those of us old enough to remember or to have paid attention to WWII history, the Holocaust and then in 1948 the Allies voted statehood to Israel, but a very different Israel than we see today. This further confuses the issues and how we can affectively fight antisemitism in today’s America which, like Israel, isn’t the same America it used to be…only weeks ago.
There are a couple of points that are made here that need emphasis. The first is that the policies of the Netanyahu government are not the policies of the Jews. If that were the case then a good number of Israeli citizens would be labeled anti-Semitic as they have participated in numerous anti-Government protests.
The second is that Netanyahu, like Orange Jesus (OJ), is a dictator in waiting. Both are willing to do anything to keep control, including the slaughter of thousands of their enemies.
Many of you might think that’s crazy. That OJ isn’t that bad. Remember that Netanyahu has had twenty years to hone his anti-democratic skills. Look at the moves OJ made in just the first seven weeks of his second chance. In one single executive order he has violated Amendments one, four, and, five. He has attempted to rewrite the thirteenth Amendment by executive order. He has fired every lawyer who participated in the Smith investigation. If SCOTUS gives him a pass on any of his clear violations of the Constitution and the law, we are royally screwed. I’m praying that the threats to Amy Coney Barrett and her family (her sister is the latest to receive threats) just make her mad – at least mad enough to overcome fear and do the right thing.
Thank you, Sheila, for this publication. Our country is in a mess at this time, which is a heart-break. The thing that absolutely throws me off balance is that the people who are so critical and hateful claim Christianity, when actually that faith supports kindness and love for all – not just the National Christians’ definition of it. It makes me sick AND angry. Trump encourages division in just about everything. Perhaps his encouragement of that will be the divider of his political stance, and he will disappear. We can hope.
Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron!
These people have perverted all of the moral principles that were promulgated by Jesus Christ and that are enumerated in the New Testament. They are absolutely NOT CHRISTIAN.
Jesus said ” as you do unto the least of these, so you do unto me.” The willingness of the CN’s to let the most vulnerable members (the least) of the world’s societies perish is to allow Jesus to perish! Very un-Christian indeed!
I truly believe that the Orange Jesus is the anti-Christ!
What Peggy, said, once again!
Netanyahu needs to be brought to the Hague, as did GWB.
OJ is working, zealously, to become untouchable as a king, has sworn an oath to “God” to protect us from “enemies, foreign and domestic,” but can’t care less about an oath, or the bible upon which he swore. I wonder whether, or not, it was held upside down.
Who will lead the defenders of the rule of law? Right now the resistance is disorganized and we are relying on a deeply flawed Supreme Court to save us. Today is supposed to be a special day of resistance, but I see nothing about it here or in the news.
@ Mitch D. Not to take away from your point well made, but just a correction in the manner Donald Trump defied convention during Inauguration during obligatory administration of The Oath.
Melania, with dignity and poise, held two Bibles right before Trump’s eyes: (1) a commemorative Bible published by the Trump Foundation that included The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the USA; (2) the Lincoln Bible.
Trump stood stoic both hands by his side and refused to place his hand on The Bible, and for that matter, The Constitution. Only a very few other Presidents stood for The Oath without a hand on The Bible.
However, Trump is the very first President that refused to place his hand on a Bible he authorized to be published that included the Constitution during inauguration.
Amen.
I am one of those who rages against the sane-washing of Oct.7 where we don’t mention the targeted rape, torture, and mutilation perpetrated against civilians; where the death of civilians during war in Germany and Japan were a sad price of war, but for Israel it is a “war crime”; where all people have the right to self-determination, except for the Jews; where words like apartheid and genocide are tossed around without understanding what they mean —
BUT
Sheila is 100% correct and I can’t add anything to it. She said it all.
Thank you, Sheila!
Peggy also has a point – forgetting that BIbi’s older brother was the only soldier to die at Entebbe, Bibi is a crook and if Hamas had not attacked, he probably would have been out of power and into jail. He does not represent a large number of Israelis, nor Jews throughout the world.
Good god, this is what I’ve been saying from the get go! My Jewish friends have been celebrating this abhorrent event—It’s about time someone stuck up for Jewish students!! they say—and I can’t seem to get through to them that this has *nothing* to do with sticking up for Jewish students, or Jews at all. It is, as you stated, a direct assault on the First Amendment. Period. Drumpf and his pals care nothing about the Jewish people: I don’t doubt that his own SIL and grandchildren could be loaded into cattle cars and he’d merely shrug.
I am a Jewish out and proud Zionist (although I loathe Bibi), and know that Zionism happened because of this very kind of authoritarian acts. But sometimes I feel like I’m shouting into the wind. And with that in mind, speaking of poison gas…
Thank you, Shelia, for clarifying a complicated issue. Right wing politicians, and media make Americans who sympathize with Palestinian plight feel like their being anti-sematic.
Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE for no crimes, but for speaking up and about the plight of his former home country. He seems to be a peaceful, intelligent hard working graduate student who has leadership qualities. Confiscating his green card and arresting him in the murky world of immigration law and transporting him to a much more conservative detention center in Louisiana for deportment is a violation of rights. Trump’s/Magas attempt to change our laws to suit their un-American plan for the future has to be blocked at every turn.
When my spouse had his green card, he was terrified that he would be rounded up and deported simply for having a speeding ticket. Thankfully, Obama was POTUS then and that never happened, except for the speeding ticket. He was the sole breadwinner between us and where would they ship him? Back to the UK? He’s an ally in citizenship for crying out loud. As a naturalized citizen, will he be “rounded up when he flies in from Europe next week?” It never ends with immigrants that just want to live their lives. Not only that but will his flight arrive in one piece? What is going on with the FAA and all of these plane crashes?
This whole round up of this guy is some mafioso ghetto nastiness and even if I don’t support what the guy is protesting, rounding him up like that, scares the bejesus out of me. Why did they have to send him to Louisiana? They could have put him in the local jail for that matter. He was never charged with a crime! Who paid for that private jet to take him there? Who? Taxpayers under the guise of homeland security? Or some prison owner that’s a billionaire and wants to make an example of him to the rest of the country? His poor wife so close to delivering their baby and I worry about early delivery and where tf is her husband?
Thanks for covering this Professor.