Pro-Hamas protester's arrest has an ominous overtone
Pro-Palestinian demonstrator Mahmoud Khalil, second from left, debates with a pro-Israel demonstrator during a protest at Columbia University, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in New York. Credit: AP/Yuki Iwamura
For a year and a half, Mahmoud Khalil led anti-Israel and antisemitic protests, sit-ins, building takeovers and rallies in support of Palestinian causes. As a student activist with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, he’s been a spokesman and lead negotiator for those who’ve espoused hateful views, accused Israel of genocide, called for Israel’s destruction, and screamed “Resistance is Justified,” in defense of the Oct. 7, 2023 atrocities Hamas inflicted on Israel.
Those who defend Israel’s right to exist and who’ve been witnesses to or victims of the extraordinarily frightening increase in antisemitism since Oct. 7 would be disgusted by much of what Khalil has said and done. He and others created an unsafe campus environment for pro-Israel Jewish students at Columbia, its partner college Barnard, and beyond. Columbia could have suspended or expelled Khalil; he got just a one-day suspension last April.
But based on what we know so far, his conduct doesn’t rise to the level of detaining Khalil, without the Justice Department making clear the legal basis for his arrest, or revoking his green card or deporting him, which federal immigration officials are threatening to do.
If a scheduled Wednesday hearing in a Manhattan federal court produces evidence that Khalil is a national security risk, or has direct ties to Hamas, Iran or other entities, that view could change.
But the uproar is spurring a larger troubling issue.
Many Jewish activists and pro-Israel groups aren’t waiting for facts or evidence, instead applauding the Trump administration and suggesting in unsettling rhetoric that antisemitism alone is enough to deport him.
“We appreciate the Trump administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
The Columbia Jewish Alumni Association said Khalil was a “ringleader of the chaos at Columbia.”
“No one forced him to lead mobs that demonize America, or harass and intimidate Jews,” the association said on social media. “This was his choice.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, posted that he was targeting those “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman got in on the attention Monday night on CNN. Without evidence, Blakeman accused Khalil of being “paid by anti-American organizations that are engaged in nefarious activities.”
Then he took a broader tack: “Are you okay with antisemitism? Are you okay with intimidating Jewish students? Are you okay with hate speech?” he asked. “That’s exactly what this is about.”
No, I’m not okay with any of those things. But that’s not what this should be about. Making it about those things leads us down a perilous, familiar path. It’s a page out of the “un-American activities” investigated by Joseph McCarthy, or the U.S. government’s Japanese internment camps of the 1940s.
It’s familiar to Jews, too. Germany’s laws in the 1930s emphasized that those who were undesirable, weren’t loyal to Germany, or harmed German interests could have their citizenship or naturalization revoked.
Pro-Israel Jews supporting the treatment of Khalil based solely on accusations of anti-American or antisemitic oratory should know better. None of this helps Israel, hostages in Gaza, or Jewish college students experiencing antisemitism. Instead, it puts Khalil on a pedestal, glorifying him and amplifying his troubling commentary and cause.
American Jews know what it’s like to be the “other.” They’ve stood alongside many minority groups in their own civil rights battles. That can’t stop now, even when it comes to those with whom we vehemently disagree.
COLUMNIST RANDI F. MARSHALL’S opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.