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student protest
Mahmoud Khalil and the Israelification of the US: Wake Up!
Palestinian human rights advocate, Mahmoud Khalil, knows authoritarianism when he sees it. “I lived under the Assad regime [in Syria]. I know how that feels.”
Oct 12, 2025
A negotiator for the pro-Palestine student protests on Columbia University's campus in 2024, Khalil and I spoke late last month. Thousands of National Guard had already been deployed to Los Angeles and Washington DC, supposedly to “crack down” on crime, leading to hundreds of arrests and seizures.
Khalil was arrested and seized — by unidentified men, without a warrant, at his home — this March. Snatched away from his pregnant wife he was transported in shackles to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where he was held for 104 days until a New Jersey judge ordered him to be released. A legal, permanent resident who had committed no violence and broken no law, Khalil’s detention was just the first and most visible abduction in a wave of arrests targeting international students and faculty who were speaking out against genocide in Gaza.
Reflecting on his experience, Khalil said: “I think people mistakenly think that what's happening is far from their doors. They think that this would never happen to them, whether, you know, because of their social status, because of their ethnicity or any of that.”
People call it the “Palestine Exception.” That’s the idea that all sorts of behaviors and speech that are acceptable in other contexts are selectively denied and punished when it comes to advocacy around Palestine. Conversely, many Americans have believed that if they only steer clear of the issue of Palestine and the treatment of Palestinians, their rights to free speech and assembly will be protected and secure; that they will be “safe.”
As we spoke, President Trump (a convicted felon) was ordering National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon, and calling for “expanded deployments” to other places. At a crackpot convening of the nation’s top brass, Trump urged the military to use US cities as “military training grounds” For what? For domination? Occupation?
“What's happening around us should alarm us that this is at our door, it's in our house,” said Khalil.
Palestine may not be the exception, but rather the test. The treatment of Palestinians and human rights advocates like Khalil has tested our tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism, and until recently, it’s a test that our anti-fascist movements have failed. Go down the list that scholars have compiled. What do authoritarians do? They name an enemy, declare an emergency, and invoke extraordinary, often military powers to shock and intimidate every credible source of opposition and dissent, the law, the media, the academy, free speech, and other politicians. Mahmoud Khalil has seen all those moves up close, and he is far from alone. Speaking in solidarity with Gaza has cost jobs, funding, landed people on watchlists and led to widespread campus arrests.
He thought it couldn't happen here. He thought that in the US, people had rights. Having left Syria and coming to prestigious Columbia University to take up graduate studies with a view to becoming a diplomat, Khalil, too, thought that he was safe:
“I was, to be honest, like I was confident, you know, nothing would happen to me. I never did anything wrong. I literally was protesting a genocide.”
He was wrong, and he learned different, and Americans are also learning.
National Guard and ICE agents have arrived in Portland, where they’ve fired pepper balls at senior citizens, journalists, and shot one priest in the head as he attempted to pray for peace. Federal agents including ICE and Border Patrol have started patrolling the streets of Chicago, where they’ve reportedly shot chemical munitions at civilians in broad daylight.
On September 30, the very next day after Khalil and I talked, federal agents rappelled in darkness from a Black Hawk helicopter onto the roof of a five story building in South Chicago’s South Shore, kicking down doors, deploying flashbang grenades, and forcibly entering nearly every apartment, removing adults and kids, zip tying their hands before separating them from their parents.
“It’s not that the US is becoming authoritarian. It is authoritarianism now,” said Khalil.
Khalil is once again under a deportation order, issued by the same immigration court judge who oversaw his detention in March. Citing paperwork errors on his visa application, he’s once again threatened with deportation to Algeria or Syria where his life would be under threat.
“Americans need to wake up,” said Khalil.
It all makes one think about that Palestinian experience we’re not supposed to speak about. What if, instead of the Palestinian exception, we need to be talking about the Israelification of the U.S.?
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The Older Generation of Politicians Can’t Stop the American Intifada
Millions of Americans are clearly fed up, with war, with their government’s allegiance to a foreign country, to militarism, to police violence, to the unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech in the U.S., and more.
May 02, 2024
The mass protests at dozens of U.S. universities cannot be reduced to a stifling and misleading conversation about antisemitism.
Thousands of American students across the country are not protesting, risking their own futures and very safety, because of some pathological hate for the Jewish people. They are doing so in a complete rejection of, and justifiable outrage over, the mass killing carried out by the state of Israel against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza.
They are angry because the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7, is fully funded and backed by the U.S. government.
Young Americans, who are not beholden to the self-interests or historical and spiritual illusions of previous generations, are declaring that “enough is enough.”
These mass protests began at Columbia University on April 17 before covering all of U.S. geography, from New York to Texas and from North Carolina to California.
The protests are being compared, in terms of their nature and intensity, to the anti-war protests in the U.S. against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s.
While the comparison is apt, it is critical to note the ethnic diversity and social inclusiveness in the current protests. On many campuses, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Black, Native American, and white students are standing shoulder to shoulder with their Palestinian peers in a unified stance against the war.
None of them is motivated by fear that they could be drafted to fight in Gaza, as was, indeed, the case for many American students during the Vietnam War era. Instead, they are united around a clear set of priorities: ending the war, ending U.S. support of Israel, ending their universities’ direct investment in Israel, and the recognition of their right to protest. This is not idealism, but humanity at its finest moments.
Despite mass arrests, starting at Columbia, and the direct violence against peaceful protesters everywhere, the movement has only grown stronger.
On the other side, U.S. politicians, starting with President Joe Biden, accused the protesters of antisemitism, without engaging with any of their reasonable, and globally-supported, demands.
Once again, the Democratic and Republican establishments stood together in blind support for Israel.
Biden condemned the “antisemitic protests,” describing them as “reprehensible and dangerous.”
A few days later, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-La.), visited the university under tight security, using language that is hardly suitable for a country which claims to embrace democracy and respect freedom of expression and right of assembly.
“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and antisemitism to flourish on our campuses,” he said, adding: “I am here today joining my colleagues, and calling on President (Minouche) Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”
Shafik, however, was already on board, as she was the one who had called for the New York Police Department to crack down on the protesters, falsely accusing them of antisemitism.
U.S. mainstream media has helped contribute to the confusion and misinformation regarding the reasons behind the protests.
The Wall Street Journal, once more, allowed writers such as Steven Stalinsky to smear young justice activists for daring to criticize Israel’s horrendous genocide in Gaza.
“Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” he alleged, thus, once more taking a critical conversation about U.S. support of genocide into bizarre and unsubstantiated directions.
U.S. establishment writers may wish to continue to fool themselves and their readers, but the truth is that neither Hezbollah nor Hamas “recruiters” are active in Ivy League U.S. universities, where young people are often groomed to become leaders in government and large corporations.
All such distractions are meant to avoid the undeniable shift in American society, one that promises a long-term paradigm shift in popular views of Israel and Palestine.
For years prior to the current war, Americans have been changing their opinions on Israel, and their country’s so-called “special relationship” with Tel Aviv.
Young Democrats have led the trend, which can also be observed among independents and, to some extent, young Republicans.
A statement that asserts that “sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis” would have been unthinkable in the past. But it is the new normal, and latest opinion polls regarding the subject, along with Biden’s dwindling approval ratings, continue to attest to this fact.
The older generations of American politicians, who have built and sustained careers based on their unconditional support for Israel, are overwhelmed by the new reality. Their language is confused and riddled with falsehoods. Yet, they are willing to go as far as defaming a whole generation of their own people—the future leaders of America—to satisfy the demands of the Israeli government.
In a televised statement on April 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the protesters as “antisemitic mobs” who “have taken over leading universities,” alleging that the peaceful protesters are calling “for the annihilation of Israel.” His words should have outraged all Americans, regardless of their politics and ideology. Instead, more U.S. politicians began parroting Netanyahu’s words.
But political opportunism shall generate a blowback effect, not just in the distant future, but in the coming weeks and months, especially in the run-up to the presidential elections.
Millions of Americans are clearly fed up, with war, with their government’s allegiance to a foreign country, to militarism, to police violence, to the unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech in the U.S., and more.
Young Americans, who are not beholden to the self-interests or historical and spiritual illusions of previous generations, are declaring that “enough is enough.” They are doing more than chanting, and rising in unison, demanding answers, moral and legal accountability, and an immediate end to the war.
Now that the U.S. government has taken no action, in fact continues to feed the Israeli war machine in its onslaught against millions of Palestinians, these brave students are acting themselves. This is certainly an awe-inspiring, watershed moment in the history of the United States.
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Columbia Students File Civil Rights Complaint After Arrests, National Guard Threat
"The violent repression we're facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling."
Apr 25, 2024
A day after Columbia University officials warned it may call on the National Guard to remove nonviolent student protesters who have been occupying campus lawns since last week in solidarity with Gaza, advocacy group Palestine Legal on Thursday filed a federal civil rights complaint demanding an investigation into the school's "discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students and their allies."
The school discriminated against pro-Palestinian protesters last week when President Minouche Shafik summoned New York Police Department officers in riot gear to arrest more than 100 students, said Palestine Legal.
The complaint details how the escalation against students, who have set up an encampment on campus to demand Columbia divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, is part of a monthslong pattern of the university's targeting of pro-Palestinian students.
According to Palestine Legal, students of all backgrounds who have demanded an end to Israel's U.S.-backed massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment, including receiving multiple death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, stereotyped, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators including... Shafik, an attack with a chemical agent that led to at least 10 students requiring hospitalization and dozens of others, including a Palestinian student, seeking medical attention, and more."
Columbia student Maryam Alwan, who Palestine Legal is representing in the complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, said the university has "utterly failed to protect [her] from racism and abuse."
"Beyond that, the university has also played a role in this repression by having me arrested and suspended for peacefully protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza," said Alwan. "The violent repression we're facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling. Palestinian students at Columbia deserve justice and accountability, not only for Israel's decadeslong oppression and violence against our people, but for the racism and discrimination we've experienced here on Columbia's campus."
Palestine Legal is representing four students in the case, as well as Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which was suspended from the campus late last year after holding anti-war protests.
The group called Columbia's threat to call in the National Guard "gravely concerning."
"Columbia's vicious crackdown on student protests calling for Palestinian freedom amidst an ongoing genocide should alarm us all. Students have always been at the forefront of the most pressing social issues of the day," said Palestine Legal staff attorney Sabiya Ahamed.
College campuses have been the sites of frequent pro-Palestinian protests since October, and the NYPD's crackdown on Columbia students last week galvanized students at universities across the country.
The Biden administration has said little about the student demonstrations, but President Joe Biden referred to them broadly as "antisemitic protests" this week.
"We urge federal civil rights officials to do what Columbia has disgracefully failed to," said Ahamed. "Ensure the rights of Palestinian and allied students are protected at a moment when their voices are most essential."
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