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antisemitism
Mahmoud Khalil Is Not a Threat; the Trump Administration Is
The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil is part of the Trump administration’s larger project of creating and sustaining the illusion of endless enemies to distract from its oligarchic agenda.
Mar 10, 2025
The evening of the 8th of March, which coincides with the Holy month of Ramadan celebrated by almost 2 billion Muslims worldwide, took an expected turn for Mahmoud Khalil and his wife. Khalil just returned home from iftar—the evening meal Muslims eat to break their day-long fasting during Ramadan. His wife was eight months pregnant. The couple, perhaps, were preparing for the upcoming delivery of the baby and welcoming the new member of the family. Perhaps, they were getting ready to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, one of the two major religious festivals Muslims celebrate at the end of Ramadan.
What was likely not foreseen at all by this family was a raid, arrest, and detention by ICE. Mahmoud, a recent graduate of Columbia University and leading Palestinian solidarity organizer on campus, recently received his green card. A green card is the Permanent Resident Card that allows a person to live and work in the United States permanently. Mahmoud’s wife is a U.S. citizen. If all went well, Mahmoud could have applied for his U.S. citizenship after three to five years, subject to some terms and conditions. Because of being a legal permanent resident—the prior step to receiving U.S. citizenship through naturalization, ICE detention most likely was the last thing on Mahmoud’s mind.
I would argue that we are currently living in a state of exception. Since the Trump administration has assumed power, most of the welfare- and social justice-oriented laws and policies that were historically designed to protect and nurture our humans, environments, and the most vulnerable ones are being gradually replaced by extreme right-wing, hateful, and anti-all-kinds-of-minoritized-communities rules and regulations. To date, a total of 83 executive orders have been signed by President Donald J. Trump, and a significant portion of these orders are aimed at destroying environmental protections, abolishing social security, and cracking down against various marginalized and minoritized communities. If you are not a rich, white, Christian, U.S. citizen, cis-man, you are very likely to be impacted by a good number of these executive orders.
The goal is to remind us that we will be the next if we speak up and challenge oppressive systems.
A notable feature of most of these executive orders is that they appropriate the language of social justice. For example, the executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” is nothing about defending women’s rights but everything about erasing trans- and nonbinary identities and experiences. If President Trump really cared about women’s rights, perhaps he would have allowed federal funding for elective abortion in government programs instead of reinstating the Hyde Amendment. Similarly, the executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” disproportionately targets Palestinian solidarity organizers in various institutions of higher education—specifically those who are not U.S. citizens.
Let’s not forget the 2017 white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, where marchers displayed swastikas and chanted slogans like “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil”—a Nazi ideological slogan. Trump was heavily criticized for adopting a “both-sides” narrative in response to the violent demonstrations, as he said, “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” A 2021 New Yorker article by David Remnick dives deeper into inquiring, “Is Donald Trump an Antisemite?” The article features a series of interviews that reveal that Trump was more pro-Israel than pro-Jewish. Some of the voices from the Israeli left criticized Trump for portraying American Jews as betrayers who betrayed Israel by voting for Democrats. The Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland described Trump’s views towards Jews as, “...if American Jews don’t support what he says, they are ungrateful and he can question their loyalty. He sees Jews as foreign and supplicants who should be grateful to him.”
Against this background, when the Trump administration’s executive order to “combat Antisemitism” was enacted by the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by arresting and detaining Mahmoud Khalil, we should look beyond the formal accusation of antisemitism outlined by DHS on X: “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” We must dive deeper into asking what exactly the series of xenophobic measures, which include but are not limited to travel bans, visa cancellations, crackdowns on immigrants and refugees, terminating the Spanish-language version of the White House website, and trade and diplomatic wars, along with cuts on government spending and reducing the size and scope of the federal government, aim to achieve.
The U.S. has long been transforming into an oligarchy, which has been alarmingly expedited under the leadership of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. An executive order has assigned the White House more power to monitor and vet independent federal regulation agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission, restricting their ability to regulate cryptocurrency trading or curb the monopoly of multinational tech giants like Meta or Amazon. Billionaire elites are engaged in a partnership with the state, where the state is primarily tasked with serving elite corporate interests. Professor Allison Stanger rightfully says, “When we grant tech leaders direct control over government functions, we’re not just streamlining bureaucracy—we’re fundamentally altering the relationship between private power and public governance.”
When the balance of power between private versus public sectors disappears, and the state is no longer aimed at serving the commoners, the state struggles to maintain its relevancy and seeks legitimacy from the common people. Noam Chomsky argues that one of the most effective ways to establish the state legitimacy is the creation of a culture of fear and the construction of endless enemies, which pits vulnerable communities against each other without drawing any attention to intersecting systems of oppression. Since the Trump administration is not going to serve anyone in this country except for its billionaire allies and rich-white-Christian-cis-male supporter base, it needs to give the rest of the people the impression that it is going to save them from some existentialist threats.
I would argue that the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil is part of the Trump administration’s larger project of creating and sustaining the illusion of endless enemies, which include but are not limited to Arabs; Muslims; Palestinians; immigrants; refugees; Indigenous communities; people of color; women; the “undeserving” poor; and trans, queer, and nonbinary communities. Even though the Trump administration must be well aware of the fact that the oversimplistic conflation of all Palestinian solidarity organizers with “Hamas sympathizers” or the attempt to detain and deport noncitizen peaceful student protestors on the false ground of leading “activities aligned to Hamas” will face serious legal challenges in the court and pushback from progressive and social justice organizations, why does it continue to threaten Palestinian solidarity organizers?
I would say the goal is to leave a chilling effect. The goal is to remind us that we will be the next if we speak up and challenge oppressive systems. The goal is to emphasize that even securing a green card will not ensure that the constitutional right of freedom of speech or freedom of peaceful protest would extend to us. The goal is to push us to a state where we would start censoring ourselves in anticipation of being targeted long before the authoritarian state intervenes and starts penalizing us.
As the Trump administration attempts to restrict abortion and gender-affirming care and erase trans and nonbinary experiences in the name of protecting “life,” protecting “America’s children,” and protecting “family values,” Khalil was torn apart from his eight-month pregnant wife. The pregnant U.S. citizen wife was threatened with being arrested by ICE for trying to help her husband. The eighth month of pregnancy could feel debilitating, yet with a heavily pregnant body, Khalil’s wife has been forced to deal with the unbearable psychological and physical stress of spending hours communicating with lawyers and traveling between New York City and New Jersey trying to find the whereabouts of Khalil only to stay in the dark.
Will Khalil be able to be there with his wife on the day of Eid al-Fitr? Will he be able to be there by the side of his wife during the birth of their baby? If not, the United States does not really deserve to claim itself as “the land of the free.”
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'This Is the Fascist Playbook': Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil Shows Depths of Trump Threat
"Arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world's most repressive regimes."
Mar 10, 2025
Civil rights organizations, legal experts, and lawmakers were among the chorus voicing alarm Sunday and into Monday over the dire implications of the Trump administration's brazen arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian rights organizer who helped lead Columbia University student protests against Israel's assault on Gaza.
"The Trump administration's outrageous detention of Mahmoud is designed to instill terror in students speaking out for Palestinian freedom and immigrant communities," said Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has helped organize nationwide demonstrations against Israel's catastrophic war on the Palestinian enclave.
"This is the fascist playbook," the group added. "We all must fiercely reject it, and universities must start protecting its students."
Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident with a green card, was arrested on Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who stormed his university-owned apartment in Manhattan. Khalil's attorney toldThe Associated Press that the ICE agents also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, an American citizen.
As of Monday morning, Khalil—an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin—was being held in an ICE facility in Louisiana, and the Trump administration is moving to revoke his green card.
While the State Department CAN revoke *visas* with very little legal process involved, stripping someone of a green card is done by DHS (not the State Department) and requires filing formal charges alleging a violation of immigration law and a removal hearing in front of an immigration judge.
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— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick ( @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) March 9, 2025 at 7:05 PM
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Sunday that Khalil's arrest was carried out "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting antisemitism."
But JVP and other advocacy groups warned that the administration's purported crackdown on antisemitism is a pretext for a dangerous assault on civil liberties, including those of Palestinian rights advocates.
"We are not fooled by the Trump administration's claims that this blatantly unconstitutional and authoritarian attack is somehow in the name of Jewish safety," said JVP. "Deporting anti-war students who are trying to end genocide and silencing political speech endangers all of us. We will not be divided."
"The unlawful detention of Mr. Khalil reeks of McCarthyism. It's clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren't MAGA-approved."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement that "arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world's most repressive regimes."
"It's genuinely shocking that this appears to be what's going on right here," Jaffer added. "Universities must recognize that these actions pose an existential threat to academic life itself. They must make clear, through action, that they will not sit on the sidelines as the Trump administration terrorizes students and faculty alike and runs roughshod over individual rights and the rule of law."
Khalil's arrest came days after Trump threatened to imprison students engaged in what he described as "illegal protests." AP reported that "Khalil's arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump's promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring."
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement Sunday that "the Trump administration's detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a green card holder studying in this country legally—is targeted, retaliatory, and an extreme attack on his First Amendment rights."
"The unlawful detention of Mr. Khalil reeks of McCarthyism. It's clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren't MAGA-approved—which is a frightening escalation of Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, and an aggressive abuse of immigration law," Lieberman added. "Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus. Political speech should never be a basis of punishment, or lead to deportation."
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Targeting 'Criticism of Israeli War Crimes,' Trump Kills $400 Million in Columbia University Contracts
"You can't appease the Zionists," said one critic. "Stop playing the game—refuse the terms."
Mar 07, 2025
Columbia University administrators garnered widespread condemnation last year for overseeing a violent crackdown on students who protested against U.S. support for Israeli war crimes in Gaza, but those actions against pro-Palestinian students didn't stop the Trump administration from cutting contracts and grants for the school on Friday.
The White House announced it was canceling contracts and funding for the Ivy League university shortly after Columbia officials began sending notices to students who have participated in Palestinian solidarity protests decrying Israel's bombardment of Gaza and the West Bank.
A senior named Maryam Alwan was accused by the school of "discriminatory harassment" for writing an op-ed in the student newspaper joining the call for divestment from Israel, while another student was contacted by a new disciplinary committee—established specifically to discipline students who express criticism of Israel—for hosting an art exhibit that focused on last year's demonstrations.
But in a move that one civil liberties advocate said was aimed at coercing all colleges into "censoring student speech," the Trump administration announced it was pulling the grants and contracts because Columbia hasn't done enough to clamp down on alleged antisemitism on campus.
"Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
One critic advised Columbia administrators that the news of the canceled funding was proof that "you can't appease the Zionists" by oppressing pro-Palestinian students.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, toldThe Associated Press the move was unconstitutional and meant to stop student's "advocacy that isn't MAGA-approved, like criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinian rights."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, added that while Trump "claims to be protecting Jews" by pushing Columbia to take more aggressive action against Palestinian rights supporters, "this is clearly about suppressing criticism of Israeli war crimes."
The news came days after U.S. Senate Republicans held the latest hearing on what they claim is antisemitism on college campuses. One Jewish student at Tufts University, Meirav Solomon, who was invited by Democrats to testify at the hearing, pointed out that Trump's gutting of the Department of Education has left all students without a way to lodge complaints of discrimination with the agency's Office of Civil Rights—eliminating "a crucial avenue for Jews and other minorities to advocate for our rights."
Meanwhile, noted Solomon, Republicans on the committee had nothing to say about Trump ally Elon Musk's apparent Nazi salute at an inauguration event in January.
On Friday, the advocacy group Bend the Arc: Jewish Action said Trump's cancellation of Columbia's grants, "falsely in the name of Jewish safety, actively puts Jews in danger."
"History has shown that a strong democracy is what keeps Jews safest," said the group. "At the core of strong democracies are free speech and education."
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