SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
israeli occupation
After Khalil Abduction by ICE, Jeffries and Schumer 'Not the Men for This Moment In History'
Democratic leaders "helped create the conditions for this framing anti-genocide speech as antisemitic/terrorism," said one journalist.
Mar 11, 2025
The two highest-ranking Democratic members of Congress both call New York City home, but even with their personal connection to the city where immigration agents abducted a recent Columbia University graduate for his involvement in pro-Palestinian protests, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have had little to say about Saturday night's arrest.
Amid mounting calls from House progressives and advocacy groups for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil on Monday evening, Jeffries released a statement that one local rights group derided as "word salad," starting by accepting the Trump administration's narrative about the former student who helped organize last year's Palestinian solidarity encampment.
"To the extent his actions were inconsistent with Columbia University policy and created an unacceptable hostile academic environment for Jewish students and others, there is a serious university disciplinary process that can handle the matter," said Jeffries, calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to "produce facts and evidence of criminal activity... such as providing material support for a terrorist organization."
Jeffries noted that the Trump administration's arrest and detention of Khalil—which were carried out under the State Department's "catch and revoke" program—"are wildly inconsistent with the United States Constitution." His statement contrasted starkly with those of his progressive colleagues including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who warned that the Trump administration is signaling "they can disappear US citizens too," and demanded Khalil's release.
The House leader's statement came after a federal judge blocked the administration from removing Khalil from the U.S. and reviewed a petition saying his detention is unlawful. Khalil is a legal resident with a green card and a citizen of Algeria.
The statement from Jeffries—who has faced condemnation for suggesting Democrats are powerless to stop President Donald Trump from imposing his agenda and has privately complained about demands for action from advocacy groups—offered the latest evidence that "he is impressively unsuited to the moment," as writer Noah Kulwin said.
Schumer, who is "the most powerful politician in New York State, and the highest ranking American Jewish elected official—locally famous for his retail politics and shaking everyone's hands at local events," had not released a statement on Khalil's detention at press time, noted local historian and community organizer Asad Dandia.
"Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are not the men for this moment in history," saidNew Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang. "So obvious and gets more obvious by the day."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) abduction of Khalil and efforts to have him deported—with Trump warning his arrest will be the "first of many"—came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that under the "catch and revoke" program, the administration "will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported." On Sunday, DHS said the arrest was carried out "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting antisemitism."
Supporters of Trump's actions have pointed to videos of Khalil being interviewed last year about the Columbia encampment and organizers' negotiations with Columbia officials to push for divestment from companies that have profited from Israel's policies in Gaza and the West Bank.
"Our demands are clear, our demands are regarding divestment from the Israeli occupation, the companies that are profiting and contributing to the genocide of our people," said Khalil in one video.
Adalah-NY, which supports calls for a boycott of Israel to protest its oppression and violence against Palestinians, said it was "no coincidence" that Jeffries offered tacit approval of the accusations against Khalil, considering his longtime vocal support for Israel.
"Fire Hakeem Jeffries," said Track AIPAC, which keeps track of donations lawmakers receive from the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Jeffries has taken $1.6 million from the lobbying group.
Musician Soul Khan asked whether Jeffries and Schumer are "trying to get Mahmoud Khalil out of ICE detention and ensure the security of his green card status," calling his abduction "the most urgent domestic crisis happening right now."
Journalist Kylie Cheung called Khalil's abduction, along with the order to "single out, detain, persecute someone for their political speech" coming directly from the president, "the purest distillation of fascism."
But with Democratic leaders, including former President Joe Biden, joining Republicans in claiming that student-led protests against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza were endangering Jewish students, said Cheung, the party "helped create the conditions for this framing [of] anti-genocide speech as antisemitic/terrorism."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Could Reckoning With the Gaza War Revive International Law?
There is an opportunity for the international legal and political system to be fixed based on new standards, justice that applies to all, and accountability that is expected from all.
Mar 09, 2025
International law is fighting for relevance. The outcome of this fight is likely to change the entire global political dynamics, which were shaped by World War II and sustained through the selective interpretation of the law by dominant countries.
In principle, international law should have always been relevant, if not paramount, in governing the relationships between all countries, large and small, to resolve conflicts before they turn into outright wars. It should also have worked to prevent a return to an era of exploitation that allowed Western colonialism to practically enslave the Global South for hundreds of years.
Unfortunately, international law, which was in theory supposed to reflect global consensus, was hardly dedicated to peace or genuinely invested in the decolonization of the South.
Instead of reconsidering their approach to Israel, and refraining from feeding the war machine, many Western governments lashed out at civil society for merely advocating the enforcement of international law.
From the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan to the war on Libya and numerous other examples, past and present, the United Nations was often used as a platform for the strong to impose their will on the weak. And whenever smaller countries collectively fought back, as the U.N. General Assembly often does, those with veto power, military, and economic leverage used their advantage to coerce the rest based on the maxim, "Might makes right."
It should therefore hardly be a surprise to see many intellectuals and politicians in the Global South arguing that, aside from paying lip service to peace, human rights, and justice, international law has always been irrelevant.
This irrelevance was put on full display through 15 months of a relentless Israeli genocidal war on Gaza that killed and wounded over 160,000 people, a number that, according to several credible medical journals and studies, is expected to dramatically rise.
Yet, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opened an investigation of plausible genocide in Gaza on January 26, followed by a decisive ruling on July 19 regarding the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the international system began showing a pulse, however faint. The International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrants were another proof that West-centered legal institutions are capable of change.
The angry American response to all of this was predictable. Washington has been fighting against international accountability for many years. The U.S. Congress under the George W. Bush administration, as early as 2002, passed a law that shielded U.S. soldiers "against criminal prosecution" by the ICC, to which the U.S. is not a party.
The so-called Hague Invasion Act authorized the use of military force to rescue American citizens or military personnel detained by the ICC.
Naturally, many of Washington's measures to pressure, threaten, or punish international institutions have been linked to shielding Israel under various guises.
The global outcry and demands for accountability following Israel's genocide in Gaza, however, have once again put Western governments on the defensive. For the first time, Israel was facing the kind of scrutiny that rendered it, in many respects, a pariah state.
Instead of reconsidering their approach to Israel, and refraining from feeding the war machine, many Western governments lashed out at civil society for merely advocating the enforcement of international law. Those targeted included U.N.-affiliated human rights defenders.
On February 18, German police descended on the Junge Welt venue in Berlin as if they were about to apprehend a notorious criminal. They surrounded the building in full gear, sparking a bizarre drama that should have never taken place in a country that perceives itself as democratic.
The reason behind the security mobilization was none other than Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer, an outspoken critic of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and the current United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
If it were not for the U.N.'s intervention, Albanese could have been arrested simply for demanding that Israel must be held accountable for its crimes against Palestinians.
Germany, however, is not the exception. Other Western powers, lead amongst them the U.S., are actively taking part in this moral crisis. Washington has taken serious and troubling steps, not just to protect Israel, and itself, from accountability to international law, but to punish the very international institutions, its judges, and officials for daring to question Israel's behavior.
Indeed, on February 13, the U.S. sanctioned the ICC's chief prosecutor due to his stance on Israel.
After some hesitance, Karim Khan has done what no other ICC prosecutor had done before: issuing, on November 21, arrest warrants for two Israeli leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They are currently wanted for "crimes against humanity and war crimes."
The moral crisis deepens when the judges become the accused, as Khan found himself at the receiving end of endless Western media attacks and abuse, in addition to U.S. sanctions.
As disturbing as all of this is, there is a silver lining, specifically an opportunity for the international legal and political system to be fixed based on new standards, justice that applies to all, and accountability that is expected from all.
Those who continue to support Israel have practically disowned international law altogether. The consequences of their decisions are dire. But for the rest of humanity, the Gaza war can be that very opportunity to reconstruct a more equitable world, one that is not molded by the militarily powerful, but by the need to stop senseless killings of innocent children.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the US Has Not Been a Force for Peace
The polar opposite of the needed diplomatic effort is what has been the dominant strategy of Israel and to a large degree also of the United States: the application of ever more military force.
Dec 12, 2024
The retiring United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process has insightfully identified a major reason the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continues to boil and to entail widespread death and destruction.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Norwegian diplomat Tor Wennesland criticized the international community for relying on short-term fixes such as improving quality of life in occupied territory or diversions such as seeking peace deals between Israel and other Arab states. The crescendo of bloodshed during the past year underscores the ineffectiveness of such approaches.
Needed but not employed was a concerted and sustained diplomatic effort to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state. “What we have seen,” said Wennesland, “is the failure of dealing with the real conflict, the failure of politics and diplomacy.”
It is important to understand what diplomacy in this context does and does not mean. It does not mean routinely giving lip service to a “two-state solution” while doing little or nothing to bring about such a solution.
Much of Wennesland’s criticism was directed at the international community as a whole, but his points would apply especially to the United States, the patron of the party to the conflict that controls the land in question and resists Palestinian sovereignty.
The polar opposite of the needed diplomatic effort is what has been the dominant strategy of Israel and to a large degree also of the United States: the application of ever more military force. This was true with the 1973 war between Egypt and Israel, the first full-scale Arab-Israeli war after Israel conquered in 1967 what is now the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights.
The central feature of former U.S. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy was a huge airlift of military supplies to Israel. Nixon and Kissinger, viewing the conflict in Cold War terms, considered their policy a success by enabling Israel to turn the tide of battle while shutting the Soviet Union out of a meaningful regional role.
Fast forward to today, and the emphasis is still on military escalation. Israel, in its vain effort to “destroy Hamas” and strike down adversaries on its northern border, is more committed than ever to increasing death and destruction as its default approach toward any security problem. The United States has abetted this approach by gifting $18 billion in munitions to Israel since October 2023.
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria does nothing to discourage these tendencies and may instead encourage them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the events in Syria with celebration and self-congratulations, claiming that Assad’s fall was due to earlier Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah and Iran. The change of regime was an occasion for Israel increasing rather than decreasing its offensive military activity in Syria, including seizure of a previously demilitarized buffer zone along the Golan frontier and airstrikes in and around Damascus on the very weekend that rebels were entering the capital.
During the intervening years since the 1973 war, a couple of U.S. presidents did make genuine efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But the necessary follow-up—largely the responsibility of subsequent administrations—did not occur.
After former President Jimmy Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin pocketed the resulting peace treaty with Egypt while ignoring the part of the accords dealing with the Palestinians. After former President Bill Clinton in 2000 laid on the table his "parameters" for a deal, the two sides came closer than ever to a peace agreement, but an Israeli election ended the negotiations and the new Israeli government did not return to the table.
The current impending change in U.S. administrations offers little or no hope for positive change on this subject. After social media posts by President-elect Donald Trump that said nothing about diplomacy and instead talked about “all hell to pay” if Israeli hostages were not released by his inauguration on January 20, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump for his “strong statement.”
Ignoring that Israel has both the power and the land and is inflicting many times more suffering on innocent civilians than anything Hamas has done, Netanyahu said that Trump’s statement “clarifies that there is one party responsible for this situation and that is Hamas.”
Echoes of a 1973-style Cold War mentality can be heard today in much discussion of U.S. policy toward the Middle East and overwhelmingly in Israeli rhetoric. The main bête noire this time is Iran, reducing the influence of which is a constantly invoked rationale for hawkish and military-heavy policies.
The Middle East is not the only region that has demonstrated the fallacy of the notion of deescalating a conflict through military escalation. As Wennesland puts it, “Politics is what ends war, and diplomacy is what ends war.”
It is important to understand what diplomacy in this context does and does not mean. It does not mean routinely giving lip service to a “two-state solution” while doing little or nothing to bring about such a solution.
Nor does it mean seeking agreements for the sake of agreements, motivated in large part by a desire to wave supposed accomplishments before a domestic constituency. This was true of the so-called "Abraham Accords," which were not peace agreements at all but instead were largely about Israel not having to make peace to enjoy formal relations with other regional states, with which Israel was not at war anyway.
It was true as well of the enormous priority that the Biden administration put on seeking a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia, which, even if it had materialized in the form the administration envisioned, would not have served either U.S. interests or the cause of Middle East peace. The administration’s effort along this line was counterproductive not only in further reducing any Israeli incentive to make peace with the Palestinians but also, as President Joe Biden himself admitted, in probably being an additional motivation for Hamas to attack Israel last October.
As for what diplomacy does mean, it includes the concerted and sustained use of diplomatic energy, policymaking bandwidth, and political capital to address directly the core issues underlying a conflict and bring about a result that makes a difference. In the Middle East context, that result needs to include Palestinian self-determination and an end to occupation.
Correct understanding of diplomacy also speaks to what a foreign policy of restraint means. It does not mean isolationism. In areas such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can mean an increase in diplomatic involvement and in the priority that policymakers give to the goal being sought. As the restraint-minded Quincy Institute puts it in its statement of principles, the United States “should engage with the world” and pursue peace “through the vigorous practice of diplomacy.”
Much damage from the policies that Wennesland laments has been done and cannot easily be reversed. The Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied territories, which tsk-tsks from the United States have done nothing to stop, have led many observers—though not Wennesland—to believe that a two-state solution is no longer possible.
But even if the requirement of Palestinian self-determination could be achieved only through a one-state solution that provides equal rights for all, the same principle—that peace can be achieved only through vigorous diplomacy and not military escalation—applies.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular