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writers against the war on gaza
ICE Arrests Palestinian Green Card Holder Who Helped Lead Columbia's Gaza Solidarity Camp
"The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a green card holder whose wife is eight months pregnant—is a blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump," said one critic.
Mar 10, 2025
Federal agents on Saturday arrested a prominent Palestinian activist and permanent U.S. resident who says the arresting officers told him his green card had been revoked.
Mahmoud Khalil and his wife, who is eight months pregnant, were returning home at around 8:30 pm Saturday when plainclothes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents "pushed in behind them," advocates for Khalil
toldZeteo's Prem Thakker. Khalil's attorney, Amy Greer, said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents also threatened to arrest his wife.
Last week, the U.S. State Department announced the launch of an artificial intelligence-powered "catch and revoke" program to cancel the visas of international students deemed supportive of Hamas. This, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel's assault on Gaza.
"Clearly Trump is using the protesters as a scapegoat for his wider agenda fighting and attacking higher education and the Ivy League education system," Khalil toldReuters Saturday before his arrest.
Thakker reported:
The agents claimed that the State Department had revoked Khalil's student visa, with one agent presenting what he claimed was a warrant on his cell phone. But Khalil, according to advocates, has a green card. Khalil's wife went to their apartment to get the green card.
"He has a green card," an agent apparently said on the phone, confused by the matter. But then after a moment, the agent claimed that the State Department had "revoked that too."
Experts said that revoking a green card is very rare and typically only occurs when a permanent resident has committed a serious crime, engages in immigration fraud, or clearly demonstrates intent to abandon their status.
"This has the appearance of a retaliatory action against someone who expressed an opinion the Trump administration didn't like," Camille Mackler, founder of Immigrant ARC, a coalition of New York legal service providers, toldHuffpost.
Khalil graduated in December with a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. He was also a lead negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest during the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which drew international attention as Israeli forces killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and annihilated much of their homeland. Khalil was briefly suspended last spring for his protest activities.
Elora Mukherjee, director of the immigrants' rights clinic at Columbia Law School, toldThe New York Times that if the Trump administration revoked Khalil's green card "in retaliation for his public speech, that is prohibited by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said late Sunday that Khalil was arrested "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting antisemitism."
"Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization," McLaughlin added. "ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump's executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security."
However, Greer said that "we will vigorously be pursuing Mahmoud's rights in court, and will continue our efforts to right this terrible and inexcusable—and calculated—wrong committed against him."
Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement that "this blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America."
The Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers, which represents more than 3,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers, urged Columbia staff and students to oppose the school's "cooperation with the Trump administration."
“By allowing ICE on campus, Columbia is surrendering to the Trump administration's assault on universities across the country and sacrificing international students to protect its finances," the union said in a statement.
Last week, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, claiming the school—which cracked down hard on Gaza protesters—hasn't done enough to combat antisemitism.
The Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) coalition noted that "Columbia University has published guidance on how best to collaborate with federal enforcement, including advising faculty and staff 'not to interfere' with ICE agents even if those agents are unable to present a warrant."
"Columbia's continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible."
"Columbia's continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible," WAWOG argued.
"A Palestinian student and member of the community has been abducted and detained without the physical demonstration of a warrant or officially filed charges," the coalition continued. "Like many other Arab and Muslim students, Khalil has been the target of various Zionist harassment campaigns, fueled by doxxing websites like Canary Mission."
"This racist targeting serves to instill fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others," WAWOG added.
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Pulitzer Snubs Palestinian Journalists' Gaza Coverage
The Pulitzer Prize Board avoided "naming the brave Palestinian journalists who did the reporting and filming and died in record numbers," said one journalist.
May 06, 2024
In recent years, the Pulitzer Prize Board has given special recognition to the journalists of Ukraine and Afghanistan for reporting from war zones, honoring their "courage, endurance, and commitment to truthful reporting" and their ability to tell their communities' stories under "profoundly tragic and complicated circumstances."
On Monday, no such recognition was given to Palestinian reporters in Gaza, at least 92 of whom have been among more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in the enclave since Israel began its bombardment in October.
The annual journalism and literature awards included a special citation for "journalists and media workers covering the war in Gaza"—but didn't differentiate between those around the world who have spent the last seven months telling the story of Israel's escalation from the safety of far-off countries, and those struggling to report on the destruction of their own home under the constant threat of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacks.
"The missing word is—is always—Palestinian," said Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG). "Palestinian journalists and media workers deserve, if nothing else, this recognition; and half of them are dead."
Public health writer Abdullah Shihipar noted that in 2022, the board awarded the special citation to the "journalists of Ukraine." In 2021, it recognized "women and men of Afghanistan," saying that from "staff and freelance correspondents to interpreters to drivers to hosts, courageous Afghan residents helped produce Pulitzer-winning and Pulitzer-worthy images and stories."
This year, said Intercept journalist Jeremy Scahill, giving a special citation to "'media workers covering the war in Gaza' is a way to avoid naming the brave Palestinian journalists who did the reporting and filming and died in record numbers."
Many of those killed, Scahill added, might not have been had it not been for U.S.-made weapons sold to Israel.
The Pulitzer Prize for international reporting was awarded to The New York Times "for its wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas' lethal attack in southern Israel on October 7, Israel's intelligence failures, and the Israeli military's sweeping, deadly response in Gaza."
One of the Times' most explosive articles about Israel and Gaza, "Screams Without Words," about the alleged sexual assaults of Israeli victims of the October 7 attack, was not among those submitted for consideration. The article has come under scrutiny because of the anti-Palestinian bias expressed by one of the freelance reporters who worked on it, and questions about its veracity.
WAWOG, which has started a website titledThe New York War Crimes, posted on social media that the Times should have instead been awarded the Pulitzer for "manufacturing consent."
By honoring the Times for its international reporting this year, said City University of New York sociology professor Heba Gowayed, the Pulitzer Prize "lost any credibility it ever had."
The prize is administered by Columbia University, where students have been protesting for weeks against U.S. support for the IDF and against the school's investment in companies that contract with Israel.
Last week, the university called on the New York Police Department to forcibly remove student protesters from a school building; police told student journalists they would be arrested if they left Pulitzer Hall to report on the incident. Student journalists are reportedly still being barred from campus.
Columbia, said Jack Mirkinson of The Nation, announced the Pulitzers "at the exact same time it is clamping down on the press freedom of its own students. You couldn't make it up."
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Protests and Parody Paper Decry New York Times' Pro-Israel Bias in Gaza Coverage
"The Times is not unique among media in manufacturing consent for war, for exploitation, for genocide. It is, rather, exemplary."
Mar 15, 2024
More than 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested Thursday after staging a protest at The New York Times' Midtown Manhattan headquarters, where activists handed out copies of a satirical knockoff of the newspaper that skewered what organizers called its biased coverage of the Gaza genocide.
After surrounding the Times' printing plant in College Point, Queens, members of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), Palestinian Youth Movement, and other groups shut down the paper's Midtown West headquarters, where they chanted, "New York Times you can't hide, we charge you with genocide," "free, free Palestine," and "from the river to the sea."
Around 150 demonstrators occupied the Times building, where they called on passersby to "boycott, divest, and unsubscribe." Some passersby confronted the demonstrators. One angry man attempted to steal a large banner from protesters. The New York Police Department said 124 protesters were arrested.
Some of the activists handed out parody copies of the Times, renamed as the The New York War Crimes. The paper's creators also changed the Times' "All the News That's Fit to Print" motto to "All the Consent That's Fit to Manufacture."
"The Times is not unique among media in manufacturing consent for war, for exploitation, for genocide," notes the satirical paper, which also has a website. "It is, rather, exemplary. Indeed, perhaps the deadliest weapon of all is the Times' sense of its own importance, its self-appointed role as the arbiter of what counts as good journalism."
"If theTimes says it, it must be true; if they print it, it must be fit to print," the publication adds. "The Times' reputation for liberalism, for rigor, for nonpartisan independence is precisely what makes it so dangerous, because it hides what it really is: media that serves the interests of U.S. imperialism."
One article, "How to Make a Genocide Disappear," breaks down how Times coverage of Israel's war on Gaza uses language, framing, and focus that favors Israel:
According to this story, Israel has responded to an unexplainable attack by Hamas, a shadowy Islamist terror group, with proportional force. A story in which attacks on hospitals and schools are regrettable but necessary evils. In the Times' surrealist account, the Israeli military stands on the frontlines of feminism, queer rights, and democracy. Hamas is to blame for the deaths of 30,000 Palestinians. The United States is a reproachful ally, not a calculating and enabling accomplice. A handful of Israeli hostages are worthy of dozens of tearful stories and op-eds, while thousands of Palestinians are kidnapped and tortured without fanfare. Even Israel's widespread, targeted murder of at least 125 journalists—a horror that the newspaper, with its much-touted reverence for journalism, might be expected to take particular heed of—is rendered invisible.
The New York War Crimes' site also highlights the Times' past support for U.S. wars, coups, and other crimes, from the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s through the 21st-century events like the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on false pretenses.
Responding to the protest, a Times spokesperson said that "the Israel-Hamas war is one of the most divisive global events in recent history," and that "we will not let critics or advocacy groups sway us from covering the conflict fully and fairly."
At the Queens demonstration—which took place from around 1:00-3:30 am—protesters laid down in a driveway and locked themselves to each other using chains and PVC pipes. Other activists held signs reading, "Stop the presses. Free Palestine" and "Consent for genocide is manufactured here." The protesters dispersed after police said they could leave freely or face arrest.
As Hell Gatereported:
A night shift worker from another operation down the block strolled over to see what the growing traffic jam was all about. "Oh, that's what's up," he said, when he saw the banners. "I'm Egyptian." Activists explained the goals of their action, and he bumped their fists. "You guys are putting in work!" he said.
The New York War Crimes tells readers that "now is the time to act."
"Those who believe in a free Palestine have long refused to buy products from American companies that make weapons for Israel," the paper states. "For exactly the same reason, we boycott all the offerings of The New York Times. We do not share their articles or listen to their podcasts. We do not cook their recipes or read their newsletters. We do not play their games. We divest ourselves of the notion that they either deserve or bestow merit."
"If you still subscribe to the Times, unsubscribe," the publication implores. "If you read the Times, stop. Write the editors an email telling them why you're boycotting, divesting, and unsubscribing."
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