Video documents arrest of Mahmoud Khalil by ICE thugs, as his wife plaintively begs them to give her information about his arrest.
The US government attempt to deport Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, is the first stage in a project not just to eliminate foreign students advocating for human rights, but to eviscerate higher education as well. It is declaring war on a so-called hotbed of hate infecting American society.
Until now, our universities were a shining light for academic excellence known around the world. They in turn represented the best of America, making a major contribution not only to educating our youth and preparing them for careers, but to global academic discourse. But they were independent. They offered carefull calibrated academic research and analysis. All anathema to the rising authoritarian state.
Trump, like all fascist leaders, views universities as the wellspring of “woke” culture, the cradle of radical ideas, an infection in the body politic. Vice President Vance encapsulated the attitude in an address entitled: Universities Are the Enemy.
But US institutions of higher learning are geographically and academically numerous and diverse. You can’t destroy a single one and wrest control of all the rest. Nevertheless, the attacks on Columbia are a “proof of concept” which can, if successful, intimidate all other such institutions. If Trump can cow Columbia, one of the most prestigious and powerful of US universities, he can transform them all into obedient reflections of MAGA ideology.
Widespread attacks part of plan to destroy federal government
But the attack on higher education is only part of a broader plan, which would destroy the federal government as we know it. This is no longer the Deep State Trump railed against in his first term. He is after the State itself: to eliminate all loci of power and influence outside of the executive branch.
Trump wants only three entities to remain standing: the executive, Congress and the Supreme Court. He already controls the latter by virtue of appointing three hard-line justices, giving him a 6-3 majority. But he doesn’t yet control the lower federal courts. There are too many judges appointed by Democrats or RINO presidents. And they form a last wall of resistance to his ideological vision.
Anything outside the direct control of the presidency is a threat and must be eliminated. The only agencies that will remain relatively unscathed will be Treasury, Defense and HHS (i.e. ICE). Mainly because the latter two are enforcers of key elements of the fascist regime Trump envisions. Several other agencies may remain as well (eg. the Federal Reserve), but they will, if Trump has his way, lose their independent status and become a creature of the executive branch.
One of the only bastions of resistance which Trump hasn’t (yet) been able to cow is the press. Some journalists and media outlets continue to offer independent reporting that takes on the excesses of the fascist regime. The American media landscape is large and diverse enough that he cannot mow down one channel and then destroy a free press. But that han’t stopped him from trying: last week he called two of his media nemeses, CNN and MSNBC, “illegal” presumably because critical reporting of the country’s executive is a criminal offense. Clearly, it’s not yet. But that’s the plan.
Other corporate media (i.e. MSNBC) eliminate program hosts of color and revamp their editorial perspective to cater to the MAGA crowd. They see which ways the political winds are blowing and don’t want to be seen as sailing against the prevailing winds.
Just as Viktor Orban did in Hungary, the MAGA coup d’etat seeks to bring the press, judiciary and higher education”to heel.” In the case of universities, the goal here in the US is to transform them into bastions of right wing academic discourse; and destroy those that resist. Orban did this in Hungary by replacing university administrators, installing his own chosen right-wing toadies; and tasking them with cleansing the faculty of dissidents and adapting the curriculum to subjects favorable to the Hungarian premier’s ideological point of view.
The takeover of US higher education
Trump has begun the process at Columbia by laying out the conditions under which he will restore the $400-million in government contracts he has withheld. The demands deliberately interfere with sacrosanct academic prerogatives including faculty appointments and the academic governance of departments. The result is, as in Hungary, a gradual imposition of restrictive regulations designed to impose ideological conformity:
Among the steps the administration demands is that Columbia place its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department under academic receivership, which would effectively give control over the program to a chair outside of Columbia’s faculty — a move that smacks of textbook racism. But the administration’s list of demands goes much further, requiring that Columbia:
- hand out expulsions or multiyear suspensions to demonstrators who participated in pro-Palestinian protests inside Hamilton Hall last year. (The university appears to have already taken steps in this direction.)
- abolish its University Judicial Board and “centralize all disciplinary processes,” including expulsions and suspensions, under the university president.
- ban masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate others,” and require any masked individuals to display their Columbia ID.
- adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism the administration formally adopted in Trump’s first term and has revived in his second.
- institute “time, place, and manner rules,” which are basically restrictions around protests.
- “empower” its security with “full law enforcement authority,” including authorizing the “arrest and removal of agitators” who foster an “unsafe or hostile work or study environment.”
- develop a “plan” to investigate and punish student groups “engaged in violations of University policy” — like some forms of protest, perhaps.
- “reform” its admissions processes, which as already undergone homogenizing changes in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling against racially conscious admissions policies.
Contra both Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer, Mahmoud Khalil’s views on antisemitism are a matter of public record. Here is what he said to Wolf Blitzer on Apr. 29, 2024. https://t.co/YAwfzAsVd5 pic.twitter.com/39ShEtwps7
— Joseph A. Howley (@hashtagoras) March 13, 2025
The anti-Semitism hoax
The central (false) claim justifying these draconian steps is that pro-Palestine campus protests are anti-Semitic, and that they make Jewish students and faculty “feel unsafe.” Surveys show that roughly half of Jewish college students have such fears. But when the nature of the perceived threats is probed, they include chants such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It’s difficult to see how a chant poses a legitimate physical threat. Not to mention, the vast majority of campus encampments were non-violent. In the rare instances of physical conflict, it was provoked by law enforcement or by counter-protesting thugs (as at UCLA). The perception of anti-Jewish bias is an emotional response that is entirely subjective, and not based on objective reality. Such fears are influenced as much by their elders’ anxieties as by actual campus events.
Critics of campus protest encampments have deliberately falsified the platform and beliefs of the protesters. In fact, Khalil gave an interview to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in which he declared:
“The liberation of Palestine and the Jewish people are intertwined. They go hand-in-hand. Anti-Semitism and any force of racism has no place on campus and in this movement.”
The Trump administration has conveniently ignored such statements, which fly in the face of charges that Khalil and the protest movement are “aligned with Hamas” or are terrorists; like Joe McCarthy, who lied and twisted what targeted enemies said, weaving it into a poisonous narrative enabling him to turn them into sacrificial victims.
The Jewish students who joined Khalil in the encampment have come to his defense. They’ve written letters to the judge overseeing his case. One writes:
Mahmoud is one of the most upstanding people I have ever met. Alongside other Jewish student activists, I only ever felt Mahmoud’s respect, solidarity, and strength…Anyone who has met Mahmoud knows that the White House’s smear campaign is just a shallow pretext to unleash state violence against student activists and further divide already traumatized communities.
Trump has supported the charges against Khalil, claiming he distributed purported “Hamas pamphlets” on campus. In fact, no one knows what the flyers say, who created them, and who distributed them. The original credited source was the “Hamas Media Office.” But there is no such entity. The only online reference I found was at a far-right site, Palestine Media Watch. It featured 2017 publication purported to be from Hamas contains no mention of this media unit. The Hamas website listed on the front page doesn’t exist, and the Twitter account was suspended long before the Columbia protests. Nor does Hamas distribute such political/media materials in English. Khalil explicitly denies the charges that he disseminated any such materials.
The pro-Israel/anti-Palestine campus campaign is based on distortion, provocation, manufactured “evidence.” and hoaxes. When you have no evidence to support claims, simply make them up. But make it believable so no one can tell the difference between false and fact.
The group that first offered such a claim is a pro-Israel campus group. From there the material reached the State Department. Trump’s media spokesperson referred to it in a press briefing as justification for deporting Khalil.
One of the main far-right groups known to be disseminating the flyers to administration officials and members of Congress is Betar. It is leading the campaign to mass deport pro-Palestine students and has also doxxed them blasting their phots on trucks circling the streets around campus. As a result, they have endured death threats, stalking and other forms of intimidation.
On the other hand, universities and the Trump administration ignore Muslim students who feel physically endangered by campus hate and even outright violence. No one seems to care how they feel. At best, they are an afterthought; an inconvenient ignored segment of the student population.
Israel Lobby groups like the ADL, American Jewish Committee and Hillel International, were the first to promote these false charges. They served as a vonduit for House GOP witch hunt show trials (aka hearings), which dragged Ivy League presidents befire them so they could vonfess thrur sins and those of their universities in insufficiently cracking down on the scourge of campus anti-Demiyism. The result was that two of the three presidents were forced by their boards of trustees to eedign. Once you capitulste to bullies you are lost. The result is the devastation we see now such.
The Israel Lobby organizations are direct accomoplices in Trump’s plan to academically-cleanse campuses nationwide of curriculum and speech critical of Israel. In other words, when American universities are neutered and collapse into ideologically safe zones, it will be these groups who were indispensable in the decline of US higher education.
Groups like these embrace this anti-Palestine rhetoric–just as the MAGA Republicans do–for political advantage. Also, it appeals to the wealthy pro-Israel billionaires who fund their organizational coffers and campaign war chests. Anti-Semitism, a real prejudice that has caused Jewish suffering for millenia, is exploited. And the suffering of those Jews who were real victims of anti-Semitism is diminished and their memories desecrated.
BREAKING: Jewish Voice for Peace is leading a sit-in in the lobby of Trump tower to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil. pic.twitter.com/8ZgZkeZdIp
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) March 13, 2025
One of the only groups protesting Trump policy is Jewish Voice for Peace, which brought hundreds of protesters to Trump Tower (watch video above), occupying its atrium while brandishing banners saying “Free Mahmoud/Free Palestine,” “Jews Say Do Not Comply,” etc. It is, unfortunately, the only Jewish organization offering full-throated, unconditional support for the effort to stave off deportation.
Liberal pro-Israel performative support
There are liberal voices as well, expressing opposition to Khalil’s arrest. But they do so on strictly procedural grounds. They agree with the charges of anti-Semitism, but argue that Khalil should go free because of his constitutional rights, rather than the content of his speech. Though they may articulate their opposition based on constitutional principles, it speaks of opportunism. They understand that political support is building in favor of Khalil and opposition is mounting against the draconian tactics of ICE. They want to be on the right side of the issue for purely political reasons.
As example is Sen. Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority leader:
I abhor many of the opinions and policies that Mahmoud Khalil holds and supports, and have made my criticism of the antisemitic actions at Columbia loudly known. Mr. Khalil is also legal permanent resident here, and his wife, who is 8-months pregnant, is an American citizen.…
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) March 11, 2025
On the one hand, Schumer must insulate himself from charges that he is “soft” on Palestine. He must retain his pro-Israel credentials at all costs. Thus he joins the false chorus that Khalil is an anti-Semite. He offers this as a sop to his Israel Lobby donors, who’ve showered him with $2-million in campaign cash.
On the other hand, Schumer argues that Khalil deserves constitutional protection. It’s a tepid, back-handed defense. It permits the MAGA Republicans to co-opt the liberals in one essential way: it accepts the far-right contention that Khalil supports Hamas, that he is a terrorist, or at least terrorist sympathizer. None of this is true. But that doesn’t matter. They’ve made their case. Khalil is guilty. Case closed.
Other Jewish organizations similarly expressed opposition to Khalil’s detention, while denouncing his political views. They’ve attenuated their argument, trying to have it both ways. In doing so, they’ve diminished their own moral integrity.
The MAGA backlash against campus protest also goes hand-in-hand with promoting pro-Israel interests. The Israel Lobby and its wealthy donors have played a major role in the campus witch-hunt. The anti-Semitism claim is an easy one for Americans to understand. The real target is not anti-Semitism, but anti-Zionism. The backlash deliberately conflates the two, exploiting the first to hide the second. Backers of the campus backlash understand that crusading against anti-Zionism would be a vain enterprise, because most people do not understand what Zionism is, let alone anti-Zionism. So instead, they raise the hoary specter of anti-Semitism, which everyone understands, or thinks they do.
Manufacturing anti-Semitism
They exploit a manufactured definition of anti-Semitism which includes criticism of Israel, with an especial focus on Gaza genocide. Any sympathy for the victims means hate for the perpetrators. Imagine during WWII, a domestic US lobby declaring that claims of genocide and criticism against Germany were tantamount to anti-Nazism, and constituted an effort to destroy the German people. That is what is happening today.
Anti-Semitism is weaponized to promote political interests. Even worse, the primary promoters of this hoax are not Jews themselves, but MAGA Republicans and other non-Jewish ideologues. For example, the section of Project 2025 concerning anti-Semitism, entitled Project Esther, was written not by someone with any special expertise on the subject, but by a Christian nationalist hack. There was no meaningful input from Jewish groups or experts. The anti-Semitism charge is a perfect example of Jewsplaining. Right-wing theocrats telling Jews that it knows what’s good for them and imposing their own values and interests on them.
This is a film about Mahmoud Khalil that’s worth watching:
Listen to Mahmoud Khalil’s story in his own words: how his family ended up in the refugee camp, where he was born and his aspirations for a free Palestine.
This clip is from our upcoming film The Encampments, which features Mahmoud. It is set to be released this year by… pic.twitter.com/VXgMABC3KG
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) March 12, 2025
Have you read Craig Murray’s article on his case? What do you think of it?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/03/the-curious-case-of-mahmoud-khalil/
Also, do you believe that Trump is really going to launch war against Iran if Ansar Allah does not back down?
https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/trump-wants-war-with-iran?r=25fc37
As IHRA, the so-called, “definition of Anti-Semitism”, gets embraced by the White House and by universities, any criticism of anything Jewish is immediately “Anti-Semitism” and therefore, must be punished.
The Administration is not doing Jews any favors by such draconian measures in fact, by making anything except praise for the genocide, “anti-Semitic”, the administration and all other groups seeking to suppress criticism of Israel, are in the business of creating hate against Jews. They are smart enough to know that but selfish enough to ignore it.
As the genocide continues, so will rise the oppression of people, especially Muslims, opposing the genocide. And tragically, so too, will hate against Jews rise.
Just a small note to an excellent analysis.
You write that Jewish Voice for Peace, “is, unfortunately, the only Jewish organization offering full-throated, unconditional support for the effort to stave off deportation.”
I believe J Street U and J Street itself and New Jew. Narrative all oppose Khalil’s detention, etc.
best jeff
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