Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story

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Across the 2024 election, Donald Trump and the people behind him said again and again that they were here to restore free speech to this country.

Then they got power, and this administration came after speech in a way the left never dared to do, never wanted to do.

You saw it with the hunt to cancel any grant that had the word diversity anywhere near it.

You saw it as countless organizations that depended on the government or that feared the government began reworking their mission statements or censoring their websites to avoid any words that might offend anyone in this administration.

You saw it as border agents looked through travelers' phones to see if they had said anything that the administration wouldn't like.

And you saw it as immigration agents began yanking people off the streets for the crime of nothing more than speech.

Among the first of these was Mahmoud Khalil, who'd been a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia, a leader in the school's anti-Israel protests.

Khalil's a green card holder.

He's married to a U.S.

citizen.

His sole offense had been to speak out against Israel in a way this administration did not like.

He was detained under authority the U.S.

Secretary of State has to cancel the residency of non-citizens who threaten U.S.

foreign policy.

Did this grad student at Columbia actually threaten U.S.

foreign policy?

Is that how fragile our foreign policy is?

No one really believed that.

Khalil was not followed into his building by plainclothes officers and taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana for more than 100 days, imprisoned there while his wife gave birth, because U.S.

government feared him.

He was imprisoned there because U.S.

government wanted others like him to fear them.

It wanted non-citizens and immigrants to stop speaking out.

It wanted everyone to ask: if they could do this to Khalil, could they do it to me?

If they could detain him on such flimsy grounds, could they not come up with a reason to detain me?

Khalil is out now on bail.

He's still speaking.

And so I wanted to hear what he had to say.

As always, my email, ezraklinshow at nytimes.com.

Bakhmoud Khalil, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Azra.

So let's start at the beginning.

Just tell me a bit about yourself.

Where were you born?

I was born in a very small Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus called Khanjjih camp.

It's really like,

I wouldn't say like a poor

neighborhood, but middle class, lower middle class.

What did your parents do?

So my parents now, they are in Europe.

In Syria, both they were civil servants.

My mom, like just working in a civil office, issuing passports, IDs to people.

My dad was a wielder working in

a state company.

Doing like metal work?

Yeah.

And what did they want for you?

Like when you were growing up,

what did they hope your adulthood would look like?

So both my parents really wanted us to be educated and invested a lot in our education, especially that, you know, my dad barely made it to middle school.

My mom had only like high school.

And when you're Palestinian in Syria, when you don't have any

property,

there's nothing like, you know, in terms of like family wealth.

So education is our main investment.

So we really like, my parents would rather us getting educated than actually getting food at some, at a lot of points.

What were you told about your family's history in Palestine growing up?

How did that

how is that identity formed for you?

You know, what I know about Palestine, I heard it from my grandmother, who spent

30 years in Palestine,

in Tiberias.

And actually my grandmother always

would always tell me that they had Jewish neighbors.

She would work in their farm.

So we had that sense of, you know, that there was coexistence.

And my grandparents were exiled from Palestine in 1948.

And

my grandmother, when she left Palestine, she was pregnant with my uncle.

And she had to give birth en route.

to southern Damascus.

So we had that sense of like injustice,

that sense of

Palestine was taken from us, was stolen from us.

The camp is just like about 30, 40 miles away from the borders.

You can see the impact of Nakba, the Palestinian exile from Palestine around you, because everyone is talking about it.

And we grew up in that environment that we long to go back.

That's why they lived in literally just a normal tent for a number of years before upgrading it to a mud house.

And then they decided to build sort of a concrete house because it was always living in the camps to Palestinians is always temporary.

It's a station until we go back to Palestine.

You said you grew up in Syria and you had to flee during the uprising.

Tell me about that moment.

What leads to you deciding you have to leave?

The Syrian people

erupted against the autocracy in Syria, the Syrian regime.

And

I was part of that.

Like Palestinians also were oppressed by the Syrian regime.

And as a result of that, I was part of organizing protests, relief to displaced persons.

But on January 11th, 2013, two of my friends were disappeared, arbitrarily detained, and they had to flee the next day.

And these two friends died under torture.

How did you become involved in organizing in the Syrian protests?

I mean, that's a dangerous thing to do.

You're how old?

I was 16 at that point.

Palestinian refugees were sort of,

at the very beginning, isolated from the big protests.

So a lot of displaced persons, Syrians, would come to the camp, would come to our schools.

So we opened our schools and we started a whole relief operation

for them.

So we felt that we need to speak up.

We need to protect those who are fleeing from the areas that the regime is targeting.

And

with a very small group of friends, we started to organize small protests.

And by a protest, I mean it would last for five, ten minutes because you fear that the Muhabarat or the military would come

after you.

And the risk of protesting in Syria was your life.

It was not like an arrest.

It was not a revocation of your degree.

It was literally death.

And it was a week after my 18th birthday that I left to Lebanon.

So when you realize you're in danger, when two of your friends have been disappeared and you're within a day, you're in Lebanon, did you already have an exit plan?

Did you just get in a car and drive?

How does that happen for you?

I learned about the disappearance of my friends.

And at that point, I feared that they would

under torture, they would confess my name.

Or if they had on their computer anything like about me, I feared that I would be next.

But I also feared that my name is already with.

the regime.

So I literally like same day plan, I went to Lebanon

like in a car.

In Syria, the security branches are very decentralized.

So I wanted to make it as soon as possible to the border so that my name is not on the list,

that I cannot leave Syria.

I had some relatives in Lebanon, so I spent a couple of weeks there, but eventually ended in Shatila refugee camp, which is one of...

the biggest Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

I wanted to continue my education, but I did not speak any English.

Most of the universities in Lebanon are either in English or French, and they are very expensive, and they had no money whatsoever.

So I started working in construction just to make a living, and then I saw the opportunity to volunteer in this organization.

It's a Syrian-American organization called Jusur, providing opportunities, education opportunities for Syrians around the world.

And I volunteered there.

And then two weeks after, they offered me a job.

That was my first job, $600 a month.

And a few months after, they offered me a scholarship to go to university in Lebanon to study computer science.

I worked with them five years.

I was doing my undergraduate part-time, working full-time.

And then I joined the British Embassy also as a program manager and political officer in their Syria office.

And so you taught yourself English during this period?

Yeah.

So

because Jusur is a Syrian-American organization, we had a lot of American volunteers.

So I would just talk with them.

I would communicate with them, not with words.

It's just like here, they're like, you know, very broken English.

Like, it took me, I would say, until 2017.

that I felt like confident in my English.

So it wasn't like an easy process.

What made you want to work with the British government?

Supporting Syrians.

I worked in the Syria office.

Their policy regarding Syria aligns with my values, aligns with how I see the political solution in Syria.

I wanted to have that insight and that contribution in that process.

And

it also aligns with my career aspirations in terms of working in diplomacy and international affairs

as a whole.

What made you want to come study in the United States?

In Lebanon, I studied computer science.

However, my career took a different path.

It's international affairs and development.

So I wanted to have this opportunity to actually study international affairs academically rather than just learning that by doing, because

to learn, to actually spend some time looking into theories, looking into the academic part of the work that I've been doing for the past 10 years at that point.

Colombia in specific, in 2018, I got a scholarship to study an executive course at Colombia in non-profit management and leadership, so at the business school.

So I came here just for a couple of weeks.

I liked.

Colombia and Colombia in the Palestinian circles, it's known because of Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic and writer.

So I heard also a lot about Colombia.

So I was like, yes, Colombia in New York, right next to the UN, where I eventually

want to work.

So why not?

What's your general impression of America?

How do you think about America as an entity, as a country, as a...

Yeah.

I mean, the fact that I worked for this Syrian-American organization organization gave me a lot of insight of America being a country of opportunity, a country at least of democracy, of rule of law.

However, I had my own reservation about the impact of America on me.

Because as a Palestinian or as a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, America's influence in the Middle East was very negative.

So I felt that impact on me as a Palestinian.

However, working for the British Embassy, I would always meet American diplomats.

So because the British and the U.S.

policy goals regarding Syria are quite similar.

So I would spend a lot of time with American diplomats just discussing

Syria and

all of that.

So, and the most important thing

I liked about the U.S.

is the quality of education.

What year is this we're talking?

So the first time I applied to Columbia was in 2020.

I got accepted, but I couldn't come because of COVID.

So I came in 2022 to the United States.

Before October 7th, how is that first year for you?

What is Columbia like for you?

I was very much looking forward to starting my degree at Columbia University.

I wanted to take full load of courses.

I wanted to have that two years as whether like, do I want to continue working in diplomacy or should I shift to the private sector?

However, that was disturbed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria when over 50,000 people died because of the earthquake.

So, but I continued, like, you know, I wanted also to be involved in as many communities as possible.

Being

the first time living in the country, I wanted to have friends.

So, I joined the MENA group.

I joined the Palestine Working Group.

Who is the Middle East?

Middle East and North Africa Club,

I would say, um just to build community um because in a city as big as new york you need you need you need a community it's a hard place to get a photo exactly however it was very obvious the anti-palestinian sentiment at colombia one of the first events we organized as part of the Palestine club or Palestine working group at Colombia was inviting

the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch to talk about Israel practices in the occupied Palestinian territories.

And I was surprised that our event was flagged as a special event.

And I was like, why is that?

Like, we're inviting someone from Human Rights Watch.

So I was very surprised that this event was flagged as a special event.

That's even before October 7th, I think, was April or March 2023.

Another event inviting the BDS coordinator, Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement, to come and talk virtually.

Also, it was flagged as a special event, and we had to fight with the administration to make it happen.

So, clearly, there was this anti-Palestinian sentiment, and that was my first shock at Colombia.

It just like to me felt like, okay, it's maybe bureaucratic, you know, like it's not a big deal.

But that was more obvious, like, after October 7, the fact that Colombia is the anti-Palestinian like prejudice within the Colombia administration, I'm saying,

is very flagrant.

Tell me about that for a minute before we get to October 7th itself, because Colombia now has these dual reputations as

sort of what you're describing, that it had a board of trustees that was,

I think it's fair to say, very concerned about things like the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.

It's also a home of a lot of very important Palestinian scholarship.

Rashid Khalidi is there at this time.

There's this question of, is it an anti-Semitic place?

Is it a what?

There's some kind of tension here that is specific about Colombia.

Colombia is a for-profit place.

Colombia doesn't care about Jewish students,

doesn't care about Palestinian students.

They only care about their brand and money.

So it's a corporation function.

Absolutely.

October 7th happens.

What do you think that day?

That day, I was at the cinema with my wife, Noor, here, like in

Lincoln Center.

And when I left the cinema around like 12.30 a.m., I started to receive all these notifications.

And to me, it felt frightening that

we had to reach this moment

in the Palestinian struggle.

And I...

I remember I didn't sleep for a number of days and Noor was very worried about

like just

my health.

And it was heavy.

Like, I still remember, like, I was like, this couldn't happen.

And what do you mean we had to reach this moment?

What moment is this?

I was interning at ONURWA at that point, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, at the UN, at their

New York office.

And as part of my internship,

My research and work was focused on Palestine, on the situation in the the west bank and ghaz and you can see that the situation is not sustainable you have an israeli government that's absolutely ignoring palestinians they are trying to make that deal with saudi and um

just happy about their apraham accord without you know, looking at Palestinians as if Palestinians are not part of the equation.

And they circumvented the Palestinian question.

And it's clear like, it's becoming more and more violent.

Like, you know, by October 6th, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers.

Over 40 of them were children.

So that's what I mean by, like, unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment.

And yeah, it was absolutely difficult, like, you know, to see not only the horrific images, images, but also the response of Israel.

Because

I knew that's what Netanyahu wants,

because Netanyahu

thrives on the killing of Palestinians.

At that point, there were already big demonstrations in Israel regarding the judicial reforms.

But I knew that that's something that Netanyahu would use to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

When you say you have these days where you're not sleeping, are you just following the news and the social media kind of relentlessly?

Are you trying to think about what will happen next?

Are you trying to think about how this will play out?

What is mostly

just thinking about the future, to be honest, like worried about the future?

And

I remember one of the things I said:

this is going to be even worse than the Nakba, like the aftermath.

And I had to to think like,

you know, like, how can you stop this?

What can we do?

Also just following, like, is it really, you know, a day or two, two days after when the Israeli or the former Israeli defense minister said, like, we're going to cut everything from Gaza, human animals, all of that.

So the intent was clear that they want to obliterate Ghazza.

I remember I did a piece right after October 7th, and

one of the things that seemed clear to me, like very, very quickly on that day, as you're watching the images, as you're hearing, you know, the screams, you're seeing the videos of people of Jewish Israelis being paraded around, of corpses,

is both that

this attack is horrific

and that the counterattack is going to be

overwhelming,

right?

And that on some level, I I understood that as something

Hamas must have wanted,

right?

Pull Israel into this attack, pull it into some kind of war.

Maybe you involve other players in the Middle East,

but

a lot of lives were being used there as kind of chips on the table.

Was that your perception, or did you see this as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium?

Yeah.

It's more the latter, like just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard.

And to me, it's a desperate attempt to

the word that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation.

That was my

interpretation of why Hamas did the October 7 attacks

on Israel.

Because at that point, there was no political process.

It was clear that the Saudi-Israel deal is very imminent, and Palestinians wouldn't have any path to statehood and self-determination.

So they had to

do that according to their calculations,

which, I mean, it's obvious is not,

you know, we're not right.

I've heard you in other news be very clear in condemning killing of civilians.

October 7th was obviously an operation that did target a lot of civilians, that did kill a lot of civilians.

Do you see that as unavoidable, that Hamas had no other choice?

Do you see it as a mistake?

What I know is targeting civilians is wrong.

That's why we've been calling for an international independent investigation

to hold perpetrators into accountability.

And it's very important, like, for us who believe in international law that this should happen.

And it's very important to underscore as well that Palestinians have tried all forms of resistance, including non-violent resistance.

However, this was always

targeted by Israel.

Palestinians who participated in the Great March of Return were killed or

maimed because of that.

And there's nothing can justify the killing of civilians.

And the international law is very clear about that.

And we cannot pick and choose when international law applies to us or it applies to others.

But also, like, there's another point to this, Israel.

Palestinians don't have to be perfect victims.

And that's what the world is asking of Palestinians amid the dispossession, the occupation, the killing, all of that.

And horrible things happen.

Nothing can justify that.

And

I would do everything in my power to stop that from happening.

But we cannot go and ask Palestinians to be perfect victims after

75 years of dispossession, of killing.

People in Gaza, you know, being under siege for over, at that point, 17 years.

Palestinians in the West Bank being stopped at checkpoints, settlers,

they attack them at every opportunity.

The human dignity of Palestinians was absent, and still, unfortunately.

So that's why

when discussing that, like,

unfortunately, these horrible things are happening or happen, but we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims.

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So tell me about from there to the organizing for you.

When do the protests and the encampments begin?

What is your initial involvement in them?

It goes back before October 7, my involvement in Palestine, organizing on campus.

And I started the process with the Colombia administration, creating DAR, which is home in Arabic.

It's the Palestinian Student Society to bring Palestinians from different schools together.

That was the goal of it.

So I worked with the administration over the summer.

to build that society.

And that positioned me by October 7 to be, you know, I was the co-president of the Senu Society, but I was also a co-president of the Palestine Working Group at SEPA.

So I had this relationship with the Columbia administration,

you know, most of them like junior officers.

I've heard you describe yourself previously to this.

You're a bureaucrat.

Yeah.

And it sounds like you maintain some of that identity at Columbia, a sort of person working within systems.

Yeah, I mean, you know, most of the students are young.

They don't have this like experience

through these bureaucratic systems.

So I found myself in that position where I would be the one communicating to the administration the concerns of the Palestinian community.

So I,

on

October, I think 9 or 10, I sent Colombia an appeal from the Palestinian students regarding the one-sided narrative that Colombia is trying to push regarding academic accommodations for Palestinian students like myself, who had been awake for days just watching the hurrors and Gaza.

When you say one-sided narrative, Colombia was pushing.

What narrative in what form?

What is the so the narrative that Colombia pushed from the very beginning was a very pro-Israel narrative.

By October 8th, there were hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel.

Yeah, Colombia erased that from their communication.

And our ask was very simple: treat us equally.

See us as humans.

Yet

that was met with opposition from, or just, you know, no, no answers whatsoever.

And the ask here would have meant in these communications being more...

Yeah,

being more balanced in terms of acknowledging the Palestinian death, acknowledging the humanitarian crisis,

acknowledging that Palestinians

are occupied.

You either should be consistent with these matters or just don't say anything.

Aaron Ross Powell, I guess the perspective of Jewish or Israeli students, or Israeli Jewish students, I should say at Columbia, would be that there was a huge attack

that killed 1,200 some people, murdered 1,200 some people,

that they were afraid of anti-Semitic violence erupting around the world, and they needed to hear something about that.

Again, what we asked is not to omit

their

suffering or or

their perspective.

We wanted to have equality, as we want, like in the whole movement.

This movement is about equality and justice.

And Colombia did that, like without even the students asking for it.

Like the first

statement coming from Colombia, it was on the evening of October 7th.

And so the whole set of communications felt like an erasure of Palestinian experience.

Yeah, absolutely.

The whole Colombia

communication with the student body was designed to erase the Palestinian experience.

And so at this point, you're sending emails.

At what point does this become the protests that later become very well known?

Yeah.

I must mention that the first protest that happened at Colombia was on October 12,

five, six days after October 7.

For these five days, every single night, there would be a vigil organized by Israeli and Jewish students at Colombia.

The

Palestinians took a decision to not hold any vigils during these days, give them the space to mourn their death and

give them the space to mourn.

And when we wanted to have our protest on October 12,

we had a counter protest.

And Colombia made the mistake of putting these protests in front of each other.

So the university decides where you can be.

Exactly.

So

they gave the students supporting Palestine the East lawn and students supporting Israel the West lawn.

It's like a metaphor.

Exactly.

And that was one of the biggest first mistakes that Colombia made.

The protesters literally took a lawn.

They wanted to call for their university to do three things.

The first one, to divest its investment from companies complicit in human rights violations, to disclose the investments where Colombia money goes.

And the third one, to end ties with Israeli academic institutions.

The student movement at Colombia start like, it's not just after October 7th.

And this is something I really want to highlight: that in 2002, Colombia students voted to ask Colombia or to demand Colombia to divest its investments from companies associated with or complicit in human rights violations in Israel.

And every other year after that, the students would do the same.

Quad, the Colombia University Apartheid Divest, was not created after October 7.

It was created in 2016, actually,

as a partnership between Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace.

So this is all not a new thing.

And the student movement is not only about protests, encampments, and civil disobedience.

There's a lot of work that has been done in terms of political education, referendums,

submitting proposals to Colombia to divest on why they should divest, research, mutual aid.

So it feels very, very hard when you hear that it's only about the protests and it's only about the encampment.

However, the students wanted to continue protesting because Colombia was not listening to them whatsoever.

You sort of described the groups you were in here as sort of Palestinian groups.

But as you mentioned a minute ago, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is also a student group, is involved in, I believe, from the beginning in these protests too, and in the divestment movement.

Tell me about them, about your relationship with the Jewish students who are part of these protests.

What is that set of relationships and dynamics like?

You know, having lived in the Middle East most of my life,

unfortunately, the only Jew you hear about is the one who's trying to kill you.

You know, and that's true for those in Ghats and in the West Bank.

That's the only Jewish person they encounter, the one at the checkpoints, the one raiding their homes.

And for me, because I was involved in this international work, I met like a lot of Jews through my work.

And coming in the United States, it was an opportunity for me to expand on that, to really understand, you know, like what Israel means to the Jewish population around the world

and the Jewish perspective about Israel

and Jewish voices for peace and not only them, because there's a lot of Jewish students who are not associated with Jewish Voices for Peace, who were part of the movement,

who felt that

they can't remain silent while a country is committing crimes in their names,

who wanted to

fight anti-Semitism by showing what real Judaism is.

that

their

Judaism requires them to speak out.

So they were absolutely like an integral part of the movement.

And so you mentioned that the protests have these three goals, or these three demands, I should say, which are divestment from countries that have human rights abuses or international law abuses, the cutting of ties to Israeli universities,

and knowledge of where Colombia's money is going.

The sort of more macro demand, the thing you hear in chance, the thing that I think is behind more of that is the idea of Palestinian liberation of freedom.

Absolutely.

What does that mean to you?

Palestinian liberation means that

Palestinians should live in dignity, freedom, and justice, as simple as that.

They did not have political goals in terms of like one state or two state.

what's the form of governance would be for a liberated Palestine.

I mean, I have views on that, like as a Palestinian.

But that was what the movement was about, just to end this occupation, to end the apartheid, to end the genocide now, and to have justice, freedom, and dignity for everyone.

I remember the Colombia protests before I knew who you were, becoming a national story, right?

And hearing about them constantly and at every dinner I seemed to go to.

And

them being defined by positions that feel more extreme than that.

You know, famously a student saying, this got attributed to you, but it wasn't you, that Zionists don't deserve to live.

Some people hear Palestinian liberation and hear Jewish eradication or expulsion.

Is that what you mean when you say it?

Is that what you hear in the movement when you say it?

No, absolutely not.

And there is deliberate attempts to demonize the movement.

And again, the movement as a whole is not homogeneous.

But also, there are some ignorance

in the movement in terms of what Palestinian liberation could mean.

But in no way, it means that it is the eradication of

the Jewish people.

And this is part of the demonization of the movement: that, like, if you get Palestinian rights, then you wouldn't get Jewish rights.

And to me, as a Palestinian, as an oppressed, I always felt my duty to also liberate my oppressor from their hate and from their fear.

But these were always like just a distraction, such sentiment about the movement that it's violent, that it wants to eradicate Israel or the Jewish people, because it's not.

We are at a time where Palestinians are getting killed

every minute.

That's what the focus was

and still is.

You end up as a negotiator on behalf of the coalition of groups that are protesting.

What is that role?

Who are you negotiating with?

What are you negotiating for?

So given my relationship with the Colombia administration

and given my experience in diplomacy, the students and faculty approach me to negotiate on their behalf.

And also as a Palestinian, like I can't relate more to the demands.

So I was negotiating with two top administrators, Colombia.

However, Colombia did not want to negotiate.

They just wanted to buy time.

And it was, you know, disheartening because these students were protesting.

since October.

Every single week you have a protest.

The students submitted proposals to Colombia's Committee on Divestment and the proposals were

rejected.

When you have Colombia suspending like SJP and JVP

in November for the protests and then disciplining students for protests, then the students had to step up their game because clearly the university

wouldn't listen to them unless they escalate.

And that's how the encampment happened.

They did not take us seriously at the beginning, but then they took us more seriously, but it was clear that they did not want in any way criticize Israel.

They did not in any way appear to be capitulating to the students.

And it was very intense.

Like I was threatened by the National Guard on the negotiation table.

They told me, this is our offer.

If you don't sign, the police or National Guard will come today at 12 a.m.

So that was the.

To uproot the encampments.

Yeah, exactly.

Many of the people protesting, many of the leaders of protest would do so with their faces covered.

You didn't.

Why?

I wasn't doing anything wrong to cover my face.

That doesn't mean that others were doing something wrong.

It means that

my calculation is different of what risk is because the risk is real.

So right after October 7, there were doxing or trucks displaying the faces of students.

These are trucks going around.

Around Columbia University,

calling students

Jewish hating group or Jewish hating students, something like that.

So students feared about like their identity.

Also, there were groups like Canary Mission, Bitar, harassing these students students and posting their information online, calling their parents, calling their employers.

So there was this fear.

And you're a target of these groups.

I was a target.

I'm still a target of these groups.

But to me,

my risk appetite was higher than others.

Like, why would I hide my face for protesting a genocide?

If an employer doesn't want to employ me for my views on Palestine, then I don't want to work there.

Was it your risk appetite or was it also a different risk assessment, which is to say that, I mean, we're going to talk about your

arrest and detention in a second.

But did that not seem to you like a thing that happens in America?

Yeah, I mean,

I was ultimately wrong with that assessment.

Because

once again, I wasn't doing anything wrong to hide my face.

And

these groups, you know, their focus was mainly like employers, opportunities, and just like to smear you online.

At no

moment I felt that there actually would be government collaboration with these groups.

None of my statements were problematic.

Not to mention they, even if they were problematic, they would be covered by, you know, First Amendment.

But I did not feel that like the government would actually act on such claims, baseless claims against me.

And

I mean, I was wrong, like eventually, that the U.S.

government eventually depended on

these profiles to target students.

Aaron Powell, so Donald Trump is inaugurated for a second term in January of 2025.

When he won the election and then when he was inaugurated,

what did you think that meant?

For one, the set of issues that you care about,

the conflict, American policy.

But also, did you think it meant anything for you and other students in your movement personally?

Did that seem like a likely outcome?

Yeah.

The elections of Trump when it comes to Palestine, unfortunately, it's the same as Biden.

Biden was equally bad.

It's just

Biden was gaslighting us that, you know, they care about Palestinians.

But in fact, Biden laid the groundwork for Trump to do what he's doing doing right now.

It's just to us, it's, you know, Trump would expose this hypocrisy.

And so, your view is that their policies were not that different, just Trump was honest about it.

Exactly.

And

but when it comes to actually using government resources to come after students

to set the movement back, because that's one of Trump's campaign pledges is to set the Palestine movement in this country 20 years back.

I think that's what he said in the summer of 2024.

But

my view is that

this

only exposed

that there is a Palestine exception in this country, whether when it comes to First Amendment,

whether when it comes to just the US government institutions.

So in the early days of March, you reach out to Columbia University.

You say that something is changing, that you're feeling unsafe.

What were you seeing?

So,

you know, after the executive order in January,

targeting basically like student activists by the Trump administration, these

shady groups like Canary Mission and Bitar became more emboldened.

They were more vicious in their attacks online.

And the week leading to my arrest, I noticed like I would, all my friends would text me all these tweets from Canary Mission, from all these groups, like tagging Rubio, tagging DHS ICE, all of that.

So I sent the Colombia administration a couple of emails, like asking for

mainly what I was thinking about, like, I just want a lawyer to send this organization a seasoned assessed letter.

And so, walk me through what happens on March 8th.

On March 8th, I was

coming back from an iftar dinner with my wife.

And I entered the lobby of my building.

And then I noticed that someone is following us.

And then they asked me, are you Mahmoud Khalil?

I was like, yeah, who are you?

Then they said, we are the police.

I was like, what police?

Because they were in plain clothes.

There were two at that point.

Then they said, like, we are like departments of Homeland Security,

and your visa has been revoked.

And I looked, you know, I was like, I don't have a visa.

Like, I'm not here on a visa.

I'm a green card holder.

So he looked very confused at that point.

And he called onto someone to come.

So at some point, there were four people.

I asked for, do you have like

any

arrest warrant or anything like to show me?

And they refused to do that.

They threatened Noor, my wife,

of arrest if she doesn't leave.

So Noor went to bring my green card because it wasn't on me at that point.

And they were just like confused about the green card part of this.

And when Noor like brought it and they saw it, he looked even more confused.

So he had to call someone.

And that someone told him, bring him anyway.

During all that period, I was chill.

Like I was very calm.

Again, like I've dealt with power all my life.

So I knew I didn't do anything wrong.

I thought, given their first comment about the visa, maybe this is just a misunderstanding.

I would go to the office and then, you know, it would be solved.

But I was very scared because they were plain clothes.

The cars were like unmarked cars.

And they were taken to their office in New York.

And five hours after, they showed me the ruby determination that my

presence in the United States presents, I think, at first.

So I can't remember that, but like it's a foreign policy threat.

Yeah, here, I'll read it.

The provision here that they're working off of the Trump administration is

an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.

Exactly.

So,

did they show you that?

Yeah, they gave it to me five hours after.

And I laughed when I saw it.

I was like, well, what do they do?

You know, even the officer shrugged, like, you know, giving me the NTA the notice to appear.

But at the same time,

I heard someone approaching the officer.

The White House is requesting an update.

And

I requested endless times to call my lawyer.

I told them, like, I want to talk to my lawyer before signing or just to know what's happening.

And they refused.

And then they moved me like to New Jersey, then back to New York, to JFK, to Texas, to Louisiana in a matter of 30 hours.

But say that again, they moved you from JFK

to Texas.

To Texas.

Back to Louisiana.

Okay.

In 30 hours?

In 30 hours.

So everything was like very quick without me knowing where I'm going.

Like I was shackled and you're expected to follow orders.

And had you been given a lawyer, an opportunity to call someone?

Nothing at all.

So, and,

you know, these practices were kind of present in Syria where you have

a security branch like kidnapping you from the street or disappearing you, arbitrarily detaining you.

So I never felt that this would happen to me in the United States, where they would show up without any arrest warrant, without anything, and just take me.

And that's why I keep saying it felt like kidnapping, because from Saturday evening until Monday morning, I had no contact with anyone.

No lawyers, no family, nothing.

And the last thing I heard from them when they were taking me to the car, they were threatening Noor with arrest.

And she was eight months pregnant at that time.

And that was the only thing I was thinking about during these 30 hours.

Like, did they arrest Noor?

Is the baby okay?

Is she okay?

Like, and I wanted like answers, but they refused to give.

any answers.

And I was again like just shackled and expected to just follow orders.

And I only knew that I was going to Louisiana when we were boarding the plane.

Tell me about what happens in Louisiana.

So I didn't know where I was going.

Like, is it

a jail?

Is it

an office?

Is it a detention center for immigrants?

I didn't know any of that.

So when we arrived there, we arrived at like 1 in the morning, like 1 a.m.

And

we get to the detention center.

They put me in this in this dorm with over 70 men.

Then in the morning, I learned that this is a nice detention facility that everyone here are undocumented or they are here because of their documents.

You know, I felt better because now like, oh, I can't talk to people.

Like, what's happening?

I can't see there's a phone.

So the first thing when we woke up, I went like to ask someone, how can I operate the phone?

And I called Noor.

And I just wanted, like, I called Noor, just wanted, like, you know, like, is she going to pick up not like what's happening on the outside world?

And Noor, yeah, picked up and

we talked.

And the first thing she told me, like, the White House has tweeted about you.

What did Trump say about you that day?

Shalom Mahmoud.

Right, I remember that tweet.

So,

I mean, he said later a lot of things about like Hamas sympathizer.

Rubio said the young aspiring terrorist, something like that.

And yeah, and it felt like in a couple of days

the media is painting a totally different image of who Mahmoud Khadil is.

The dehumanization of such a tweet and of such

portrayal in the media was so difficult to me on a personal level.

And yeah, but like I kept asking,

is what's happening is legal?

Like I fled Syria fearing political prosecution

to come to the United States to face

the same fate of political prosecution.

Do you have a view on why it was you?

I will say, because I prepared for this show and I went looking for,

well, okay, I need to make sure I know the really inflammatory things you said.

And I found inflammatory things said

by people nearby you at different times or by an Instagram account that's part of a group you're part of, that kind of thing.

I couldn't find that much from you.

Yeah.

I mean, I joked with a couple of friends before my detention that I would be like Trump's perfect target if he want to do anything regarding that.

But still, it was a joke.

Like I didn't think.

Why would you be his perfect target?

A Palestinian.

My name is Mahmoud.

And

I was vocal in the media.

So that's the perfect

target to make an example out of because it's not about me.

It's not about like because he hates me or like because i i you know but it was just the perfect recipe to make an example out of because the main goal of targeting me is to chill speech in this country um

and

to make an example out of me that like even if you are

a permanent resident you're not safe

that

we have ways to come after you.

And that's the main message that they wanted to deliver by targeting me.

And the other thing is because

I

present

a different narrative than

what

the Israel lobby and this administration want to show, that Palestinians are violent.

Palestinians, they just want to bomb things.

But like I presented a different reality to that, that no,

we know what we're doing.

We want

justice and freedom and dignity for everyone.

That we are educated, that we are doing this like from the strong belief in human rights and the dignity of all people.

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I want to go back to the Rubio termination notice.

So

the

legal grounds here

are someone, an alien in the language of the law here,

who the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States?

So I've tried to look at what the Trump administration has said about the justification of this, and they've offered a few.

One is the view that fighting anti-Semitism is a foreign policy priority of the United States,

that you are anti-Semitic, and that your presence here is then in conflict with that priority.

How do you respond to that?

I mean, it's just, you know, baseless.

There isn't any truth to that, and it's absurd.

And in fact, what's a threat to combating anti-Semitism in this country is this administration and conditional support.

to a country that's committing a genocide in the name of the Jewish people.

And

they're trying

to

conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, with anti-Israel policies or sentiment.

The same way they're also trying to now

couple or conflate between pro-Palestine activism and pro-Hama speech.

And that's their main goal.

But a court, a federal court, judge,

said that

it's likely unconstitutional that the administration targeted me.

And I'm not sure how much you know, but like this provision was used

in the 50s to go after Jewish immigrants in this country.

It has a very proud lineage.

You sort of touched this glancingly, but one of the arguments they've made about you is, I think the word they used was aligned.

The Yorkties are aligned with Hamas.

And Hamas is a designated terrorist organization under U.S.

law.

And so, again, that would make you

potentially in conflict with American foreign policy.

Aaron Powell, this goes again into the attempt by

whether this administration or just like Israel in general to group

the

pro-Palestine activism with supporting Hamas, which is not true.

Like what I stand for, what I'm advocating for is the end of the genocide.

the end of the occupation, the end of the apartheid regime, and the end of complicity of Columbia University in this regime.

As simple as that.

I don't know how that makes me aligned with Hamas or with anyone, but that's what I stand for.

The other thing, and this has become, I think, more present in the administration's rhetoric, not just about you.

JD Vance just gave a speech about citizenship where he makes this point about Zoran Mamdani.

It's kind of become a more,

I would say, significant part of the rationale for a lot of what they're doing, which is that being in America is a privilege.

It's not a right.

And that the right response to that privilege, that gift, you came here fearing persecution in other places, is gratitude, not protest.

They believe it weakens America to allow the presence of immigrants who are critiquing what America is, what America's foreign policy is.

Maybe, I think only maybe, but maybe citizens are allowed to do do that.

Maybe native-born Americans are allowed to do that.

But you here on the largesse of the American government,

you should be quiet and grateful

and treat your presence here as a privilege.

And they have decided to start deporting people who don't.

How do you think about that argument?

This is a very dangerous argument.

You know, this is about selective then democracy, selective rights to people.

And

this administration is trying to target anyone who doesn't fit the very narrow definition of what an American should be or who is the real American in this country.

If you don't look like Stephen Miller, then you're not an American.

That's eventually what they want.

us to do.

And

the same with the privilege part of it.

It's the privilege privilege of the law, not the privilege of the administration to be in this country.

I'm married to an American citizen who was born in this country.

My son is American.

So I get that privilege from the law.

This is how this administration is trying to portray everything right now.

That anything is a privilege.

Federal funding is a privilege.

Medicare is a privilege.

Birthright citizenship is a privilege.

Freedom of speech, due process is a privilege.

And this is very dangerous because you can't have

a democracy

for some.

It's not a democracy.

Then it's just, you know, like

I'm not sure

what a word to describe that, but it's absolutely not a democracy.

It would be just

an autocracy.

When you were in the ICE detention facility,

you had become by this point a national cause

with

the right

calling you all kinds of names, but many people also rallying around you, attention to your case.

Shalom Mahmoud made sure a lot of people knew who you were.

You were there with a lot of people whose names are not known.

Tell me a bit about your fellow inmates.

Tell me what you

learned and saw about what's happening

in the immigration system, in the ICE detention centers during those hundred and four days?

You know, coming to America to study and, you know, to live, to build a life here, I never

imagined that

there is such injustices happening on U.S.

soil.

I mean, one one example is a 45-year-old man who has been in this country for

since 2021,

and

he was picked up from his court hearing, leaving behind

his wife, who's battling cancer, and four children under the age of 11.

This man was literally at his court hearing, going through the process of

getting

documentation.

But now

his wife had a a chemotherapy appointment upcoming.

And he was just like literally

crying every day.

And then it was so normal seeing people crying in the detention center.

Another story is a person coming to me,

showing me like a piece of paper.

He's like, what this paper is about.

Since I was, you know, I had a master's degree and I know how bureaucracy works.

So a lot of people would come to me with questions.

And

I was like, you don't know what this is.

He was like, no,

they gave it to me.

They made me sign it.

And it's his deportation order.

And next day he was deported.

And

a 19 years old

came to ask me,

can my mom continue to visit me?

His mom would drive every week for four hours from New Orleans.

to see him, but she's also undocumented.

So he came to ask me, like, is it safe for her to come and visit me

and i had

to tell him like no it's not safe because

they may arrest her and then you wouldn't have anyone to support you on the outside um

so just like so many stories like left and right you you see the injustice happening there the dehumanization around

being named criminals um

on the news, while the vast majority of them were either picked up from court hearing, from ICE check-ins, or from their work.

Maybe it's because of my ignorance, but I never thought that this is actually happening, where

the immigration system is

very corrupt.

It is, in fact, kangaroo court.

It is fully controlled by the executive branch, fully controlled by the attorney general.

You, in a letter you wrote or that you dictated there,

you referenced this line from Hannah Rend,

who has a right to have rights?

Yeah.

That was to me the most

difficult part of the whole experience.

That

the moment you enter that facility,

you don't have any rights.

All

your rights

are

just like taken away from you.

And

to me, like having, you know, like this support from lawyers who would tell me what my rights are.

So that's why I felt like

in that specific

moment when writing about like,

yeah, who has rights to have right if

me being, you know, a legal permanent resident in this country, an educated person, In a matter of like moments, I was stripped of all these rights.

While you're in there, your wife, who is eight months pregnant when you were picked up, gives birth.

What was that experience like for you?

I was always hoping that I would be out before the birth of my son.

Noora and I have always dreamt about this moment.

I mean, every parent

has done the same.

And to me, to lose that moment

because a person decided so

felt

difficult, the dehumanization of that moment that I had to be on the phone listening to my wife

at

2:30 in the morning, like listening just to her screams.

And I can't,

you know, I can't hold her hands or

give her any supporting words in a place where

I can't even raise my voice at that time.

You're listening in this room with.

Yeah, I was on the phone.

Yeah, like there was like 70 people.

They were asleep, the majority of them.

I was also

trying to resist

crying at that moment.

I don't want them to see me crying.

And

this is one of the the moments that I would never forgive them for taking it from me.

But this is

part of the cruelty

that was imposed on me that

we went to ICE, to DHS,

to request like

temporary or for law, temporary release, but it was refused immediately.

And we gave them, you can put all the conditions like you want, just like for two hours, just for me to be in that room.

I have no criminal history,

no risks whatsoever.

Yet they refuse because their main goal

out of this is to punish me, to make an example out of me, to be as cruel as possible.

So, yeah, so I always struggle to answer this question about that feeling.

Because

I tried to prepare for that moment.

Yeah, I collapsed

when I was on the phone.

And, you know, I had to wait a number of hours until I could receive a picture of Dean, of the newborn.

But then the detainees actually made me a cake.

the night of like I did not tell anyone, but then someone approached me.

He's like, you're not okay.

Because I stayed on my bunk like the whole day.

Then he told me, like, you're not okay.

I told him, like, yeah, my wife gave birth today.

And then an hour after, like, you know,

they, it's just a detention-made like cake.

It's not like a real cake, but like, it's,

yeah, but that felt, you know, like to have them.

And usually people save these things, you know, not, but they, they, they brought it to like to me, and, and, and we, uh, we celebrated that together.

Um,

yeah, that's not a moment you can prepare for.

Yeah.

But it's unfortunately,

this is just like

literally, I always say it's a drop in the sea of sorrow that Palestinians go through every day.

It's just a microscope of what a Palestinian story is, why Palestinians are so dehumanized

in this country, in the West, that

just

all this administration had to say that is that I'm Palestinian.

And this is what we are fighting against now.

It's just the dehumanization of Palestinians.

There's a way in which your experience inverts the narrative that has taken hold.

Look, I'm Jewish.

I don't take anti-Semitism lightly.

You should see my inbox.

And it can be true that Jews can be unsafe, but the idea, and it is real, that there is anti-Semitism at Colombia,

but

nobody there ended up as unsafe as you did.

Yeah.

I mean, I would push back regarding anti-Semitism at Colombia.

I would really push back on that.

But there was none?

I wouldn't say there was none.

I would say there isn't this manufactured history about anti-Semitism at Colombia because of the protests, because proud boys were at the doors of Colombia, the very right-wing, you know, like group.

And

And there are incidents here and there, but it's not that anti-Semitism is happening at Colombia because of the Palestine movement.

This is what I would always push back.

And I have like that strong belief that anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian racism, they rise together.

The incidents rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.

And I'm not trying like to sanitize history or sanitize

the present when it comes to that.

But

going back to what you said,

I paid so much because of that rhetoric, because of Colombia's complicity and because of, you know, a lot of the students who targeted me are pro-Israel students.

Like, you know, the same four or five students would tweet about me every day just to silence me, because it was easier for them.

to silence me, to throw me in prison, than actually reflect on what I'm saying, than actually listening to this, even if it's uncomfortable.

And I know it's uncomfortable because

supporting a genocide

should be uncomfortable.

Like being uncomfortable is very different from being unsafe.

And

I want to get into like, you know, like the chants, like from the river to the sea, from globalize the antifada, about all of that.

Like I heard someone on your podcast saying, like, oh, I don't like the chant globalize the antifada.

Yeah, like don't like it.

Like

it's not being chanted for you to like it.

It's actually to make you uncomfortable.

So you have to think about your complicity and what's happening.

And words matter.

And

the fact that Palestinians are being attacked for whatever chants, symbols, anything they do.

should be addressed.

Like Palestinians, you know, you have the BDS, the boycott, divestment and

sanctions movement.

It's a very peaceful movement and

yet it was labeled as an anti-Semitic, like anti-Semitic.

And criminalized.

And criminalized in the United States.

So

you have people dictating on you what your chance should be.

And

with the globalized anti-father, it's not about like violence and,

you know, like globalize the killing and all of it.

It's not, and it was

overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation.

The second Intifada included some instances of violence.

Included many suicide bombings.

Yeah, included 100 and something, but it's also included the killing of 3,000 Palestinians.

I'm just saying that the fact that many Jewish people here globalize Intifada as globalize the violence struggle is not based on nothing.

No, I think it's based on

policing Palestinian thought and speech.

That's what it's based on.

Because from the river to the sea, no one ever said that's a violent, from the Palestinian perspective, no one ever said that's a violent call.

Yet

you see this narrative that, oh, it's a call to

erase

Israelis from Palestine, which no one said that.

It's actually the Likud party that says that.

That's from the river to the sea, it all should be like Jewish sovereignty there.

It's not Palestinians who said that.

But there have always been different factions of Palestinians, right?

In the same way that you're saying it's not fair to ask Palestinians to be perfect victims, it's also, I think, not reasonable to collapse.

There have been much more violent factions of the Palestinian struggle.

There have been plenty of periods when what Hamas meant from things like that was much more annihilatory.

But the Intifada was not started by Hamas.

No, I agree, but it has, but it, but the second intifada very much involved them.

But that doesn't mean it started, it started because I'm just saying when you say that nobody ever said it this way.

No, no, I'm saying like the way that the students are saying that.

And even

the students, that's fair, I think.

Yeah, the students never said that, like, because to us it means let's globalize the struggle to liberate Palestine.

That

it shouldn't feel convenient where Palestinians are being killed killed every day and the world is silent.

That's what the uprising is about.

And again, like, I don't want to sanitize history.

And I told you, like, the second Intifada involved violent acts.

But overwhelmingly, they were peaceful.

And in the second Intifada, over 3,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel.

The first Intifada, 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel, too.

The place where I overwhelmingly agree with you

is that

there is,

one, a broad effort to demand the Palestinians speak perfectly

that is not demanded of Jewish people.

There are no end of chants that happen on Jerusalem Day in Israel and no end of rhetoric.

I mean, I went to a synagogue when I was young that I ended up stalking out of when my rabbi told my confirmation class that Israel would be within its rights to displace all Palestinian people.

And that was normal.

And that was a reform synagogue.

I watched on an interview you were giving, the sort of repeated demands that you denounce Hamas, not just killings of civilians, but Hamas itself.

There is an insistence that Palestinians, in my experience,

sort of denounce struggle almost entirely, that don't understand it as their own struggle.

And it's not applied equally.

The demand that you would denounce every part of Israeli government or life, including the ruling government right now that is

creating a mass starvation,

is not.

demanded of Jewish people.

And so there is.

There's a huge double standard here.

Yeah, absolutely.

And

that's why you wouldn't find many Palestinians answer that question.

Because it's not about Hamas.

It's about just the perspective of asking this question,

the dehumanization of asking this question when, because it's not about my political view about Hamas.

Like they only want to say, like, when I hear yes or no, that's it.

Like, it's not about like what I think about it.

And this is being used to credit or discredit like Palestinian.

Like, if I condemn Hamas, then I am a Palestinian worth of listening to.

If I don't, then I'm not.

And this is what gets Palestinians angry with this line of questioning.

Because as I said, Palestinians are the ones now being starved and genocided.

Because even if Hamas does not exist tomorrow,

the Israeli occupation and supremacy.

would continue against the Palestinians.

So it's not about Hamas.

I want to pick your story back up here.

What leads to your release?

You know, now

I'm out on bail with very restrictive conditions that I have, like to reside in New York, very few places to go to.

But a federal court ordered that my

detention was likely unconstitutional, that I was targeted for my freedom of

speech, that there is no

evidence of what the administration

has said about me.

But the legal fight is long.

The administration is waging a lawfare against me.

They are basically

appealing every decision, trying to

bring retaliatory

charges against me.

So I you know, I just like shut up and

leave the country.

But we'll continue the fight because unfortunately there's no other option right now.

You're giving interviews like this one.

You were on Capitol Hill recently.

Tell me about that decision.

I'm demanding accountability

for

the overreach,

for

the

illegality of my detention.

And

I want to bring it to what really matters, which is ending the genocide in Gaza.

That's why that was was centered to my conversation

with the media or with Congress members.

Because what's happening to me and to others is just a distraction from the real issue, which is the US complicity in the genocide

in Gaza.

That's why I, you know, like a lot of people tell me, like, oh, take a break, or why you're taking all these risks.

But I really can't

take a break where the genocide is not taking a break, where

as of today, there's over 100 people we're starved to death.

There is like

moral imperative to me to speak up, especially now that I have this platform

that I should continue to use.

Unfortunately, I did not choose this place, you know, ICE did.

However, I want to take that responsibility with pride and continue advocating for the rights of my people.

As always, then, our final question: what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

The first book I would recommend is

a newly published book, Omar La Ad's book,

which is One Day Everyone

Will Have Always Opposed This.

It's sort of like exposing the hypocrisy between the West ideals and actions.

The second book is Edward Said's The Question of Palestine.

That was actually published like in, I think, late 70s before Hamas was founded.

And it's a good glimpse into the Palestinian thought when it comes to Palestine and Zionism and Zionism from the perspective of Palestinians.

The third book is

My Promised Land by Ari Shafet, which mirrors Rashid Khalidi's Hundreds Wars on Palestine.

And to me, that was

helpful because it shows that the Zionist colonial project started like in the 80s and sort of confirm what Rashid Khalidi says in a lot of places.

The 1880s.

The 1880s, yeah.

Like, yeah, those are the three books that I would recommend.

Mahmoud Khalil, thank you very much.

Thank you, Israel.

This episode of Israel Clancho is produced by Jack McCordick and Roland Hu.

Fact-checking by Michelle Harris.

Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Amin Saota.

Our executive producer is Claire Gordon.

The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Marie Cassione, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Kristen Lin, and Jan Koble.

Original music by Carol Sabaro, Amin Zahota, and Pat McCusker.

Audience Strategy by Christina Semoluski and Shannon Busta.

The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

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