In March 2025, Khalil, a Palestinian born in Syria, was abducted by federal agents and disappeared into the wilds of the American carceral state while his wife was pregnant.
Threatened with deportation, the Columbia University student was accused of advocating for Palestine and criticising the Israeli government.
Now he wants justice. And it’s justice for all of us.
His 104-day stay in federal detention and his ongoing deportation case made Khalil famous, although he was hardly alone.
Other pro-Palestine non-citizens were caught up in the mix.
A Turkish student in Boston–whose abduction, captured on camera, looked like it was out of a 1980s Central American dictatorship–appeared to be targeted because she wrote an op-ed critical of the Israeli government.
Universities, embracing the Trumpian spirit, have clamped down on student protests.
Academics like Steven Thrasher and Sang Hea Kil have fought against their terminations, which stemmed from their support for anti-genocide protests.
Khalil filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan, with support from the Center for Constitutional Rights, that “alleges that the government’s actions violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a 1871 anti-conspiracy law intended to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups”, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The suit also “alleges there had been a ‘conspiracy’ among private pro-Israel entities, including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar USA, and senior Trump Administration officials to target and prosecute pro-Palestinian activists”.
According to the wire service, Khalil’s lawyer said:
Project Esther, a 2024 plan for combatting antisemitism written by the conservative Heritage Foundation that outlined many policies undertaken by the Trump administration last year, had created a ‘blueprint for the conspiracy’ and that “Betar and Canary Mission then worked to identify and ‘nominate’ campus pro-Palestinian activists for the Trump administration to target.
This is not just about Khalil. This case is about protecting everyone’s freedom in the US to disagree with the government and its allies publicly.
It’s important not only to target the current authoritarian US regime but also the pro-Israel groups acting as its legal Freikorps. It is acceptable for pro-Israel organisations to use the same freedoms that Khalil and the rest of us enjoy to advocate for their cause: hold demonstrations, lobby lawmakers and publish articles.
But if what Khalil says is true, these groups are engaged in tearing down the most basic freedoms of the US Constitution: the right to free speech, assembly and association.
Betar has already felt the sting of justice. The group reached a settlement with the New York state attorney general that “requires Betar to cease activities that threaten or intimidate Muslim, Jewish and Palestinian activists at protests and its frequent social media posts or face a $50,000 penalty”, according to the Associated Press.
The group had claimed it had “compiled the names of campus protesters against the war in Gaza and submitted them to Trump administration officials, urging deportation” and “boasted of using facial recognition software to identify masked activists”.
Of course, cancel culture and opposition to free speech are hallmarks of modern Zionist activism.
Bari Weiss, the Ellison family capo in charge of gutting CBS News of actual journalism, started by vilifying professors who were critical of Israel.
The far-right Zionist Organization of America has tried to evict HIAS, a Jewish refugee assistance agency, from the major umbrella group of Jewish organisations.
“Staff from The 92nd Street Y, New York are resigning, after the storied cultural hub abruptly halted a scheduled reading by author Viet Thanh Nguyen,” NPR reported in October 2023, noting the author was one of many writers who signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
That last instance might be one of the more stupid episodes in recent years.
This prestigious Jewish cultural institution has diminished itself by cancelling a literary legend like Nguyen, yet hosting David Portnoy, a right-wing Internet provocateur whose most redeeming cultural contributions are his pizza reviews.
As awful as these instances are, they are still not quite the same as assisting a regime that is publicly in favour of replacing democracy with authoritarianism by helping to hunt down immigrants for incarceration and deportation because of their political statements.
If what Khalil alleges is true, these right-wingers–many of them Jewish–have taken inspiration from German citizens who happily told the Nazis where Jews and dissidents were hiding.
“The Trump administration’s policies of repressing speech and persecuting activists critical of Israel didn’t come from nowhere,” said Ben Lorber, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates.
“They grew out of an agenda that has been developed, tested and refined by pro-Israel organizations and leaders for decades. Groups like Canary Mission set the stage by targeting students for years, and organizations like the Heritage Foundation developed blueprints for repression that the Trump administration was able to put into practice.”
Lorber, co-author of Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, said,
Israel advocates have long recognized that it wasn’t enough to simply defend the actions of the Israeli government in the public square, or to make the case for pro-Israel policies like increased US military aid. More and more Americans across the political spectrum are recognizing Israel’s policies as transparently unjust, and supporting an end to unquestioned US support. Instead, Israel advocates have turned to campaigns to silence and chill speech they deem too critical of Israel.
He added:
They have used tools like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, as well as concerted lawfare and public pressure campaigns to accuse critics of antisemitism, and to push for laws and policies banning what they deem to be antisemitic speech. The arrest and attempted deportation of activists like Khalil represents only the latest, brutal stage in a long history of campaigns designed to chill speech and silence dissent.
The American constitutional right to speak out about how our tax dollars are spent is one of the most admired aspects of the nation’s foundation. It’s worth saving.
Mahmoud Khalil, once a political prisoner, is leading that struggle.
Photograph courtesy of Diane Krauthamer. Published under a Creative Commons license.
