{"id":209926,"date":"2026-07-16T18:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/209926\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T18:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:51:08","slug":"mahmoud-khalil-files-suit-alleging-a-public-private-conspiracy-to-target-israels-critics-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/209926\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Khalil Files Suit Alleging a \u2018Public-Private\u2019 Conspiracy To Target Israel\u2019s Critics"},"content":{"rendered":"

By The Associated Press<\/a><\/p>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is suing the federal government and several private groups, alleging they were part of a conspiracy to suppress criticism of Israel through a coordinated campaign to dox, jail and ultimately deport student activists.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0civil rights suit<\/a>, filed in federal court Tuesday, names the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, as the architect of what it describes as an ongoing conspiracy to silence members of the pro-Palestinian movement by smearing them as antisemites.<\/p>\n

Those efforts were aided by\u00a0Canary Mission and Betar<\/a>, two pro-Israel groups that maintain online lists of Israel\u2019s critics, often alongside unsubstantiated claims that they are affiliated with Hamas, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Activists placed on those lists \u201cwere nearly automatically targeted by the Federal Defendants for arrest and removal,\u201d the suit claims, adding that the \u201cprocess of nomination to punishment was frictionless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Khalil argue this \u201cpublic-private partnership\u201d could violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups.<\/p>\n

The suit, led by the Center for Constitutional Rights, seeks unspecified damages and a judicial order to end the alleged conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Inquiries to the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar were not immediately returned on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, did not comment on the lawsuit, but said in an email that the executive branch \u201chas the lawful authority to take actions that will protect the public and to ensure the integrity of our immigration system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit comes as Khalil\u2019s deportation case appears headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

At a news conference on Tuesday, Khalil described the purpose of the latest filing as \u201cexposing the network of organizations, particular actors and institutions that work together to criminalize solidarity with Palestine and to make an example of those who refuse to stay silent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf constitutional protections can be cast aside under political pressure today, they can be cast aside tomorrow against anyone,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

A former graduate student at Columbia University, Khalil gained prominence as a spokesperson and leader for\u00a0student activists protesting against Israel<\/a>\u00a0and its actions in Gaza.<\/p>\n

He was arrested in March 2025 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in his campus apartment and quickly became the\u00a0face of the Trump administration crackdown<\/a>\u00a0on pro-Palestinian demonstrators.<\/p>\n

Khalil then spent 104 days in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his first child, before a federal judge in New Jersey ordered his release.<\/p>\n

Soon after his arrest, both Canary Mission and Betar boasted of their role in flagging Khalil\u2019s noncitizen status to the government.<\/p>\n

Betar \u2014 an Israeli company that\u00a0claimed to use facial recognition software<\/a>\u00a0to identify masked protesters \u2014 also claimed it had compiled a longer list of names and given it to the Trump administration. The group has since agreed to\u00a0dissolve<\/a>\u00a0its nonprofit status, following a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James accusing its members of harassing Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Khalil\u2019s lawsuit traces the origins of the alleged conspiracy to a blueprint from the Heritage Foundation, entitled \u201cProject Esther,\u201d which called for the expulsion of noncitizens who joined protests against Israel.<\/p>\n

The report also suggested, without evidence, that participants in those protests should be seen as part of a \u201chighly organized, global Hamas Support Network.\u201d<\/p>\n

In May, as the Trump administration ramped up its crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists, one of the report\u2019s authors, Robert Greenway, appeared to acknowledge the foundation\u2019s influence, saying that it was \u201cno coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening,\u201d according to the suit.<\/p>\n

Greenway, a former adviser to Trump, did not reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Khalil, meanwhile, has forcefully denied that his criticism of Israel amounts to antisemitism. While government officials \u2014 along with Canary Mission and Betar \u2014 have linked him to Hamas, they have offered no evidence to support the claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy beliefs are not wanting my tax money or tuition going toward investments in weapons manufacturers for a genocide,\u201d Khalil previously told The Associated Press. \u201cIt\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is suing the federal government and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[60450,60449,941,31548,37,5539,41521,42333,61172],"class_list":["post-209926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-betar","tag-canary-mission","tag-federal-government","tag-heritage-foundation","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-mahmoud-khalil","tag-pro-palestinian","tag-project-esther"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116931165148941260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}