{"id":126520,"date":"2025-08-07T14:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T14:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126520\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T14:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T14:16:15","slug":"mahmoud-khalil-justifies-oct-7-downplays-antisemitism-at-columbia-in-nyt-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126520\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Khalil justifies Oct. 7, downplays antisemitism at Columbia, in NYT interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six weeks after being released from US federal detention, Mahmoud Khalil, the first pro-Palestinian protest leader to be arrested by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration last spring, has defended Hamas\u2019s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and said concerns about antisemitism at Columbia University reflect a \u201cmanufactured hysteria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khalil first made the latter allegation in a jailhouse letter in April, soon after he was detained by immigration authorities over his role in the university\u2019s pro-Palestinian protests, which critics said were fueling antisemitism.<\/p>\n

He repeated it in a wide-ranging interview<\/a> with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein published on Tuesday. The interview appeared to mark the most extensive public questioning that Khalil has faced about the allegations of antisemitic activity that made him a symbol of the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on colleges.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Klein delved into Khalil\u2019s arrest on March 10, which stemmed from allegations that he had fueled antisemitism on Columbia University\u2019s campus, and subsequent three-month detainment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana. In June, in Khalil\u2019s first interview since he was released from federal detention, he told the New York Times that his detainment \u201cfelt like kidnapping.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the interview, Klein repeatedly invoked his Jewish identity, but when he brought up his personal experience with antisemitism and allegations of antisemitism at Columbia University, Khalil pushed back.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLook, I\u2019m Jewish. I don\u2019t take antisemitism lightly. You should see my inbox. And it can be true that Jews can be unsafe, but the idea \u2014 it is real that there was antisemitism at Columbia, yet nobody there ended up as unsafe as you did,\u201d said Klein.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would push back regarding antisemitism at Columbia. I would really push back on that,\u201d replied Khalil, to which Klein responded: \u201cThere was none?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Protesters demand the release of Columbia protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil at a rally in New York City, March 10, 2025. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say there was none. I would say there is this manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests,\u201d Khalil replied.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cProud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right-wing group. And there are incidents here and there. But it\u2019s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

There does not appear to be any evidence that members of the Proud Boys were at Columbia. A Columbia antisemitism task force reported last year that Jews experienced \u201ccrushing\u201d discrimination on campus<\/a>, much of it related to the pro-Palestinian protest movement.<\/p>\n

Khalil\u2019s arrest in March by immigration authorities marked a flashpoint in the Trump administration\u2019s campaign against antisemitism on college campuses. In its wake, several other non-citizen pro-Palestinian student protesters faced arrests and deportation efforts, prompting outcry and calls for due process, including from many Jewish groups.<\/p>\n

Last month, Columbia, where Khalil earned a graduate degree, reached a $221 million dollar settlement with the federal government over antisemitism allegations. In June, the school released a report that found that nearly two-thirds of its Jewish students reported not feeling accepted for their religious identity during the school year that included Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters march outside Columbia University in New York City on April 18, 2024. (Kena Betancur \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why I would always push back,\u201d continued Khalil in his response to Klein\u2019s invocation of antisemitism at Columbia. \u201cI have a strong belief that antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism rise together. The incidents rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khalil also defended the phrases \u201cGlobalize the intifada\u201d and \u201cFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,\u201d which pro-Palestinian activists claim are nonviolent but many Jews and Israelis interpret as calls to expanding Palestinian campaigns of terror attacks on civilians and for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Holy Land.<\/p>\n

He also said that Hamas\u2019s October 7 atrocities violated international law because they targeted civilians, but characterized it as inevitable. Shortly before Khalil\u2019s arrest, he led a protest<\/a> where activists distributed Hamas propaganda on campus.<\/p>\n

Some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were slaughtered in the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel amid acts of brutality including sexual assault, torture, dismemberment and mutilation that overtly targeted civilians in their homes and at a music festival; 251 were abducted to the Gaza Strip, where 49, not all of them alive, are still being held hostage alongside of the body of a soldier killed in 2014.<\/p>\n

Early in the interview, Klein asked Khalil whether he thought Hamas attacked Israel to provoke \u201csome kind of war,\u201d or whether he saw it \u201cas something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium\u201d in a conflict that had stagnated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more the latter \u2014 just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard,\u201d said Khalil. \u201cAnd to me, it\u2019s a desperate attempt to tell the world 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

While noting that he\u2019s against the targeting of civilians, Khalil repeated several times that \u201cwe cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also implied that the onslaught stemmed in part from the movement toward an Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that point, there was no political process,\u201d he claims. \u201cIt was clear that the Saudi-Israel deal is very imminent, and Palestinians wouldn\u2019t have any path to statehood and self-determination. So they had to do that, according to their calculations \u2014 which, it\u2019s obvious, were not right.\u201d<\/p>\n


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