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Persecuted by a diabolical regime simply for believing a certain way, deprived of every possible right, including the right to a blankie, by a police state that, if it can suppress the rights of the brave truth-teller Mahmoud Khalil, will soon be setting up concentration camps from sea to shining sea for those who will emulate him, Mahmoud Khalil is — as he repeatedly assures us — a profile in courage. His stirring letter, smuggled out of jail, will no doubt be seen by future historians as a foundational document in the universal march for freedom. It made a deep impression on me. It should do the same for you.
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices under way against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours – I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns – based on racism and disinformation – to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their BA degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC [Student Workers of Columbia] President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change – leading the charge against the Vietnam war, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my firstborn child.
For the facts, as opposed to this maudlin and self-aggrandizing twaddle, see here.
Why we don’t want Open Borders and Sharia Laws forced upon us
Lesson One. Do NOT lose the war!
If Khalil wants to end his status as a “political prisoner”, he need only cease fighting his deportation. He has no right to be here. And if the people of Gaza want to end the war *they started*, they need only lay down their arms and surrender the hostages.
Dearest Mahmoud,
If I may offered some universal and sage advice. “Don’t start none, won’t be none” it’s the second half of the phrase that often catch people by surprise.
“Students have long been at the forefront of change – leading the charge against the Vietnam war, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.”
Indoctrinated students can also be made into complicit puppets.
“The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime’s most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Führer’s cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references…
I remember Germany and Austria in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s,” writes an American who served in the U.S. Embassy in Austria. The “idealistic youth” broke up classrooms, invaded university campuses, broke shop windows. The liberals of Berlin and Vienna sprang to the defense of the youth. They labeled any police action against them as ‘brutality.’ One of the phrases used to describe the idealistic German youth by editorial writers and educators, believe it or not, was ‘the culturally deprived.’ … When they broke windows of Jewish shops, the liberals—even intellectual Jews of Germany and Austria—said: ‘how else shall they show their resentment? Most of the shops just happen to be owned by Jews.’17”
― Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels
Just what we need….another lecture from Lennie Piehole’s Ominous Parallels. Guess what T. The article is not about Lenny Piehole and his ossified ideas, or you because you can’t find anything more to say about this wannabe terrorist.
Fer Chrissake, no more garbage about this garbage human being.
It’s obvious he didn’t write this steaming pile of self-pity. Some bleeding heart fangirl or fanboy did.
Deport him back to the Gaza craphole already. Maybe Chris Van Kiss-ass (D. Maryland) can go there and they can have a beer together like he did with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I guess Chris feels an affinity for this lowlife Maryland Boy
Our jails and prisons should be built and ran like those in El Salvador and there wouldn’t be anything leaked.
No more Luxeries in Prison t no fancy meals no body Building Equipment just the Humane Treatment Three Meals a day and a Cell
His long winded diatribe comes down to a simple truth. He want destruction of Western Civilization. That is all.
I think this “tortured” soul needs a visit from one of the J6 Hostages. I think they could enlighten this “poor” soul on how REAL Political Prisoners are treated.
This is more of the typical Marxist agenda; claim the “victim” status, blame the horrible government that doesn’t adhere to your dark and insidious beliefs, and if that doesn’t work – write a letter from the Birmingham jail ( whoops, Louisiana Correctional Facility), three hots and a cot on the American taxpayers dime.
Property has rights too! I don’t know if America can AFFORD much more of these “mostly peaceful” protests that “tortured” souls like this one INCITE.
He violated the conditions of his VISA, as a guest in our great country. It’s just so simple, but leave it to the Leftist democrat machine to complicate it and twist it into a pretzel that even THEY can’t understand.
We deserve to live in a peaceful and safe place. THAT is the American dream.
Had to laugh when I read in the article that Khalil has now resorted to blaming the bleeding-heart FACULTY + ADMINISTRATORS at Columbia for his ‘no good, very bad, terrible, awful incarceration’ ! They were his outspoken protectors and cheerleaders! Many of them wore their Keffiyehs over their faces and marched and chanted right beside him. It was a perfect set up for faculty members, they could support a “Palestinian” in public and reveal their shameless hate for Jews at the same time. But now he’s turned on them and they look like fools. Which they are: Scratch an AntiSemite you find a COWARD every time. American, College educated, AntiSemitic Cowards in Ivory Towers funded with hard earned US Tax dollars from the Working Classes. A longstanding Grift! End it now! Make these schools use their Multi-Billion Dollar Endowments to teach Hate and Anti-Americanism with their own money.
In Australia Palestinian supporters trying to stop our Xmas they are trying to take control all over! Islam against Christianity
In Australia Palestinian supporters trying to stop our Xmas they are trying to take control all over!
Palestinian supporters trying to block Xmas decoration in Myers Melbourne
You can always hang Mohammed in effigy from lamp posts.