Half my family is Jewish. My late wife was Jewish. I have friends of decades who live in Israel, as well as family.
Oct. 7 hit me and my family hard.
I only knew one person personally who was murdered in that horrific event — Vivian Silver, a woman whose work as a peace activist I had reported on. Such a brutal irony that Silver, who for 30 years headed an organization dedicated to Israeli-Palestinian solidarity, who drove Palestinian cancer patients to treatment in Israel, who dedicated her life to peace, who worked every day with Palestinian women, was murdered Oct. 7 by terrorists.
It was no surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a swift reprisal in response to what he called the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. President Joe Biden offered his support, as did myriad governments worldwide.
In the wake of such a horror, with videos of women and children being abducted surfacing on social media and in the news, it was apparent this was a coordinated attack meant to terrorize Israelis and send a message to Netanyahu’s government.
Collective punishment
Netanyahu’s response was swift: he ordered all food, water and electricity to Gaza stopped as the country prepared for war. Yet these actions were different from a declaration of war against an enemy — Hamas. They were a declaration of collective punishment against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Such actions contravene the Geneva Conventions — the humanitarian rules of war.
This announcement from Netanyahu also raised questions: if Gaza was an autonomous state, how did Israel have so much control over the region?
The answer leads directly to the protest movement that sprang up on college campuses last year and globally in advance of that.
The fact is, Gaza has no central government. Its titular leadership is Hamas, which the majority of the world, including some Arab nations, views as a terrorist organization.
The last election in Gaza was in 2006. Since half the population is under 18, that means very few Gazans even voted in that election.
Gaza is one of the poorest countries in the world and the repressive government of Hamas made it a hotbed of honor killings of women and LGBTQ+ people. Even now, with international focus on Gaza, women and girls are rarely seen on camera. It is just men and boys in food lines. Are women and girls even eating?
Global outrage grows
In Philadelphia and New York, a coalition of rabbis and Muslim leaders began staging sit-ins on highways, in train stations and elsewhere, all protesting the war as well as calling for the release of the hostages taken Oct. 7.
These protests became more frequent and began to split communities. Many viewed criticism of Israel as exemplary of antisemitism, particularly given the horrific events of Oct. 7.
But the seemingly indiscriminate killing in Gaza with tens of thousands of civilians dead and countless more injured caused many to call the war there genocidal. Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble.
Biden, who continued to support Israel without reservation, was referred to as “genocide Joe.” In the 2024 primary, significant numbers of voters chose “uncommitted” to send a message to the administration about Gaza.
Renowned author and historian Masha Gessen, a nonbinary correspondent for The New Yorker, gave a speech in Germany about bearing witness to genocide and how we could not invoke the Holocaust without applying what we now know to what is happening in Gaza.
Campus protests
In spring 2024, many encampments against the war sprang up at college campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania. The largest such encampment was at Columbia University in New York City.
In 2024, Mahmoud Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University, completing his degree in December. He lived in campus housing with his wife, an American citizen. Khalil himself is a permanent U.S. resident with a green card.
Khalil was a leader in that encampment, known for negotiating with the university during the protests, which included many Jewish students. On March 11, Jewish students at Columbia staged a protest in support of Khalil, while others posted on social media that he was supportive of Jewish students and not a supporter of Hamas.
On the evening of March 8, ICE agents arrested Khalil and said he was being deported. For several days prior to what was an illegal incursion onto Columbia University grounds by ICE agents, Khalil had complained to the university about being doxxed and receiving threatening messages on social media.
ICE originally told Khalil his student visa was being revoked. When his wife presented his green card, they apparently were confused, but detained him anyway.
Khalil was being deported by President Donald Trump for being a supporter of terrorism.
Authoritarianism v. the First Amendment
Mahmoud Khalil was not taken to a deportation center in New Jersey, but in Louisiana. His wife, an American citizen, is eight months pregnant, and cannot fly. Khalil is isolated from his wife and all support as he awaits a hearing.
Protests in support of Khalil have flooded the streets from New York to London.
Khalil has not committed a crime. He is a permanent resident of the U.S. who protested in support of Palestinians in what many globally view as a genocidal conflict in Gaza — a claim that has also been made to international courts.
The First Amendment is the foundation of America’s constitutional protections. It is for unpopular as well as popular speech. Trump hasn’t deported any Americans marching in support of neo-Nazis, even though many Americans find these groups both threatening and antisemitic.
What happens to us as a nation if we conflate free speech with terrorism and someone speaking in support of civilians under threat from what many view as a genocidal conflict as a terrorist?
Mahmoud Khalil is not a terrorist nor a terrorist sympathizer. He is a permanent resident of the U.S. who was arrested and detained illegally and will possibly — despite all the solidarity marches on his behalf — be deported, never to be allowed back in the U.S.
Slippery slope
The facts of Mahmoud Khalil’s case seem incontrovertible. He engaged in protests in support of Palestinians and against the war on Gaza. He was a negotiator with Columbia who had strong support from Jewish students. He is not a supporter of Hamas nor is he a terrorist.
This case highlights how capricious the Trump administration is with ICE arrests, detentions and deportations. It also raises the specter of concern for members of other vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ+ people, with whom Trump is also at war on a near-daily basis.
If a permanent resident of the U.S. who has not committed any crime can be arrested and detained, how broadly could those capabilities be expanded and how many people could be captured in Trump’s authoritarian net?
Every American should recognize the imperiling nature of authoritarianism and of using free speech as a weapon. The founders made the First Amendment the bulwark of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution because they had suffered under the Crown for speaking out.
Our most fundamental liberty as Americans is to speak truth to power in whatever forms we perceive them. What has happened to Mahmoud Khalil puts us all at risk. It is imperiling our democracy to ignore such a threat.