Pod Insights The Ezra Klein Show Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story About this episode Mahmoud Khalil was a leader in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests. In March, he was arrested by ICE agents and held for more than 100 days in a Louisiana detention facility. The Trump administration claims Khalil is deportable — even though he has a green card, married to a U. S. citizen — because he poses a threat to U. S. foreign policy goals.
Khalil’s alleged offense here is speech.
Khalil is out now on bail, and he’s still speaking. I wanted to hear what he had to say.
Mentioned:
A Letter From Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
Book Recommendations:
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
The Question of Palestine by Edward Said
My Promised Land by Ari Shavit
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] .
You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Transcript 11,295 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:31 Ezra Klein? Across the 2024 election, Donald Trump and the people behind him said again and again that they were here to restore free speech to this country. Then they got power, and this administration came after speech in a way the left never dared to do, never wanted to do. You saw it with the hunt to cancel any grant that had the word diversity anywhere near it. You saw it as countless organizations that depended on the government, or that feared the government, began reworking their mission statements or censoring their websites to avoid any words that might offend anyone in this administration. You saw it as border agents looked through travelers' phones to see if they had said
1:15 Ezra Klein? anything that the administration wouldn't like. And you saw it as immigration agents began yanking people off the streets for the crime of nothing more than speech. Among the first of these was Mahmoud Khalil, who'd been a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia, a leader in the school's anti-Israel protests. Khalil's a green card holder. He's married to a US citizen. His sole offense had been to speak out against Israel in a way this administration did not like. He was detained under authority the US Secretary of State has to cancel the residency of non-citizens who threaten US foreign policy. Did this grad student at Columbia actually threaten US foreign policy? Is that how fragile our foreign policy is?
1:59 Ezra Klein? No one really believed that Khalil was not followed into his building by plainclothes officers and taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana for more than 100 days, imprisoned there while his wife gave birth because the US government feared him. He was imprisoned there because the US government wanted others like him to fear them. It wanted non-citizens and immigrants to stop speaking out. It wanted everyone to ask, if they could do this to Khalil, could they do it to me? If they could detain him on such flimsy grounds, could they not come up with a reason to detain me? Khalil is out now on bail. He's still
2:40 Ezra Klein? speaking. And so I wanted to hear what he had to say. As always, my email [email protected] .
2:57 Ezra Klein? Mahmoud Khalil, welcome to the show.
2:59 Speaker 01 Thank you for having me, Azra.
3:01 Ezra Klein? So let's start at the beginning. Just tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born?
3:05 Speaker 01 I was born in a very small Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus called Khan Shih Camp. It's really like, I wouldn't say like a poor like neighborhood, but you know, middle class, lower middle class.
3:19 Ezra Klein? What did your, what did your parents do?
3:21 Speaker 01 So my, my parents now, they are in Europe. In Syria, both they were civil servants. My mom, like just working in a civil office, issuing passports, IDs to people. My, my dad was a wielder, working in a state company.
3:42 Ezra Klein? Doing like metalwork?
3:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:45 Ezra Klein? And what did they want for you? Like when, when you were growing up, what, what did they, what, what did they hope your adulthood would look like?
3:53 Speaker 01 So both my parents really wanted us to be educated and invested a lot in our education, especially that, you know, my dad barely made it to middle school. My mom had only like high school. And when you're Palestinian in Syria, when you don't have any, any property, there's nothing like, you know, in terms of like family wealth. So education is our main investment. So we really like, my parents would rather us getting educated than actually getting food at some, at a lot of points.
4:30 Ezra Klein? What were you told about your family's history in Palestine growing up? How did that, how was that identity formed for you?
4:39 Speaker 01 You know, I know about Palestine, I heard from my grandmother, who spent thirty years in Palestine, in Tiberias. And actually, my grandmother always told, like, would always tell me that they had Jewish neighbors. She would work in their farm. So we had, we had that sense of, you know, that there was coexistence. And my grandparents were exiled from Palestine in nineteen forty-eight. And my grandmother, when she left Palestine, she was pregnant with my uncle and she had to give birth en route to southern Damascus.
5:20 Speaker 01 So we had that sense of like injustice, that sense of Palestine was taken from us, was stolen from us. The camp is just like about thirty, forty miles away from the borders. You can see the impact of Nakba, the Palestinian exile from Palestine around you, because everyone is talking about it. And we grew up in that environment, that we longed to go back. That's why they lived in literally just a normal tent for a number of years before upgrading it to a mud house. And then they decided to build sort of a concrete house, because it was always, living
6:04 Speaker 01 in the camps to Palestinians is always temporary. It's a station until we go back to Palestine.
6:11 Ezra Klein? You said you grew up in Syria and you had to flee during the uprising. Tell me about that, that moment, what leads to you deciding you have to leave?
6:19 Speaker 01 The Syrian people erupted against the autocracy in Syria, the Syrian regime. And I was part of that, like Palestinians also were oppressed by the Syrian regime. And as a result of that, I was part of organizing protests, relief to displaced persons. But on January 11th, 2013, two of my friends were disappeared, arbitrarily detained, and they had to flee the next day. And these two friends died under torture.
7:00 Ezra Klein? How did you become involved in organizing in the Syrian protests? I mean, that's a dangerous thing to do. You're how old?
7:08 Speaker 01 I was 16 at that point. Palestinian refugees were sort of, at the very beginning, isolated from the big protests. So a lot of displaced persons, Syrians, would come to the camp, would come to our schools. So we opened our schools and we started a whole relief operation for them. So we felt that we need to speak up, we need to protect those who are fleeing from the areas that the regime is targeting. And with a very small group of friends, we started to organize small protests.
7:49 Speaker 01 And by a protest, I mean it's, it would last for five, 10 minutes because you fear that the Muhhabarat or the military would come like after you. And the risk of protesting in Syria was your life. It was not like an arrest, it was not a revocation of your degree, it was literally death. Yeah, and it was a week after my 18th birthday that I left to Lebanon.
8:15 Ezra Klein? So when you realize you're in danger, when two of your friends have been disappeared and you're, within a day, you're in Lebanon, did you already have an exit plan? Did you just get in a car and drive? How does that happen for you?
8:29 Speaker 01 I learned about the disappearance of my friends. And at that point, I feared that they would, under torture, they would confess my name. Or if they had on their computer, anything like about me, I feared that I would be next. But also, I feared that my name is already with the regime. So I literally, like, same-day plan. I went to Lebanon. In a car, did you walk? Yeah, yeah, like, in a car. In Syria, the, the security branches are very decentralized. So I wanted to make it as soon as possible to the border so that my name is not on the list that I cannot leave Syria.
9:11 Speaker 01 I had some relatives in Lebanon, so I, I spent a couple of weeks there, but eventually ended in Shatila Refugee Camp, which is one of the biggest Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. I wanted to continue my education, but I did not speak any English. Most of the universities in Lebanon are either in English or French, and they're very expensive. And they had no money whatsoever. So I started working in construction just to make a living. And then I saw the opportunity to volunteer in this organization. It's a Syrian-American organization called Jusur, providing opportunities, education opportunities for Syrians around the world. And they volunteered there.
9:56 Speaker 01 And then, two weeks after, they offered me a job. That was my first job, six hundred dollars a month. And a few months after, they offered me a scholarship to go to university in Lebanon to study computer science. I worked with them five years. I was doing my undergraduate part-time, working full-time. And then I joined the British Embassy, also as a program manager and political officer in their Syria office. And so you taught yourself English during this period? Yeah. How? So, because Jusur is a Syrian-American organization. We had a lot of American volunteers. So I would just talk with them. I would communicate with them, not with, with words.
10:40 Speaker 01 It's, it's just like here, they're like, you know, very broken English. Like, it took me, I would say, until 2017 that I felt like confident in my English. So it wasn't like an easy process. What made you want to work with the British government? Supporting Syrians. I worked in the Syria office. Their policy regarding Syria aligns with my values, aligns with how I see the political solution in Syria. I wanted to have that insight and that contribution in that process. And it also aligns with my career aspirations
11:22 Speaker 01 in terms of working in diplomacy and international affairs as a whole.
11:28 Ezra Klein? What made you want to come study in the United States?
11:30 Speaker 01 In Lebanon, I studied computer science. However, my career took a different path. It's international affairs and development. So I wanted to have this opportunity to actually study international affairs academically rather than just learning that by doing. Because to learn, to actually spend some time looking into theories, looking into the academic part of the work that I've been doing for the past 10 years at that point. Columbia in specific. In 2018, I got a scholarship to study an executive course at Columbia in nonprofit management and leadership.
12:14 Speaker 01 So at the business school. So I came here just for a couple of weeks. I liked Columbia. And Columbia in the Palestinian circles, it's known because of Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic and writer. So I heard also a lot about Columbia. So I was like, yes, Columbia in New York, right next to the UN, where I eventually want to work. So why not?
12:41 Ezra Klein? What's your general impression of America? How do you think about America as an entity, as a country, as a?
12:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:51 Speaker 01 I mean, the fact that I worked for this Syrian-American organization gave me a lot of insight of America being a country of opportunity, a country at least of of democracy, of rule of law. However, I had my own reservation about the impact of America on me. Because as as a Palestinian or as a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, America's influence in the Middle East was very negative. So I I felt that impact on me as as a Palestinian. However, working for the British Embassy, I would always meet American diplomats. So
13:27 Speaker 01 because the British and the US policy goals regarding Syria are quite similar. So I I would spend a lot of time like with American diplomats just discussing, you know, like Syria and and and all of that. So and the most important thing I I liked about the US is the quality of education.
13:52 Ezra Klein? What year is this we're talking?
13:54 Speaker 01 So the first time I applied to Columbia was in 2020. I got accepted, but I couldn't come because of COVID. So I came in 2022 to to the United States.
14:04 Ezra Klein? Before October 7th, how is that first year for you? What is Columbia like for you?
14:09 Speaker 01 I was very much looking forward to starting my degree at Columbia University. I wanted to take full load of courses. I wanted to have that two years as whether like, do I want to continue working in diplomacy or should I shift to the private sector? However, that was disturbed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria when over 50,000 people died because of the earthquake. So but I continued like, you know, I wanted also to be involved in as many communities as possible being. The first time living in the country, I wanted to have friends. So I joined the MENA group. I joined the Palestine Working Group.
14:50 Ezra Klein? MENA is the Middle East.
14:52 Speaker 01 Middle East and North Africa Club, I would say, just to build community. Because in a city as big as New York, you need, you need, you need a community.
15:02 Ezra Klein? It's a hard place to get a foothold.
15:03 Speaker 01 Exactly. However, it was very obvious, the anti Palestinian sentiment at Columbia. One of the first events we organized as part of the Palestine Club or Palestine Working Group at Columbia was inviting the Middle East Director at Human Rights Watch to talk about Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territories. And I was surprised that our event was flagged as a special event. And I was like, why is that? Like, we're inviting someone from Human Rights Watch. So I was very surprised that this event was flagged as a special event. That's even before October 7. That was, I think, was April or March 2023.
15:47 Speaker 01 Another event inviting the BDS Coordinator, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement, to come and talk virtually. Also, it was flagged as a special event, and we had to fight with the administration to make it happen. So clearly, there was this anti Palestinian sentiment. And that was my first shock at Columbia. It just like to me felt like, okay, it's maybe bureaucratic. You know, like, it's not a big deal. But that was more obvious, like, after October 7, the fact that Columbia is the anti Palestinian, like, prejudice within the Columbia administration, I'm saying, like, is very flagrant.
16:29 Ezra Klein? Tell me about that for a minute before we get to October 7 itself, because Columbia now has these dual reputations as sort of what you're describing, that it had a Board of Trustees that was, I think it's fair to say, very concerned about things like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. It's also a home of a lot of very important Palestinian scholarship. Rashid Khalidi is there at this time. There's this question of, is it an antisemitic place? Is it a, what, there's some kind of tension here that is specific about Columbia?
17:03 Speaker 01 Columbia is a for-profit place. Columbia doesn't care about Jewish students. Doesn't care about Palestinian students. They don't, they only care about their brand and money.
17:13 Ezra Klein? So it's a corporation function.
17:14 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
17:16 Ezra Klein? October 7th happens. What do you think that day?
17:20 Speaker 01 That day, I was at the cinema with, with my wife Noor here, like in, at Lincoln Center. And when I, when I left the cinema around like 12, 12:30 AM, I started to receive all these notifications. And to me, it felt frightening that
17:39 Speaker 01 we had to reach this moment in, in, in, in, in the Palestinian struggle.
17:48 Speaker 01 And I, I remember I didn't sleep for a number of days and Noor was very worried about, about like just my health.
17:59 Speaker 01 And it was heavy, like I, I still remember like, I was like, this couldn't happen and.
18:04 Ezra Klein? What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this?
18:07 Speaker 01 I was interning at UNRWA at that point, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency at the UN, at their New York office. And as part of my internship, my research and work was focused on, you know, Palestine, on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. And you can see that the situation is not sustainable. You have an Israeli government that's absolutely ignoring Palestinians. They are trying to make that deal with Saudi and just happy about their Abraham Accord without, you know, looking at Palestinians as if Palestinians are not part of the equation.
18:50 Speaker 01 And they circumvented the Palestinian question. And it's clear, like it's, it's becoming more and more violent. Like, you know, by October 6th, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Over 40 of them were children. So that's what I mean by like, unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment.
19:17 Speaker 01 And yeah, it was absolutely difficult like, you know, to see not only the horrific images, but also the response of Israel. Because I knew, I knew like, that's what Netanyahu wants. Because Netanyahu thrives on the killing of Palestinians. At that point, there were already big demonstrations in Israel regarding the judicial reforms. But I knew that that's something that Netanyahu would use to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
19:56 Ezra Klein? Well, when you say these days where you're not sleeping, are you just following the news and the social media kind of relentlessly? Are you trying to think about what will happen next? Are you trying to think about how this will play out? What is, what's the nature of your?
20:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, mostly just thinking about the future, to be honest, like worried about the future. And I remember one of the things I said, this is gonna be even worse than the Nakba, like the aftermath. And I had to think like, you know, like, how can you stop this? What can we do? Also, just following, like, is it, is it really, you know, a day or two, two days after when, when the Israeli or the former Israeli Defense Minister said, like, we're gonna cut everything from Gaza, human animals, all of that. So the intent was clear that they wanna obliterate Gaza.
20:49 Ezra Klein? I remember I did a piece right after October 7th, and one of the things that seemed clear to me, like, very, very quickly on that day, as you're watching the images, as you're hearing, you know, the screams, you're seeing the videos of people, of Jewish Israelis being paraded around, of corpses, is both that this attack is horrific, and that the counterattack is gonna be overwhelming, right?
21:23 Ezra Klein? And that on some level, I understood that as something Hamas must have wanted, right? Pull Israel into this attack, pull it into some kind of war. Maybe you involve other players in the Middle East, but a lot of lives were being used there as kind of chips on the table.
21:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:45 Ezra Klein? Was that your perception? Or did you see this as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium?
21:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's more the latter, like just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard. And to me, it's a desperate attempt to, to the word that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation. That was my, my interpretation of why Hamas did the October 7 attacks on Israel. Because at that point, there was no political process. It was clear that the Saudi-Israel deal is very imminent, and
22:27 Speaker 01 Palestinians wouldn't have any path to statehood and self-determination. So they had to do, to do that according to their calculations, which, I mean, it's obvious is not, you know, what not right.
22:48 Ezra Klein? I've heard you in other news be very clear in condemning killing of civilians. October 7th was obviously an operation that, that did target a lot of civilians, that did kill a lot of civilians. Do you see that is unavoidable, that Hamas had no other choice? Do you see it as a mistake?
23:07 Speaker 01 Well, I know it's targeting civilians is, is wrong. That's why we've been calling for an international independent investigation to hold perpetrators into accountability. And it's very important, like for us who believe in international law, that this should happen. And it's very important to underscore as well that Palestinians have tried like all forms of resistance, including nonviolent resistance. However, this was always targeted by Israel.
23:43 Speaker 01 Palestinians who participated in the Great March of Return were killed or maimed because of that. And there's nothing can justify the killing of civilians. And the international law is very clear about that. And we cannot pick and choose when international law applies to us or it applies to others. But also, like, there's another point to this, Isra. Palestinians don't have to be perfect victims. And that's what the war is asking of Palestinians amid the dispossession, the occupation, the killing, all of that. And horrible things happen. Nothing can justify that.
24:26 Speaker 01 And I would do everything in my power to stop that from happening. But we cannot go and ask Palestinians to be perfect victims after 75 years of dispossession, of killing. People in Gaza, you know, being under siege for over, at that point, 17 years. Palestinians in the West Bank being stopped at checkpoints. Settlers, they attacked them at every opportunity. The human dignity of Palestinians was absent. And still, unfortunately. So that's why I'm, when discussing that, like, unfortunately, these horrible things are happening, could happen.
25:11 Speaker 01 But we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims.
25:32 Ezra Klein? So tell me about from there to the organizing for you. When did the protests and the encampments begin? What is your initial involvement in them?
25:42 Speaker 01 It goes back before October 7, my involvement in Palestine organizing on campus. And I started the process with the Columbia administration, creating DAR, which is home in Arabic. It's the Palestinian Student Society, to bring Palestinians from different schools together. That was the goal of it. So I worked with the administration over the summer to build that society. And that positioned me by October 7 to be, you know, I was the co-president of this new society, but I was also a co-president of the Palestine Working Group at CIPA. So I had this relationship with the Columbia administration, you know, most of them like junior officers.
26:25 Ezra Klein? I've heard you describe yourself previously to this, you're a bureaucrat.
26:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:28 Ezra Klein? And it sounds like you maintain some of that identity at Columbia.
26:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:32 Ezra Klein? A sort of person working within systems.
26:35 Speaker 01 Uh huh. Yeah, I mean, you know, most of the students are young. They don't have this like experience through these bureaucratic systems. So I found myself in that position where I would be the one communicating to the administration, the concerns of the Palestinian community. So I, on October, you know, October, I think nine or 10, I sent Columbia, you know, an appeal from the Palestinian students regarding the one-sided narrative that Columbia is trying to push regarding academic accommodations for Palestinian students, like myself, who had been awake for days, just watching the horrors in Gaza.
27:15 Ezra Klein? When you say one-sided narrative Columbia was pushing, what narrative and what, what form? What is the?
27:20 Speaker 01 So the narrative that Columbia pushed from the very beginning was a very pro-Israel narrative. By October 8, there was hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel. Yeah, Columbia erased that from their communication. And our, our ask was very simple, treat us equally, see us as a humans. Um, yet that was met with opposition from, or just, you know, no, no answers whatsoever.
27:49 Ezra Klein? And the ask here would have meant in these communications, being more?
27:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, be, be, being more, being more balanced in terms of acknowledging the Palestinian death, acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, acknowledging the Palestinians.
28:08 Speaker 01 Are occupied, you either should be consistent with with these matters or just don't say anything.
28:14 Ezra Klein? I guess the perspective of Jewish or Israeli students or Israeli Jewish students, I should say, Columbia would be that there was a huge attack that killed 1,200 some people, murdered 1,200 some people, that they were afraid of antisemitic violence erupting around the world. And they needed to hear something about that.
28:37 Speaker 01 Again, what we asked is not to omit their suffering or their perspective. We wanted to have equality, as we want like in the whole movement. This movement is about equality and justice. And Columbia did that, like, without even the students asking for it. Like, the first statement coming from Columbia was on the evening of October 7.
29:05 Ezra Klein? And so the whole set of communications felt like an erasure of Palestinian experience.
29:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. The whole Columbia communication with the student body was designed to erase the Palestinian experience.
29:22 Ezra Klein? And so at this point, you're sending emails. At what point does this become the protest that later become very well known?
29:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:32 Speaker 01 I must mention that the first protest that happened at Columbia was on October 12, five, six days after October 7. For these five days, every single night, there would be a vigil organized by Israeli and Jewish students at Columbia.
29:49 Speaker 01 The Palestinians took a decision to not hold any vigils during these days. Give them the space to mourn their death and, and, and, um, yeah, give them the space to mourn. And when we wanted to have our protest on October 12. We had a counter protest. And Colombia made the mistake of putting these protests in front of each other.
30:20 Ezra Klein? So the university decides where you can be.
30:22 Speaker 01 Exactly. So they gave the students supporting Palestine the east lawn and students supporting Israel, the west lawn.
30:35 Ezra Klein? It's like a metaphor.
30:36 Speaker 01 Exactly.
30:39 Speaker 01 And that was one of the biggest first mistakes that Colombia made. The protesters literally took a lawn. They wanted to call for their university to do three things. The first one, to divest its investment from companies complicit in human rights violations, to disclose the investments, where Colombia money goes. And the third one, to end ties with Israeli academic institutions. The student movement at Colombia start like it's not just after October 7. And this is something I really wanna highlight, that in 2002, Colombia's students voted
31:23 Speaker 01 to ask Colombia or to demand Colombia to divest its investments from companies associated with or complicit in human rights violations in Israel. And every other year after that, the students would do the same. QUAD, the Colombia University apartheid divest, was not created after October 7. It was created in 2016, actually, as a partnership between Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. So this is all not a new thing. And the student movement is not only about protests, encampments, and civil disobedience. There's a lot of work that have been done in terms of political education, referendums,
32:07 Speaker 01 submitting proposals to Colombia to divest, on why they should divest, research, mutual aid. So it feels very, very hard when you hear that it's only about the protests and it's only about the encampment. However, the students wanted to continue protesting because Colombia was not listening to them whatsoever.
32:30 Ezra Klein? You sort of described the groups you were in here as sort of Palestinian groups. But as you mentioned a minute ago, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is also a student group, is involved in, I believe, from the beginning in these protests too and in the divestment movement. Tell me about them, about your relationship with the Jewish students who are part of these protests. What is that sort of relationships and dynamics like?
32:56 Speaker 01 You know, having lived in the Middle East most of my life, unfortunately, the only Jew we hear about is the one who's trying to kill you, you know? And that's so for those in Gaza and in the West Bank. That's the only Jewish person they encounter, the one at the checkpoints, the one raiding their homes. And for me, because I was involved in this international work, I met like a lot of Jews through my work. And coming in the United States, it was an opportunity for me to expand on that, to really understand, you know, like what Israel means to the Jewish population around the
33:36 Speaker 01 world and the Jewish perspective about Israel. And Jewish Voices for Peace, and not only them, because there's a lot of Jewish students who are not associated with Jewish Voices for Peace, who were part of the movement, who felt that they can't remain silent while a country is committing crimes in their names, who wanted to fight antisemitism by showing what real Judaism is, that their Judaism requires them to speak out. So they were absolutely like an integral part of the movement.
34:18 Ezra Klein? And so you mentioned that the protests have these three goals, or these three demands, I should say, which are divestment from countries that have human rights abuses or international law abuses, the cutting of ties to Israeli universities, and knowledge of where Columbia's money is going. The sort of more macro demand, the thing you hear in chants, the thing that I think is behind more of that is the idea of Palestinian liberation, of freedom.
34:45 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
34:46 Ezra Klein? What does that mean to you?
34:48 Speaker 01 Palestinian liberation means that...
34:51 Speaker 01 Palestinians should live in dignity, freedom and justice, as simple as that. They did not have political goals in terms of like one state or two states. What's the the form of governance would be for liberated Palestine? I mean, I have views on that, like as a Palestinian.
35:13 Speaker 01 But that was what the movement was about, just to end this occupation, to end the apartheid, to end the genocide now, and to have justice, freedom and dignity for everyone.
35:27 Ezra Klein? I remember the Columbia protest, right before I knew who you were, becoming a national story, right, and hearing about them constantly and at every dinner I seemed to go to and and them being defined by positions that they feel more extreme than that. You know, famously a student saying this got attributed to you, but it wasn't you, that Zionists don't deserve to live. Some people hear Palestinian liberation and hear Jewish eradication or expulsion. Is that what you mean when you say it? Is that what you hear in the movement when you say it?
36:05 Speaker 01 No, absolutely not. And and there is deliberate attempts to demonize the movement. And again, the movement as a whole is not homogeneous, but also there are some ignorance in the movement in terms of what Palestinian liberation could mean. But in no way it means that it is the eradication of Jewish, of the Jewish people.
36:31 Speaker 01 And this is part of the demonization of the movement that like if you get Palestinian rights, then you wouldn't get Jewish rights.
36:41 Speaker 01 And to me, as a Palestinian, as an oppressed, I always felt my duty to also liberate my oppressor from their hate and from their fear.
36:52 Speaker 01 But these were all always like just a distraction, such sentiment about the movement that it's violent, that it won't eradicate, it eradicates Israel or the Jewish people, because it's not, they, we are at a time where Palestinians are getting killed every minute.
37:14 Speaker 01 That's what the focus was and still is.
37:19 Ezra Klein? You end up as a negotiator on behalf of the coalition of groups that are protesting. What is that role? Who are you negotiating with? What are you negotiating for?
37:31 Speaker 01 So, given my relationship with the Columbia administration and given my experience in diplomacy, the students and faculty approached me to negotiate on their behalf and also as a Palestinian. I can't relate more to the demands. So I was negotiating with two top administrators at Columbia. However, Columbia did not want to negotiate. They just wanted to buy time. And it was, you know, disheartening because these students were protesting since October. Every single week you have a protest.
38:13 Speaker 01 The students submitted proposals to Columbia's Committee on Divestment and the proposals were rejected. When you have Columbia suspending like SJP and JVP in November for the protests and then disciplining students for protests, then the students had to step up their game because clearly the university wouldn't listen to them unless they escalate. And that's how the encampment happened. They did not take us seriously at the beginning, but then they took us more seriously, but
38:55 Speaker 01 it was clear that they did not want in any way criticize Israel. They did not in any way appear to be capitulating to the students. And it was very intense. Like I was threatened by the National Guard on the negotiation table. They told me, this is our offer. If you don't sign, the police or National Guard will come today at 12 a.m.
39:19 Ezra Klein? So that was the... To uproot the encampments.
39:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
39:23 Ezra Klein? Many of the people protesting, many of the leaders of protest would do so with their faces covered. You didn't. Why?
39:34 Speaker 01 I wasn't doing anything wrong to cover my face.
39:39 Speaker 01 That doesn't mean that others were doing something wrong. It means that my calculation is different of what risk is because the risk is real. So right after October 7, there were doxing or trucks displaying the faces of students.
39:56 Ezra Klein? These are trucks going around.
39:57 Speaker 01 Around Columbia University, calling students Jewish-hating group or Jewish-hating students, something like that. So students feared about like their identity. Also, there were groups like Canary Mission, Bittar harassing these students and posting their information online, calling their parents, calling their employers.
40:22 Speaker 01 So there was this fear.
40:23 Ezra Klein? And you're a target of these groups?
40:24 Speaker 01 I was a target. I'm still a target of these groups. But I, to me, like I, my risk appetite was higher than than others. Like, why would I hide my face for protesting a genocide? If an employer doesn't wanna employ me for my views on Palestine, then I don't wanna work there.
40:43 Ezra Klein? Well, was it your risk appetite or was it also a different risk assessment? Which is to say that, I mean, we're gonna talk about your arrest and detention in a second. But did that not seem to you like a thing that happens in America?
40:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, I, I mean, I was ultimately wrong with that assessment.
41:06 Speaker 01 Because, once again, I wasn't doing anything wrong to hide my face. And these groups, you know, their focus was mainly like employers, opportunities, and and just like to smear you online.
41:24 Speaker 01 At no moment I felt that there actually would be government collaboration with these groups. None of my statements were problematic, not to mention that even if they were problematic, they would be covered by, you know, First Amendment. But I did not feel that like the government would actually act on such claims, baseless claims against me. And I mean, I was wrong, like eventually, that the US government eventually depended on these profiles to target students.
42:01 Ezra Klein? So Donald Trump is inaugurated for a second term in January of 2025. When he won the election and then when he was inaugurated, what did you think that meant? For one, this set of issues that you care about, the conflict, American policy, but also, did you think it meant anything for you and other students in your movement personally? Did that seem like a likely outcome?
42:25 Speaker 01 Yeah. The elections of Trump when it comes to Palestine, unfortunately, it's the same as Biden. Biden was equally bad. It's just Biden was gaslighting us that, you know, they care about Palestinians. But in fact, Biden laid the groundwork for Trump to do what he's doing right now. It's just to us, it's, you know, Trump would expose this hypocrisy. And
42:52 Ezra Klein? So your view is that their policies were not that different, just Trump was honest about it?
42:56 Speaker 01 Exactly. And, and, but when it comes to actually using government resources to come after students, to set the movement back, because that's one of Trump's campaign pledges is to set the Palestine movement in this country 20 years back. I think that's what he said in the summer of 2024. But my view is that
43:25 Speaker 01 This only exposed that there is a Palestine exception in this country, whether when it comes to First Amendment, whether when it comes to just the US government institutions.
43:42 Ezra Klein? So in the early days of March, you reach out to Columbia University. You say that that something is changing, that you're feeling unsafe. What were you seeing?
43:52 Speaker 01 So, you know, after the executive order in January, targeting basically like student activists by the Trump administration, these shady groups like Canary Mission and Bittar became more emboldened. They were more vicious in their attacks online. And the week leading to my arrest, I noticed like I would, all my friends would text me all these tweets from Canary Mission, from all these groups like tagging Rubio, tagging DHS, ICE, all of that. So I sent the Columbia administration a couple of emails like asking for mainly, I was thinking about like, I just want a lawyer to send this organization
44:37 Speaker 01 a cease and desist letter.
44:40 Ezra Klein? And so walk me through what happens on March 8.
44:43 Speaker 01 On March 8, I was coming back from an Aftar dinner with my wife. And I entered the lobby of my building. And then I noticed that someone is following us. And then they asked me, are you Mahmoud Khalil? I was like, yeah, who are you? Then they said, we are the police. I was like, what police? Because they were in plain clothes. There were two at that point. Then they said like, we are like Departments of Homeland Security. And your visa has been revoked. And I looked, you know, I was like, I don't have a visa. Like, I'm not here on a visa. I'm a green card holder.
45:27 Speaker 01 So he looked very confused at that point. And he called on to like someone to come. So at some point, there were four people. I asked for, do you have like any arrest warrant or anything like to show me? And they refused to do that. They threatened Noor, my wife.
45:49 Speaker 01 Of arrest if she doesn't leave. So Noor went to bring my green card because it wasn't on me at that point. Um, and they were just like confused about the green card um part of this. And um when Noor like brought it and they saw it, he looked even more confused. Uh, so he had to call someone and that someone told him, bring him anyway. During all that period, I was chill, like I was very calm. Again, like I've dealt with power all my life, so I knew I didn't do anything wrong. I thought, given their first comment about the visa, maybe this is just a misunderstanding. I would go to the office and then, you know, it would be solved.
46:32 Speaker 01 Um, but I was very scared because they were plainclothes. The cars were like unmarked cars. Um, and they was taken to their office in in in New York. And five hours after, they showed me that will be a termination. That my presence in the United States presents, I think, adverse. So I can't remember that, but like it's foreign policy threat.
47:01 Ezra Klein? Um, yeah, here, I'll I'll read it. Um, the the provision here that they're working off of the Trump administration is an alien whose presence or activities in the United States, the Secretary of State, has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.
47:20 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. Exactly. So.
47:22 Ezra Klein? And they show you that they.
47:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, they gave it to me five hours after.
47:25 Ezra Klein? Okay.
47:25 Speaker 01 And they laughed when I saw it. I was like, well, what did I do? You know, even the officer like shrugged, like, you know, giving me the the N T A, the notice to appear. Um, but at the same time, I I heard someone approaching the officer at the White House is requesting an update. And.
47:46 Speaker 01 I requested endless times to call my lawyer. I told him like I want to talk to my lawyer before signing or just like to know what's happening and they refused. And then they moved me like to New Jersey, then back to New York, to JFK, to Texas, to Louisiana in a matter of thirty hours. Say that again, they moved you from JFK to Texas. To Texas. Then to Louisiana. Okay, in thirty hours? In thirty hours. So everything was like very quick without me knowing where I'm going. Like I was shackled and you're expected to follow orders. And had you been given a lawyer, an opportunity to call someone? Nothing at all.
48:31 Speaker 01 So, and you know, these, these practices were kind of present in Syria where you have a security branch like kidnapping you from the street or disappearing you arbitrarily detaining you. So I never felt that this would happen to me in the United States where they would show up without any arrest warrant, without anything and just take me.
48:58 Speaker 01 And that's why I keep saying it felt like kidnapping because from Saturday evening until Monday morning, I had no contact with anyone.
49:11 Speaker 01 No lawyers, no family, nothing. And the last thing I heard from them when, when they were taking me to the car, they were threatening Noor with arrest and she was eight months pregnant at that time. And, and that, that was the only thing I was thinking about during these thirty hours. Like, did they arrest Noor? Is the baby okay? Is she okay? Like, and I wanted like answers, but they refused to give any answers. And I was again, like just shackled and expected to just follow orders. And I only knew that I was going to Louisiana when we were boarding the plane. Tell me about what happens in Louisiana.
49:59 Speaker 01 So I didn't know where I was going. Like, is it a jail? Is it an office? Is it detention center for immigrant? I didn't know any of that. So when we arrived there, we arrived at like one in the morning, like 1:00 AM.
50:18 Speaker 01 And we get to the detention center. They put me in this dorm with over 70 men. Then in the morning, I learned that this is a nice detention facility that everyone here are undocumented or they are here because of their documents. You know, I felt better because now like, oh, I can't talk to people. Like, what's happening? I can see there is a phone. So the first thing when we woke up, I went like to ask someone, how can I operate the phone? And I called Noor.
50:53 Speaker 01 And I just wanted, like, I called Noor, just wanted, like, you know, like, is she gonna pick up? Not like what's happening on the outside world. And Noor, yeah, picked up and we talked. And the first thing she told me, like, the White House has tweeted about you.
51:09 Ezra Klein? What did Trump say about you that day?
51:11 Speaker 01 Shalom Mahmoud.
51:13 Ezra Klein? Right, I remember that tweet.
51:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. So, I mean, he said later a lot of things about like Hamas sympathizer. Rubio said, young aspiring terrorist, something like that. And, yeah, and it felt like in a couple of days, the media is painting a totally different image of who Mahmoud Khalil is.
51:42 Speaker 01 The dehumanization of such tweets and of such portrayal in the media was so difficult to me on a personal level.
51:56 Speaker 01 And, yeah, but like I kept asking, like, is what's happening is legal? Like, I fled Syria fearing political persecution to come to the United States to face, like, the same fate of political persecution.
52:13 Ezra Klein? Do you have a view on why it was you?
52:17 Ezra Klein? I will say, because I had to, I prepared for this show. And I went looking for, okay, I need to make sure I know the really inflammatory things you've said.
52:28 Ezra Klein? And I found inflammatory things said by people nearby you at different times, or by an Instagram account that's part of a group you're part of, that kind of thing. I couldn't find that much from you.
52:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I joked with a couple of friends before my detention that I would be like Trump's perfect target if he wanted to do anything regarding that. But still, it was a joke.
52:54 Ezra Klein? Why would you be his perfect target?
52:57 Speaker 01 A Palestinian. My name is Mahmoud. And I was vocal in the media. So that's the perfect target to make an example out of because it's not about me. It's not about like, because he hates me or like because I, you know, but it was just the perfect recipe to make an example out of because the main goal of targeting me is to chill speech in this country. And to make an example out of me that like, even if you are a permanent resident, you're not safe. That we have ways to come after you.
53:42 Speaker 01 And that's the main message that they wanted to deliver by targeting me. And the other thing is because I present a different narrative than what the Israel lobby and this administration wants to show that Palestinians are violent. Palestinians, they just want to bomb things. But like I presented a different reality to that, that no, we, we know what we're doing. We want justice and freedom and dignity for everyone. That we are educated, that we are doing this like from this strong belief
54:25 Speaker 01 in human rights and the dignity of all people.
54:49 Ezra Klein? I want to go back to the Rubio termination notice. So the legal grounds here are someone, an alien in the language of the law here, who the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. So I've tried to look at what the Trump administration has said about the justification of this, and they've offered a few. One is a view that fighting antisemitism is a foreign policy priority of the United States, that you are antisemitic, and that your presence here is then in conflict with that priority. How do you respond to that?
55:35 Speaker 01 I mean, it's just, you know, baseless. There isn't any truth to that, and it's absurd. And in fact, what's a threat to combating antisemitism in this country is this administration unconditional support to a country that's committing a genocide in the name of the Jewish people. And they're trying to conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism with anti-Israel policies or sentiment, the same way they're also trying to now couple or conflate between pro-Palestine activism and pro-Hamas speech.
56:20 Speaker 01 And that's their main goal, but a court, a federal court judge said that it's likely unconstitutional that the administration targeted me. And I'm not sure how much you know, but like, this provision was used in the 50s to go after Jewish immigrants in this country.
56:41 Ezra Klein? It has a very proud lineage. You sort of touched this glancingly, but one of the arguments they've made about you is, I think the word they used was aligned, that your codes are aligned with Hamas. And Hamas is a designated terrorist organization under US law. And so, again, that would make you... Potentially in conflict with American foreign policy.
57:05 Speaker 01 This goes again into the attempt by, whether this administration or just like Israel in general to group the pro-Palestine activism with supporting Hamas, which is not true. Like what I stand for, what I'm advocating for is the end of the genocide, the end of the occupation, the end of the apartheid regime, and the end of complicity of Columbia University and this regime, as simple as that. I don't know how that make me aligned with Hamas or with anyone, but that's what I stand for.
57:44 Ezra Klein? The other thing, and this has become, I think, more present in the administration's rhetoric, not just about you. J.D. Vance just gave a speech about citizenship where he makes this point about Zohran Mamdani. It's kind of become a more, I would say, significant part of the rationale for a lot of what they're doing, which is that being in America is a privilege. It's not a right. And that the right response to that privilege, that gift, you came here fearing persecution in other places, is gratitude, not protest. They believe it weakens America to allow the presence of immigrants who are critiquing what America is, what America's foreign policy is. Maybe, I think only maybe, but maybe
58:29 Ezra Klein? citizens are allowed to do that. Maybe native-born Americans are allowed to do that. But you, here on the largesse of the American government, you should be quiet and grateful and treat your presence here as a privilege. And they have decided to start deporting people who don't.
58:53 Ezra Klein? How do you think about that argument?
58:55 Speaker 01 This is a very dangerous argument. You know, this is about selective than democracy, selective rights to people. And this administration is trying to target anyone who doesn't fit the very narrow definition of what an American should be, or who is the real American in this country. If you don't look like Stephen Miller, then you're not an American. That's eventually what they want us to do. And the same with the privilege part of it. It's a privilege of the law, not the privilege of the administration to be in this country. I'm married to an American citizen who was born in this country.
59:39 Speaker 01 My son is American, so I get that privilege from the law. This is how this administration is trying to portray everything right now, that anything is a privilege. Federal funding is a privilege. Medicare is a privilege. Birthright citizenship is a privilege. Freedom of speech, due process is a privilege. And this is very dangerous because you can't have a democracy for some. It's not a democracy. Then it's just, you know, like, I'm not sure what a word to describe that, but it's absolutely not a democracy.
1:00:22 Speaker 01 It would be just an autocracy.
1:00:27 Ezra Klein? When you were in the ICE detention facility, you had become by this point a national cause, with the right calling you all kinds of names, but many people also rallying around you, attention to your case. Shalom Mahmoud made sure a lot of people knew who you were. You were there with a lot of people whose names are not known. Tell me a bit about your fellow inmates. Tell me what you learned and saw about what's happening in the immigration system and the ICE detention centers during those 104 days.
1:01:06 Speaker 01 You know, coming to America to study and, you know, to live, to build a life here, I never imagined that.
1:01:16 Speaker 01 There is such injustices happening on US soil. I mean, one example is a forty-five-year-old man who has been in this country for, since 2021. And he was picked up from his court hearing, leaving behind his wife, who's battling cancer, and four children under the age of eleven. This man was literally at his court hearing, going through the process of getting documentation.
1:01:58 Speaker 01 But now, his wife had a chemotherapy appointment upcoming. And he was just like, literally crying every day. And it was so normal seeing people crying in the detention center. Another story is a person coming to me, showing me like, a piece of paper. He's like, what this paper is about? Since I was, you know, I had a master's degree and I know how bureaucracy works. So a lot of people would come to me with questions. And, and I was like, you don't know what this is? He was like, no, they, they gave it to me. They made me sign it. And it says deportation order. And next day, he was deported.
1:02:41 Speaker 01 And a nineteen-years-old came to ask me,
1:02:49 Speaker 01 can my mom continue to visit me? His mom would drive every week for four hours from New Orleans to see him. But she's also undocumented. So he came to ask me like, is it safe for her to come and visit me?
1:03:04 Speaker 01 And they had To tell them like, no, it's not safe because they may arrest her and then you wouldn't have anyone to support you on the outside.
1:03:15 Speaker 01 So just like so many stories, like left and right, you you see the injustice happening. There the dehumanization around being named criminals on the news while the vast majority of them were either picked up from court hearing, from ICE check-ins or from their work. Maybe it's because of my ignorance, but I never saw that this is actually happening where the immigration system is is very corrupt. It is, in fact, kangaroo court. It is fully controlled by the executive branch, fully controlled by the attorney general.
1:03:56 Ezra Klein? You, in a letter you wrote or that you dictated there, you referenced this line from Hannah Rent, "Who has a right to have rights?"
1:04:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:12 Speaker 01 That that was, to me, the most difficult part of the whole experience. The
1:04:21 Speaker 01 the moment you you enter that facility,
1:04:26 Speaker 01 you don't have any rights. All your rights are just like taken away from you. And to me, like having, you know, like this support from lawyers who would tell me what my rights are. So that's why I felt like in that specific moment when writing about like, yeah, who has rights to have rights?
1:04:55 Speaker 01 If me being, you know, a legal permanent resident in this country, an educated person, in a matter of like moments, I was stripped of all these rights.
1:05:08 Ezra Klein? While you're in there, your wife, who is eight months pregnant when you were picked up, gives birth. What what was that experience like for you?
1:05:20 Speaker 01 Um, I was always hoping that I would be out before the birth of my son. Nora and I have always dreamt about this moment. I mean, every parent um have done the same. And to me to lose that moment because a person decided so um felt difficult, the dehumanization of that moment that I had to be on the phone listening to my wife at two thirty in the morning, like listening just to her screams and and I can't, you know, I can't hold her hands or
1:06:02 Speaker 01 give her any, any supporting like words in a place where, you know, I can't even raise my voice at that, at that time.
1:06:11 Ezra Klein? You're listening in this room with?
1:06:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was on the phone. Yeah, like there was like seventy people. They were asleep, like the majority of them. Um, I was also like trying to resist crying at that moment, like I don't want them to see me crying. Um, and and this is one of the moments that I would never forgive them for taking it from me. But this is part of the cruelty that was imposed on me, that we went to ICE, to DHS, to request like temporary or for law temporary release, but was refused immediately.
1:06:56 Speaker 01 Um, and we gave them, you can put all the conditions like you want, just like for two hours just for me to be in that room. I have no criminal history, no risks whatsoever, yet they refuse because their main goal out of, out of this is to punish me, to make an example out of me, to be as cruel as possible. Um, so yeah, so I, I always struggle to answer this question about that feeling. Um.
1:07:28 Speaker 01 Because I I tried to prepare for that moment. Yeah, I collapsed like when I was on the phone. And, you know, I had to wait a number of hours until I could like receive a picture of Dean of of the newborn.
1:07:49 Speaker 01 But then the the detainees actually made me a cake. The night of like, I did not tell anyone, but then someone approached me is like, you're not okay. Because I stayed on on my bunk like the whole day. And he told me like, you're not okay. I told him like, yeah, my wife give birth today. And then an hour after like, you know, um, um, they it's it's a detention made like cake. It's not like a real cake, but like it's, uh, yeah, but that that felt, you know, like to have them. And usually people save these things, you know, not but they they they brought it to like to me and and and we uh, we celebrated that together.
1:08:30 Ezra Klein? Yeah, that's not a moment you can prepare for.
1:08:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:35 Speaker 01 But unfortunately, this is just like, literally, they always say it's a drop in the sea of sorrow that Palestinians go through every day. It's just a microcom of what a Palestinian story is, why Palestinians are so dehumanized and and and in this country in the West that just all this administration had to say that is that I'm Palestinian. And that this is what we are fighting against now. It's it's just the dehumanization of of Palestinians.
1:09:14 Ezra Klein? There's a way in which your experience inverts the narrative that has taken hold. Look, I'm Jewish. I don't take antisemitism lightly. You should see my inbox.
1:09:29 Ezra Klein? And it can be true that Jews can be unsafe, but the idea, and it is real that there is antisemitism in Columbia. But nobody there ended up as unsafe as you did.
1:09:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I would push back regarding antisemitism at Columbia. I would really push back on that.
1:09:45 Ezra Klein? That there was none?
1:09:46 Speaker 01 I wouldn't say there was none. I would say there isn't this manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests. Because Proud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right wing, you know, like group. And and there are incidents here and there, but it's not that like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of like the Palestine movement. This is why I would always push back. And I have like that strong belief that antisemitism and anti Palestinian racism, they rise together. Like the incidents rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways. And I'm not trying like to sanitize history or sanitize like the present when it comes to that.
1:10:32 Speaker 01 But like going back to what you said, like I paid so much because of that rhetoric. Because of Columbia's like complicity and because of, you know, a lot of the students who targeted me are pro-Israel students. Like, you know, the same four or five students would tweet about me every day just to silence me. Because it was easier for them to silence me, to throw me in prison than actually reflect on what I'm saying. Than actually listening to this, even if it's uncomfortable. And I know it's uncomfortable because supporting a genocide should be uncomfortable.
1:11:14 Speaker 01 Like, being uncomfortable is very different from being unsafe. And I want to get into like, you know, like the chants, like from the river to the sea, from Globalize the Antifa about all of that. Like, I heard someone on your podcast saying like, oh, I don't like the chant Globalize the Antifa. Yeah, like, don't like it. Like, it's not, it's not being chanted for you to like it, it's actually to make you uncomfortable. So you have to think about your complicity and what's happening. And words matter. And the fact that Palestinians are being attacked for whatever chants, symbols, anything they do.
1:11:55 Speaker 01 Should be addressed, like Palestinians, you know, you have the BDS, the Boyka divestment and sanctions movement. It's a very peaceful movement and yet it was labeled as antisemitic.
1:12:11 Ezra Klein? And criminalized.
1:12:13 Speaker 01 And criminalized in the United States.
1:12:15 Ezra Klein? In many states.
1:12:16 Speaker 01 So you have people dictating on you what your chant should be. And with the globalized Intifada, it's not about like violence and, you know, like globalize the killing and all. It's not. And it was overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation. The second Intifada included some instances of violence.
1:12:43 Ezra Klein? Included many suicide bombings.
1:12:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, include 100 and something, but it's also included the killing of 3,000 Palestinians.
1:12:50 Ezra Klein? I'm not, I'm just saying that the fact that many Jewish people here globalizing Intifada as globalize the violent struggle is not based on nothing.
1:13:03 Speaker 01 No, I think it's based on policing Palestinian thought and speech. That's what it's based on. Because from the river to the sea, no one ever said that's a violent, from the Palestinian perspective, no one ever said that's a violent call. Yet, you see this narrative that, oh, it's a call to erase Israelis from Palestine, which no one said that. It's actually the Likud party that says that, that from the river to the sea, it's all should be like Jewish sovereignty there. It's not Palestinians who said that.
1:13:38 Ezra Klein? But there have always been different factions of Palestinians, right? In the same way that you're saying it's not fair to ask Palestinians to be perfect victims. It's also, I think, not reasonable to collapse. There have been much more violent factions of the Palestinian struggle. There have been plenty of periods when what Hamas meant from things like that was much more annihilatory.
1:13:58 Speaker 01 But the Intifada was not started by Hamas.
1:14:00 Ezra Klein? No, I agree, but it has, but it, but the second Intifada very much involved them.
1:14:04 Speaker 01 Involved, but that doesn't mean it started, it started because of...
1:14:08 Ezra Klein? I'm just saying when you say that nobody ever. Said it this way.
1:14:12 Speaker 01 No, I'm saying like the way that the students are saying that and even even.
1:14:17 Ezra Klein? The students, that's fair, I think.
1:14:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, the students never said that like because to us it means let's globalize the struggle to liberate Palestine that it shouldn't feel convenient where Palestinians are being killed every day and the world is silent. That's what the uprising is about. And again, like I don't want to sanitize history and I told you like the Second Intifada involved violent acts, but overwhelmingly they were peaceful. And in the Second Intifada, over 3,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel. The First Intifada, 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel too.
1:15:01 Ezra Klein? The place where I overwhelmingly agree with you is that there is one abroad effort to demand the Palestinians speak perfectly that is not demanded of Jewish people. There are no end of chants that happened on Jerusalem Day in Israel and no end of rhetoric. I mean, I went to a synagogue when I was young that I ended up stalking out of when my rabbi told my confirmation class that Israel be within its race to displace all Palestinian people, right? And that was normal. And that was a reform synagogue. I watched
1:15:44 Ezra Klein? on an interview you were giving, the sort of repeated demands that you denounce Hamas, not just killings of civilians, but Hamas itself. There is a insistence that Palestinians, in my experience.
1:16:02 Ezra Klein? Sort of denounce struggle almost entirely. They don't understand it as their own struggle. And it's not applied equally. The demand that you would denounce every part of Israeli government or life, including the ruling government right now that is creating a mass starvation, is not demanded of Jewish people. And so there is, there's a huge double standard here.
1:16:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. And that's why you would, you wouldn't find many Palestinians answer that question. It's not about Hamas. It's about just the perspective of asking this question. The dehumanization of asking this question when, because it's not about my political view of about Hamas. Like, they only want to say, like, want to hear yes or no. That's it. Like, it's not about, like, what I think about it. And this is being used to credit or discredit, like, Palestinian. Like, if I condemn Hamas, then, then I am a Palestinian worth of listening to. If I don't, then I'm not. And, and this is what gets Palestinians angry with this line of questioning. Because, as I said, like Palestinians are the one now being, like, starved and, and genocided.
1:17:16 Speaker 01 Because even if Hamas does not exist tomorrow,
1:17:21 Speaker 01 the Israeli occupation and supremacy would continue against the Palestinians. So it's not about Hamas.
1:17:31 Ezra Klein? I want to pick your, your story back up here. What leads to your release?
1:17:35 Speaker 01 You know, now I'm, I'm, I'm out on bail with very restrictive conditions that I have, like, to reside in, in, in New York, have very few places to go to. But federal court ordered that my detention was likely unconstitutional, that I was targeted for my freedom of, of, of, of speech, that there is no evidence of what the administration has, has said about me. But the legal fight is, is long. The administration is, is waging a lawfare against me. They are basically appealing every decision, trying to bring retaliatory.
1:18:22 Speaker 01 Charges against me, so I, you know, I just like shut up and, and, and, and leave the country. But we'll continue the fight because unfortunately, there's no other option right now.
1:18:34 Ezra Klein? You're giving interviews like this one. You were on Capitol Hill recently. Tell me about that, that decision.
1:18:43 Speaker 01 I'm demanding accountability for the overreach, for the illegality of my detention. And I want to bring it to what really matters, which is ending the genocide in Gaza. That's why that was centered to my conversation, whether with the media or with Congress members. Because what's happening to me and to others is just a distraction from the real issue, which is the US complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
1:19:19 Speaker 01 That's why I, you know, like, a lot of people tell me like, oh, take a break, or why you're taking all these risks.
1:19:30 Speaker 01 But I really can't take a break where the genocide is not taking a break. Where, as of today, there's over 100 people, we're starved to death. There is like moral imperative to me to speak up, especially now that I have this platform that I should continue to use. Unfortunately, I did not choose this, this place, you know, ICE did. However, I want to, I want to take that responsibility with pride and, and continue advocating for the rights of my people.
1:20:04 Ezra Klein? As always, then our final question, what are the books you'd recommend to the audience?
1:20:09 Speaker 01 The first book I would recommend is.
1:20:13 Speaker 01 A newly published book, Umar al-Aad's book, which is "One Day Everyone Will Have Always Opposed This." It's sort of like exposing the hypocrisy between the worst ideals and actions. The second book is Edward Said's "The Question of Palestine." That was actually published, I think, late 70s, before Hamas was founded. And it's a good glimpse into the Palestinian thought when it comes to Palestine and Zionism, and Zionism from the perspective of Palestinians.
1:20:54 Speaker 01 The third book is "My Promised Land" by Ari Shavit, which mirrors Rashid Khalidi's hundreds of wars on Palestine. And to me, that was helpful because it shows that the Zionist colonial project started like in the 80s and sort of confirm what Rashid Khalidi say in a lot of places.
1:21:20 Ezra Klein? The 1880s.
1:21:21 Speaker 01 The 1880s, yeah. Yeah, those are the three books that I would recommend.
1:21:29 Ezra Klein? Mahmoud Khalil, thank you very much.
1:21:31 Speaker 01 Thank you, Ezra.
1:21:48 Ezra Klein? This episode of The Ezra Klontz Show is produced by Jack McCordick and Roland Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Marie Cassillon, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Kristin Lynn, and Jan Kobal. Original music by Carol Sabaro, Aman Sahota, and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina C. Maluski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.
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