I read a sad and depressing article in the New York Post on March 15 about the rampant anti-Semitism at Columbia University. The article’s focus was about an unnamed female Jewish graduate student who experienced intolerable anti-Semitism when she was in the same class last fall as Mahmoud Khalil.
The article was entitled “Detained Columbia Anti-Israel Protester Mahmoud Khalil Seethed With Hatred For Jewish State, Ex-classmate Says.” It was written by Susan Edelman, Georgia Worrell, and Rich Calder.
I was aware that anti-Semitism had become a huge problem at such Ivy League universities as Harvard and Columbia since October 7, 2023, but I never realized that it was this bad, especially in a classroom. In my opinion, the head administrators at Columbia University have become spineless hypocrites in tolerating such blatant Jew hatred.
The article never specified the name of the woman’s class, but I highly suspect that it was either a history or political science class concerning either Israel or the Middle East. After reading the entire article, I strongly realized that Khalil’s ex-classmate had to remain anonymous because she still greatly fears for her physical safety or, much worse, from the fanatical black-and-white, keffiyeh-wearing and face-covered Hamas supporters at Colombia.
Unfortunately, the anti-Semitism this Jewish woman experienced was so bad that she reluctantly had to withdraw from the class taught within the renowned School of International and Public Affairs. Her withdrawal only occurred out of fear after numerous complaints about Khalil were ignored by the feckless administration, who did nothing under the preposterous pretext of free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Khalil’s ex-classmate described his presence in her classroom as “‘insidious,'” who made her feel extremely “‘ uncomfortable.'” She stated that it “‘was just so clear that the thing driving him most in life is destroying Israel [my emphasis], and everyone within it and anyone who supports it, and probably all Jews [my emphasis] … That to me was scary, that something could consume you like that.'”
What she described was the anti-Jewish fanaticism of a typical Hamas supporter whose favorite chant or placard is “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.”
Adolf Eichmann, who shared Adolf Hitler’s homicidal hatred of the Jews and followed his orders as one of the primary architects of the Final Solution during World War II, would have been proud of Mahmoud Khalil. He especially would have been proud of Khalil’s Nazi-like desire to advocate for the total annihilation and genocide of the Jewish state as described in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (2nd paragraph).
The Post stated that Khalil, who was 30 and head of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Colombia, “was a frequent no-show to class, which centered on Israeli politics, …. And when he did attend lectures, he disrespectfully interrupted his professor, who is Israeli.”
Most disturbingly, Khalil’s ex-classmate stated that he also “’targeted’” Jewish students in a required online “WhatsApp group chat,” who falsely referred to Israel as both “colonial” and “genocidal.” She added that “once or twice a week, he would just go in [the group chat] and basically instigate crazy claims that were just very antisemitic [my emphasis] and really inflammatory, and would get into fights with people.”
Even more disturbingly, Khalil’s ex-classmate stated that she “anonymously filed two Title VI complaints with Columbia administrators about his antisemitic rants within the group chat — but nothing ever came of them.” The head amoral Columbia administrators callously ignored both complaints.
According to the Post, after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, “Khalil became a driving force behind many of the anti-Israel protests [on campus], organizing takeovers and building encampments that plagued Columbia for more than a year, and he is now the poster boy for President Donald Trump’s crackdown on antisemitic college protesters.”
Unlike the Biden administration, who did nothing about the anti-Semitism at Columbia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Khalil on March 8 for distributing “‘pro-Hamas propaganda flyers,'” which violated the conditions of his green card, “at his Columbia-owned apartment building, and later transferred [him] to a detention facility in [Jena,] Louisiana, where he faces deportation.”
After his arrest, Khalil’s ex-classmate said, “I really do think this country is probably safer without him here like I don’t know how he got a green card,”… “He seems very much like he hates America and everything it stands for, and I think he’s done a lot to cause harm and violence here, and I could see him doing more.” I think that she is 100% correct.
She directly accused Columbia of bending “over backwards to not expel him, and I think if they would have followed their own rules, we would not be here now.” The Columbia administrators hypocritically tolerated his anti-Jewish hatred, fully knowing that if he had made a similar criticism of African Americans, LGBTQ+ individuals, or women, he would have been expelled from the university within twenty-four hours.
The New York Post also revealed that from June to November of 2023, Khalil “was a political affairs officer with UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency], which has extensive ties to Hamas. A damning Israeli dossier compiled through interrogations of Hamas terrorists and documents found in Gaza estimated roughly 1,200 [my emphasis] of UNRWA’s staffers were linked to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
The Jewish graduate student concluded that the “majority of her peers have worn keffiyehs to class to show their support this [past] week [for Khalil]— a move that has left her “’ unsettled.’” It appears that the keffiyeh has become a silent symbol for pro-Hamas supporters at Columbia in order to intimidate their political opponents, especially Jews and non-fanatical non-Jews.
Hopefully, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will soon receive a favorable legal ruling to deport Mahmoud Khalil to either Algeria or Syria for supporting Hamas, which the U.S. declared a terrorist organization on October 8, 1997. If so, I hope that Khalil will be the first of many Hamas supporters at Columbia who have violated their green cards to face deportation.
If Rubio is not successful, Columbia University must expel Khalil for violating the civil rights of both Jewish and non-Jewish students, which will serve as a warning to other U.S. universities and colleges. Or else they could risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in “federal grants and contracts.”
Robert L. Maronic