Mahmoud Khalil

There is no excuse for it.

And to make matters even more ridiculous, they also brought in Mahmoud Khalil.

Why he's still in the United States, I don't know.

He just keeps filing lawsuit after lawsuit.

He seems to love our justice system, even though he really doesn't like America, as he's made abundantly clear.

So of course, we also had to hear from Mahmoud Khalil, who actually wants to commit genocide against the Jewish people.

We also had to hear from him at this Yom Kippur service, where we're supposed to be commemorating during the period in which he spoke, the fallen people from the Jewish community in the past year.

But no, let's bring Mahmoud Khalil to talk about it.

My neighbors can also be the enemy, but you have tanks to kind of justify that and all the bells and whistles that you consistently get with a police budget that balloons in every single community, large and small.

I mean, you said it all, but I will say sometimes, right, it becomes like a self-reinforcing idea, right? Intelligence agencies are often the ones defining the term and then forcing everybody else to comply, right? And, you know, you're seeing that, you know, with Mahmoud Khalil and some of the issues that student protesters were facing and the way that their activism, whether you agree with it or not, the way it's being framed and the way that now Marco Rubio and others are talking about it as if these 20-year-old kids are terrorists, right? That's how they're being spoken about.

And so, you know, I know Michael, he's an academic.

And so, you know, as academics and educators, like we're always conscious of definitions and who makes these definitions and power and so on and so forth.

This is our great victory on the college campus of Columbia.

This is what Mahmoud Khalil wanted.

At one point, it's crazy, he turns to the camera and he says, and I will never condemn Hasan Piker.

I don't know why they added that, because this whole media frenzy started recently, but I guess they had to insert that in.

So that was mostly what we're focusing on here.

And they use stories like what happened to Mahmoud Khalil in their argument.

As many listeners remember, he was one of those protesters at Columbia University who the Trump administration accused of pro-Hamas, pro-jihadist protest activity, and also like anti-Semitic and anti-American activity more generally.

They used him as basically an example saying cases like that are chilling our free speech to be able to speak out against America and Israel.

You'll find links to Lisa and John's books on our show page.

And do keep an eye on www.merritt.org slash events for more information on future events, like our live event with Mahmoud Khalil tomorrow, September 25th in Philadelphia.

We hope to see some of you there.

And lastly, please consider making a monthly donation to Merip during our fall campaign.

It's unbelievable.

Sitting there next to Mahmoud Khalil in the crowd, a Hamas supporter, supports the dismantling of the one and only Jewish state to kill all the Jews in it.

Yes, they support that.

And they support killing you too.

So for the past three years, Rabbis for Ceasefire, Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, JFREJ, all these organizations have banded together to do this public offering, a public service, not a rally, but a service in, at Grand Army Plaza.

And Mahmoud Khalil spoke yesterday very powerfully, and a Palestinian woman whose name I forget from a West Bank village, which is on the verge of being wiped out by settlers in the army.

And, um, Hala El-Aliyan, I, I hope I'm not butchering her name.

A wonderful poet, um, who read a great poet of hers, a poem of hers called Redacted.

... activist movement, in the, i- you know, he's done some good anti-Zionist work locally.

On that level, just like Yuval Abraham, I don't really care what's in his heart.

What I do care about is when he's given pride of place at a religious service, when a secular politician, an elected politician who has s- who, who, who speaks like a politician, moves like a politician, thinks like a politician, is given pride of place at a s- a spiritual service that's supposed to be a solemn in solidarity moment with, you know, Mahmoud Khalil there, and a Palestinian woman speaking forcefully about what Zionism has done to her people.

To me, it's just not, it's just, it's just not appropriate to start things off with this, this kind of wishy wa- it just waters it down.

Even amid those changes, the board still takes months to decide appeals involving detained immigrants, although there have been exceptions.

The board took just nine days this spring to rule that Mahmoud Khalil, a high-profile pro-Palestinian student activist targeted by the administration, could be deported.

A former human rights lawyer, Mr. Serrano was for many years one of Ecuador's most powerful and feared figures.

In 2011, he became Interior Minister, a position that gave him direct oversight of the country's police and intelligence system.