"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 Name is Mahmoud Khalil and I Am a Political Prisoner A letter dictated by Mahmoud Khalil over the phone from ICE detention in Louisiana. Mahmoud Khalil March 18, 2025

Protestors show support for pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil on March 15, 2025, at the University of Washington campus in Seattle. Khalil was arrested without a warrant on March 8 by the Department of Homeland Security. Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images

The contents of this letter have not been edited.

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 underway 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 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 U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. 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 Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing — 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 B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC 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 first-born child.

 https://inthesetimes.com/article/mahmoud-khalil-letter-from-a-palestinian-political-prisoner-in-louisiana

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

 

Jewish Voice for Peace protest in New York City Trump Tower for FREE SPEECH & Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil

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Timeline: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) & Establishment of Israeli Apartheid

1. Prelude to Catastrophe (Late 1800s-1945)

"We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." - Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, 1895... "  READ MORE  https://imeu.org/article/the-nakba-65-years-of-dispossession-and-apartheid

Key context on the Palestinian activist arrested by ICE: I Was a Columbia Student Journalist. Here’s What to Know About Mahmoud Khalil. By Irie Sentner 3/13/2025

There’s a website called Canary Mission that posts the names and images of anyone seen as anti-Israel — including student journalists whose coverage the Canary moderators don’t like.
 

New York Police Department officers surround the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University in New York City, on April 30, 2024. | Irie Sentner/POLITICO

1

What was Mahmoud Khalil’s role in Columbia’s student protests? And do you know what his immigration status was during the protests?

2

Was deportation a widespread concern among immigrant students participating in the protests?

Absolutely. During the encampment, two friends who were international students told me they wished they could be there but couldn’t risk losing their visas. There was a similar fear among low-income students, who didn’t want to risk their scholarships or lose on-campus housing. Many chose to participate in other ways, like sharing pro-Palestinian content on social media or bringing food and supplies to the encampment.

At Barnard specifically, students who were suspended for protesting were evicted from their dorms almost immediately. That was also a major fear: There’s a big difference between someone who lives near New York or has a robust support system in the U.S., and a student who would be left on the streets of Manhattan because their family lives in another country... READ MORE 

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/13/columbia-student-journalist-mahmoud-khalil-00226729

3

Has there been a vibe shift on campus since Trump’s election?

4

How had student protesters tried to protect themselves from retaliation until now?

5

Has the debate surrounding student protests changed at all since 2024? Could Khalil’s arrest change it in any way?

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine ]

Mahmoud Khalil: When Speaking for Palestine Becomes a Crime Mahmoud Khalil is a political prisoner and his unlawful detainment is being used to set precedent implementing facisct policies reminiscent of McCarthy Era First Amendment restrictions

Ahmad Ibsais

Mar 12, 2025

 

Mahmoud Khalil joins a long lineage of political prisoners detained for advocating just causes throughout American history. From Eugene Debs imprisoned for opposing World War I, to Japanese Americans interned during World War II for their heritage alone, to Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote his famous 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' while detained for peaceful protest.

 

As a Palestinian, I learned very young that our very existence was a form of protest. Every family gathering that turned into a political discussion and every celebration existed in defiance of forces that would rather see us disappear. This is why the detention of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil strikes at the core of my being—I recognize in his abduction the same suffocating tactics used to silence Palestinians for generations, now deployed on American soil against those who dare speak our name.

Khalil’s detention by ICE agents on March 8, marks a watershed moment in American democracy. As his pregnant wife watched helplessly, government agents took away a legal permanent resident whose only "crime" was serving as a negotiator in campus protests calling for university divestment from companies profiting from Israel's Genocide on Gaza.

Let us be clear: Mahmoud Khalil is a political prisoner—detained not for any recognizable crime, but for criticizing Israel. There is no law against calling for the end of Genocide, nor should there be in a constitutional democracy. Yet the Trump administration has effectively created such a crime, linking legitimate criticism of a colonial state to “antisemitism,” by abducting and detaining a green card holder solely for his political expression.

After Khalil's detention, the official White House Instagram account published an image of him with the words "Shalom Mahmoud" plastered across it—a chilling taunt that reveals the administration's contempt for due process and basic human dignity. His temporary disappearance into the ICE detention system—his lawyers couldn't locate him for over 24 hours—mirrors the tactics of authoritarian regimes worldwide.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is that it didn't begin with Trump. It was precisely the Biden-Harris administration's demonization of student protesters as antisemitic that laid the groundwork for Trump's assault on Columbia and other universities. In January 2025, a far-right pro-Israel group submitted a list of students with visas to the Trump administration, urging their deportation for pro-Palestine advocacy. Within days, the administration issued an executive order threatening visa revocation for protesters. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the agenda explicit, writing: "We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported."

Across American universities, suppression has manifested in student expulsions, organizations being disbanded, and unprecedented surveillance: nine universities have forcibly shut down their Students for Justice in Palestine chapters; Columbia University expelled three students; and UCLA reportedly spent $12 million to surveil and challenge student protesters. This institutional violence mirrors the academic purges of the McCarthy era, when professors were blacklisted for ideological nonconformity.... READ MORE  https://ahmadibsais.substack.com/p/mahmoud-khalil-when-speaking-for?publication_id=1020749&post_id=158862987&isFreemail=true&r=34riug&triedRedirect=true

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As of now ANNE FRANK RULES APPLY

UN News Global perspective Human stories: Israeli Knesset vote on UNRWA set to deepen Palestinian suffering

 28 October 2024 Peace and Security

Monday’s vote by the Israeli Knesset banning the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) contradicts principles of the UN Charter, violates Israel’s obligations under international law, and sets a dangerous precedent, the head of the Agency, Philippe Lazzarini has warned. The UN chief pledged later he would take the issue to the General Assembly.

“This is the latest in the ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role towards providing human-development assistance and services to Palestine refugees,” Mr. Lazzarini said in a post on X, following reports of the long-anticipated vote being taken by Knesset members, passing by a margin on 92-10.

Tweet URL

Mr. Lazzarini added that the two bills which will reportedly come into effect within 90 days “will only deepen the suffering” of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through “more than a year of sheer hell”.

“These bills increase the suffering of the Palestinians and are nothing less than collective punishment,” he said.

The UN Secretary-General issued a statement in New York late on Monday warning that if implemented the laws would "likely prevent UNRWA from continuing it's essential work."

António Guterres stressed UNRWA provided the principal way of delivering aid and it would have "devastating consequences" were Israel to outlaw the agency.

"I am bringing this matter to the attention of the UN General Assembly and weill keep the Assembly closely informed as the situation develops," Mr. Guterres said. 

Virtually the entire population of the Gaza Strip depends on humanitarian assistance, with UNRWA as the “backbone” of UN’s relief efforts in the war-ravaged enclave.

In addition to helping deliver food and other lifesaving essentials, UNRWA is also crucial for overseeing the ongoing polio vaccination drive.

No alternative to UNRWA

UNRWA’s importance has been reiterated by several countries as well as UN’s leadership, including the Secretary-General, who has described the agency’s historic and leading humanitarian role as “irreplaceable”.

Mr. Lazzarini further stated that putting an end to UNRWA and its services “will not strip the Palestinians from their refugee status”.

Tweet URL

“That status is protected by another UN General Assembly resolution until a fair and lasting solution is found to the plight of the Palestinians,” he said.

“Failing to push back these bills will weaken our common multilateral mechanism established after World War Two,” he added.

UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in December 1949 “to carry out […] direct relief and works programmes” for Palestine refugees. It began its operations on 1 May 1950.

'Dangerous and outrageous'

In a post on X, the acting head of UN aid coordination office, OCHA, expressed her teams' "full solidarity with UNRWA...whose work is essential to millions of Palestinians."

Joyce Msuya added that the decision was "dangerous and outrageous. There is no alternative to UNRWA."

Many world leaders expressed their grave concern over the ramifications of the move by Israeli parliamentarians, including nations of the European Union, the United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and a Spokesperson for the State Department in Washington. 

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1156231 

Children play among tents set up for displaced Palestinians by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (Unrwa) in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on 19 October 2023 (AFP)

UNRWA Gaza 2018. Photo by Khalil Adwan

 UNWRA Galleries - photos & films  https://www.unrwa.org/ 

HISTORIC UNRWA FILM AND PHOTO ARCHIVE

"Visit the online platform for the digitized UNRWA Archive. ِAs we continue to upload digitized photographs and videos. Here you can browse the collections, galleries, and files that you can access in this media library."

Are restrictions on pro-Palestine speech ‘the new McCarthyism?’

VIDEO INTERVIEW 24 MINUTES LONG- CLICK HERE https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-bottom-line/2024/9/8/are-restrictions-on-pro-palestine-speech-the-new-mccarthyism

Is there an attempt to chill debate on Palestine and Israel on both sides of the Atlantic?

The United States, and the West in general, are in a “dire period” of repression of speech on Palestinian freedom or criticism of Israel, argues Dima Khalidi, founder of Palestine Legal.

Khalidi tells host Steve Clemons that despite strong constitutional protections for free expression, “there seems to be this exception when it comes to Palestine”, as witnessed by the wave of censorship, intimidation, firings and restrictions on activism in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza.

The situation is similar across Europe, says British journalist Richard Medhurst, who’s been covering Gaza closely and was arrested for “speech crimes” upon arrival in London recently.

On the growing tide of bigoted anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian hate pervading our politics

Rep. Ilhan Omar

@Ilhan

  New: Joint statement with

@RepRashida

and

@RepAndreCarson

on the growing tide of bigoted anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian hate pervading our politics

BBC News: Iraqi Christians are fleeing Mosul after Islamist militants threatened to kill them unless they converted to Islam or paid a "protection tax"

The Islamist militant group Isis has told Christians in Mosul to convert to Islam, pay a tax or be killed

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28381455

Iraqi Christians flee after Isis issue Mosul ultimatum

Iraqi Christians are fleeing Mosul after Islamist militants threatened to kill them unless they converted to Islam or paid a "protection tax".

A statement issued by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) was read out at the city's mosques.

It called on Christians to comply by midday on Saturday or face death if they did not leave the northern city.

Isis has control of large parts of Syria and Iraq and said last month it was creating an Islamic caliphate.

The ultimatum cited a historic contract known as "dhimma," under which non-Muslims in Islamic societies who refuse to convert are offered protection if they pay a fee, called a "jizya".

"We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract - involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword," the Isis statement said....READ MORE

Palestinian envoy is asked to leave Ottawa after controversial tweet

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/palestinian-envoy-is-asked-to-leave-ottawa-after-controversial-tweet/article2204367/

The Palestinian envoy to Canada has been told she’s not welcome in Ottawa after she tweeted a link to a video that the federal government deemed an offensive diatribe against Jews.

Now, Linda Sobeh Ali, the chargé d’affaires of the Palestinian delegation in Ottawa, is just one cut above persona non grata. The Canadian government called her in for a high-level dressing down, made a formal protest to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and has decided to “limit communication” with her until a replacement arrives.

The diplomatic cold shoulder was sparked when Ms. Sobeh Ali took to Twitter this month... READ MORE or just watch the video Linda tweeted:

Heartbreaking Poem of Palestinian Girl - English Subs