Mahmoud Khalil: Beyond the Empire’s Duopolistic Appropriations
By Saswat Pattanayak
New York, March 14, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil’s freedom is intertwined with Palestinian liberation. Photo by Saswat Pattanayak
Liberals who want to address Trump’s assault on free speech without acknowledging that it is merely a continuation of an official anti-Palestine foreign policy that was nurtured and strengthened under Biden (if not a continuation of the climate of Islamophobia since Bush presidency itself) are quick to forget history at best, and are conveniently absolving themselves of their complicity, at worst.
Last year alone there were over 3,500 students who were arrested for opposing genocide. The violent attacks on student encampments were not accidental targeting of pro-Palestinian students. At domestic front and internationally, the US American ruling class had made it quite clear that it was against any form of ceasefire in Gaza. That it was normal for it to not only witness endless murders of Palestinian children but it was a patriotic duty on part of Biden administration to fund the war machine which would enable those deaths. And to remarkably justify hundreds of thousands of revenges because Biden had somehow witnessed beheading of forty Israeli babies - a falsehood which White House had to later retract (but not before a consensus was manufactured in favor of genocide that continued to be upheld at the United Nations while rest of the world was left in utter disbelief).
The outrage that liberals have towards Trump today is a matter of political opportunism to which they have entitlement. But the sarcasm they are routinely flinging at the minorities - or even the way they blame the Muslim voters for rise of Trump - is perfectly consistent with the criminal apathy they have had towards the Palestinians. It’s almost with a sense of vindictive glee that they rejoice the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil while theorizing how permanent residents should not be subject to detention on basis of their right to speech.
Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is not primarily, a matter of first amendment rights. It is not a matter of legality of immigrant rights. It is definitely not a matter about assault on the great American democracy. Khalil was not some random person on social media checking the limits of his freedom. He was openly spearheading negotiations on behalf of anti-genocide students of Columbia University. He was singularly attacked because of his steadfastness when it came to Palestine’s cause. This attack was consistent with American domestic and foreign policy towards Palestinian freedom struggle. It was consistent with NYPD’s brutality towards protesters last year across all campuses in the city. It was consistent with selective outrage against Palestinian protesters while being tolerant towards violent counterprotesting vandals in UCLA last year. Despite all credible video evidences and despite even Israeli media (Times of Israel, May 2, 2024) conceding that “Jewish students say pro-Israel violence at UCLA protest camp undercut their advocacy” - the only student group that was stereotyped and penalized; whose degrees were withheld and who were suspended - were Palestinians or pro-Palestine students.
Liberals should know this much. They should also be in the know of AIPAC’s funding of their own politicians. The macabre sadistic laughters of Democrats in Washington DC when confronted by anti-genocide activists such as Medea Benjamin are well documented. The political votes in support of nonstop indiscriminate militarist operations, the votes in support of endless billions of dollars to further carpet bombing of Gaza were votes by the Democrats as much as by the Republicans. Action against Mahmoud Khalil is due to his political stance against American foreign policy that perpetuated genocide last year under President Biden. He has not been abducted because he is a permanent resident; he has not been imprisoned because he exercised his right to free speech. He has been targeted because he was demanding that his university divests from a genocidal campaign. It is his opposition towards a foreign policy championed by Democratic Party all last year - that he has today found himself in this position.
Therefore it is all the more important that the Democrats acknowledge the damages they have caused to American student movement - a movement that had a glorious history of establishing civil rights, a movement of telling truth to power that attracted Dr. King and Bob Dylan; Abbie Hoffman and Mary Beth Tinker; Students for a Democratic Society, Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. It was the Democrats who continued to assault the student movement all last year by branding it antisemitic - to the extent that the public opinion led to constitute committees to fire or to hold accountable presidents of MIT, UPenn and Harvard. Today the anti-intellectualism masquerading as anti-DEI continues to target dozens of other great institutions. Instead of rejecting the premise that conflates antizionism with antisemitism, Democrats proudly had stood by and allowed a global student movement against injustice to get unfairly labeled as terroristic, domestically.
Without acknowledging the material cause behind Khalil’s arrest - his unwavering opposition to an active genocide, any amount of chest-thumping about freedom and democracy which allegedly were always there in this country (according to conveniently gullible-once-again Bernie Sanders - it was all glorious for past 250 years - the audacity to make such a claim!) and that democracy got all stripped away overnight by Trump, is an absolute hogwash. Despite the massive electoral losses, the party has learnt nothing at all. It is yet again another failure on the part of the clueless (or purposively so) liberals to take responsibility for their own actions, whose dastardly consequences are now merely being appropriated by the officially reactionary maga hats.
