THE DETENTION OF SYRIAN-BORN PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST Mahmoud Khalil is not going to galvanize anyone but the most gullible suckers who are unable to think for themselves and don't have the information even if they could think.
I detest Trump and his toady Marco Rubio, but Rubia was right today when he said if Mahmoud Khalil was truthful when he decided to enter our country and told interviewers that he was a Palestinian supporter, he would have never been in the country at all.
What Democrats are being tricked into doing by ???? someone ??? is to say that Democrats support bringing supporters of terrorism into the country. Can you think of anything more thoughtless and wrong?
Democrats always get tricked by the liars in their midst who trick them into shooting themselves in the foot. It ends up dividing the party and looking like morons to independents.
The end result is to divide the Left and reducing voter turnout and argument.
No matter what I read or where I am, one main through point is that Americans take our democracy for granted. That democracy put a bubble around all of us - thicker for those in the majority and thinner as we reach women, people of color and immigrants.
An example is the horror that Mahmoud Khalil was detained illegally. Is this horrific? Most definitely. That said trump and his Nazi crew hate people of color. They articulated it in the trump 1.0, said it over and over again at rallies, so at this point, I look at Americans.
His arrest and detainment is horrific and illegal but can't be unexpected.
Hegseth is in place to unleash the military on the US population. What do people think that means? trump supporters "hate the libs." If they weren't being affected by the job losses and crazy stock market and tariffs, they'd be rooting for trump to take down anyone in blue states.
The reactions and protests I see are not where they need to be to ward off the insanity that I know is coming. We have feckless Democrats voting with Republicans as if this is business as usual. I'm in Indivisible at the local level and it's passable but won't blunt what's happened and what will happen.
I believed that we'd never have elections again. As time goes on that becomes more and more realistic.
I’m wondering how many people who voted for Trump or decided not to vote largely because of Biden‘s response to October 7 and support for Israel now realize the error of their ways.
One needs to look deep - Trump is losing supporters and this issue is adversely impacting the crowd. Even the insurrectionists in Congress don't totally back him.
Another Congress would call in Kash Patel to explain - but the corruption runs deep.
The first thing that this situation demonstrates is that a law written in a time when norms (and the Constitution and the associated rights) were observed (and it was assumed that norms (and the Constitution and associated rights) would be observed)--or that the Courts would protect those things--are dangerously vague and inadequate and lack proper protections of rights.
And the courts can, when things are vague or inadequate kind of interpret/decide however they want. A true stickler for the law would probably invalidate the law because it is constitutionally vague or even unconstitutional--proceduralists who are vetted by the Heritage Foundation and call themselves originalists might be tempted to say, well it says that, so its okay what he did. especially if their "leader" is a coward and worried about creating a situation that precipitates a full-blown confrontation between the Administration and the Courts..
The second thing that this demonstrates is that if you pick the right targets and work patiently (and set the proper groundwork) it gets easier and easier to take everyone's rights away at some point--often with the roared approval of the very people whose rights you are actually taking away (because, of course, the leopards will NEVER eat THEIR face).
Because people are on board with protecting THEIR rights, not so on board with protecting the rights of people who they do not like or causes they do not like. It has ever been so.
We just watched "I'm Still Here"....a film about a Brazilian woman whose husband was opposed to the military dictatorship. He was arrested and "disappeared" - it was later revealed that he was tortured and thrown into the ocean out of a helicopter. She soldiered on. As we should.
The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (14 Mar 1879-1955)
At least this is clear: the Trump administration is a regime and it is dangerous. We, the People, will not stand for this. Bad facts made bad policy. I don't like what this guy has to say but that is the point of a democracy, is it not? This is scary, scary stuff. I really had no idea Trump and the Republicans would go full-on fascist so quickly. Yet here we are.
“Disappearing” Khalil—exactly right! Trump/Musk have become Pinochet … without the uniform. Also without reason or humanity. Next up: Gitmo for Adam Schiff?
I wish Bulwark contributors would actually read up on the positions taken by Mahmoud Khalil before condemning him. Kudos to Carrasquillo for not falling into that trap.
Every single other podcast or piece of writing from the Bulwark has taken the "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it" approach, but with more vitriol, going into pains to emphasize that they think he is deplorable. However, nobody actually says what statements or beliefs they actually find deplorable. Mona Charen has been the biggest culprit, but both JVL and Sarah Longwell have also taken that approach.
I'd suggest actually looking up what he's said. Sarah even grudgingly admitted that Khalil does not say objectionable stuff, but even that concession implied that Khalil secretly holds abhorrent views. I believe her phrasing was that Khalil is "careful" not to make such statements.
This is an actual quote from Khalil:
"As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other." He characterized the movement as one "for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone".[12] Of concerns about antisemitism, Khalil said, "There is, of course, no place for antisemitism. What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that's taking different forms and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism [are] some of these forms."
And no, he never said that Zionists don't deserve to live--he's vehemently denied saying that and there is zero proof he ever said that.
He was the chief negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), whose main goal was to get Colombia to divest from it's holdings that were supporting weapons manufacturers supplying weapons to Israel. That's a bad thing?
Have some of its members said offensive antisemitic stuff that the broader organization denounced? Absolutely.
It's funny how Mona Charen holds Khalil responsible for utterances he didn't make, while giving Israeli MKs or even CABINENT MEMBERS a pass for openly advocating for genocide. Hell Netanyahu himself said:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you.”
Amalekites were persecutors of the biblical Israelites, and a biblical commandment says they must be destroyed. And by "destroyed" it means killing women and children as well. Not once have I heard JVL, Mona Charen, or Sarah Longwell criticize any such statement from Israeli government officials.
Of course, Charen also failed to condemn Israeli students for spraying peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors with a noxious substance on the Columbia campus.
Khalil is in no way an extremist. He's been vetted by the British Government and worked for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, managing the Chevening Scholarship and projects related to accountability, justice and gender equality in Syria. He also interned for UNRWA and met his American wife in Lebanon when they were both working on an aid program.
The irony is that by instinctually holding that Khalil is a deplorable extremist, Bulwark contributors make it harder to defend his freedom of speech. Whereas, if his speech isn't problematic in the first place, it makes the Trump Administration's attempt to have him deported even more objectionable.
The Israeli brutality in Gaza has created more Hamas supporters in Gaza and around the world than there ever were before. BTW - I am not a Hamas supporter, tho I'm sure you will assume that I am because I have the temerity to criticize the actions of Israel.
Gazans celebrated the death, cruelty and genocide exhibited on Oct 7th. They continue to celebrate and support Hamas. They have no desire to live side-by-side with Israel and jews, they wish to wipe them off the map. Israel is justified in the actions they've taken and it would end tomorrow if Hamas handed over the hostages! They bring this on their own people and the blood and responsibility lies at their feet
To quote Peter Beinart in "Being a Jew after the Destruction of Gaza":
"I still believe in the metaphor of Jews as a family. But it has been corrupted. Jewish leaders have turned our commitment to one another into a moral sedative. They have traded on our solidarity to justify starvation and slaughter. They have told us that the way we show we care about the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas is to support a war that kills and starves those very hostages, and that the way to honor the memory of the Israelis Hamas murdered is to support a war that will create tens of thousands more scarred, desperate young Palestinians eager to avenge their loved ones by taking Israeli lives. We need a new story--based on equality rather than supremacy--because the current one doesn't endanger only Palestinians. It endangers us."
And Beinart is no liberal squish, he's a former editor of The New Republic and editor-at-large at Jewish Currents.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Because the people of Gaza are very much aware that there’s something Hamas could do that would end all this immediately: surrender and release the hostages.
It would be the rational thing to do. They’ve picked a fight with a hopelessly superior enemy, have no chance of victory, and their entire plan is to sit in tunnels while their people suffer above ground, take no responsibility for what is happening and pretend Israel started all this, steal the bulk of the humanitarian aid sent in, and then prepare to declare a perverse victory just by not having all died while their senior leadership profits handsomely from Iran’s largesse sent their way from safety in Qatar.
The people of Gaza aren’t blind. They know their misery is being used as foil by Hamas, and they do not love their erstwhile masters for it.
I'll give you a historical example. In WWII, Nazi commanders would execute a dozen random civilians in a village for every German solder killed by resistance fighters in that village.
The "appropriate" response would have been to identify the actual culprit and punish the resistance operative for espionage (operating in enemy territory without a uniform violates the rules of war).
Now, do you think the villagers held the resistance fighters morally responsible for the execution of their peers? Or the Nazi commanders?
I was a child abuse prosecutor for almost 30 years. Several years ago, I handled a very disturbing case that involved a green card holder* who lured a teen with a developmental delay from a bus stop into his car and took her to a different location and sexually assaulted her. This was a very difficult case to prosecute, primarily related to the victim's deep trauma and communication deficits, and it was resolved with a plea to a felony sex offense that involved nearly a decade in prison and registration as a sex offender. It seemed like a good resolution, the family of the victim was relieved that there was no trial, and I believed that he would be deported after he served his sentence.
Imagine my horror when, rather than being deported, I learned that he was set to be released into my community years later. I couldn't figure it out. I thought that there had been a mistake, and all I needed to do was give them a call, point them in the right direction, and an ICE hold would be placed on him. I called the federal authorities to let them know that they needed to fix this oversight before he was released. It took a few days, but I ultimately got a hold of an attorney with the correct agency.
What I learned shocked me. I was told that, although he pled to a felony and that the felony was both a sex offense AND required sex offender registration, the federal government did not consider the state charge to which he pled to constitute a "crime of violence" such that his green card/permanent residence status could be revoked. They told me, basically, that he had a "property right" in his status, and it could only be revoked for certain statutory reasons. Those statutory reasons, apparently, did not include a sexual assault under my state statute, to which he pled guilty and served approximately 8 1/2 years in state prison.
So, to hear that they are taking the position that this guy can be deported is, genuinely, baffling to me. Also, if they're going to go after green card holders, I assume that the guy I'm talking about isn't the only one that fell through the cracks here, and I'm thinking maybe they could start with him, and others like him.
*Let me hasten to add, as well, that while this defendant was not the only immigrant I prosecuted for child abuse/sexual assault, the vast, vast majority of the (mostly) men I prosecuted were white, straight, married, American and self-identified as Christian.
I read your story and it sounds gut-wrenching. I am curious about your point of view. Is it that our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed? What is your opinion on the Khalil story?
Thank you for laying this out so well that I shared it with my overwhelmingly Republican Facebook feed. I have typically avoided talking about immigration issues there as I know that is an issue that won't sway most of them, but Khalil goes well beyond "shut down the border."
THE DETENTION OF SYRIAN-BORN PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST Mahmoud Khalil is not going to galvanize anyone but the most gullible suckers who are unable to think for themselves and don't have the information even if they could think.
I detest Trump and his toady Marco Rubio, but Rubia was right today when he said if Mahmoud Khalil was truthful when he decided to enter our country and told interviewers that he was a Palestinian supporter, he would have never been in the country at all.
What Democrats are being tricked into doing by ???? someone ??? is to say that Democrats support bringing supporters of terrorism into the country. Can you think of anything more thoughtless and wrong?
Democrats always get tricked by the liars in their midst who trick them into shooting themselves in the foot. It ends up dividing the party and looking like morons to independents.
The end result is to divide the Left and reducing voter turnout and argument.
In Argentina the government "disappeared" 40,000 CITIZENS. The Khalil arrest is only a start.
No matter what I read or where I am, one main through point is that Americans take our democracy for granted. That democracy put a bubble around all of us - thicker for those in the majority and thinner as we reach women, people of color and immigrants.
An example is the horror that Mahmoud Khalil was detained illegally. Is this horrific? Most definitely. That said trump and his Nazi crew hate people of color. They articulated it in the trump 1.0, said it over and over again at rallies, so at this point, I look at Americans.
His arrest and detainment is horrific and illegal but can't be unexpected.
Hegseth is in place to unleash the military on the US population. What do people think that means? trump supporters "hate the libs." If they weren't being affected by the job losses and crazy stock market and tariffs, they'd be rooting for trump to take down anyone in blue states.
The reactions and protests I see are not where they need to be to ward off the insanity that I know is coming. We have feckless Democrats voting with Republicans as if this is business as usual. I'm in Indivisible at the local level and it's passable but won't blunt what's happened and what will happen.
I believed that we'd never have elections again. As time goes on that becomes more and more realistic.
I’m wondering how many people who voted for Trump or decided not to vote largely because of Biden‘s response to October 7 and support for Israel now realize the error of their ways.
One needs to look deep - Trump is losing supporters and this issue is adversely impacting the crowd. Even the insurrectionists in Congress don't totally back him.
Another Congress would call in Kash Patel to explain - but the corruption runs deep.
The blood of an innocent, US citizen child being denied entry for cancer treatment is on all of the Trump voters' hands. All of you.
The first thing that this situation demonstrates is that a law written in a time when norms (and the Constitution and the associated rights) were observed (and it was assumed that norms (and the Constitution and associated rights) would be observed)--or that the Courts would protect those things--are dangerously vague and inadequate and lack proper protections of rights.
And the courts can, when things are vague or inadequate kind of interpret/decide however they want. A true stickler for the law would probably invalidate the law because it is constitutionally vague or even unconstitutional--proceduralists who are vetted by the Heritage Foundation and call themselves originalists might be tempted to say, well it says that, so its okay what he did. especially if their "leader" is a coward and worried about creating a situation that precipitates a full-blown confrontation between the Administration and the Courts..
The second thing that this demonstrates is that if you pick the right targets and work patiently (and set the proper groundwork) it gets easier and easier to take everyone's rights away at some point--often with the roared approval of the very people whose rights you are actually taking away (because, of course, the leopards will NEVER eat THEIR face).
Because people are on board with protecting THEIR rights, not so on board with protecting the rights of people who they do not like or causes they do not like. It has ever been so.
Audience capture comes for The Bulwark. Sad. What does Charlie say about this?
great article. Thank you. Now is the time.
We just watched "I'm Still Here"....a film about a Brazilian woman whose husband was opposed to the military dictatorship. He was arrested and "disappeared" - it was later revealed that he was tortured and thrown into the ocean out of a helicopter. She soldiered on. As we should.
The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (14 Mar 1879-1955)
Silence signifies assent.
At least this is clear: the Trump administration is a regime and it is dangerous. We, the People, will not stand for this. Bad facts made bad policy. I don't like what this guy has to say but that is the point of a democracy, is it not? This is scary, scary stuff. I really had no idea Trump and the Republicans would go full-on fascist so quickly. Yet here we are.
Khalil is basically a Nazi but even Nazis have rights. The Trump Administration is repeating 1919-1920.
“Disappearing” Khalil—exactly right! Trump/Musk have become Pinochet … without the uniform. Also without reason or humanity. Next up: Gitmo for Adam Schiff?
I wish Bulwark contributors would actually read up on the positions taken by Mahmoud Khalil before condemning him. Kudos to Carrasquillo for not falling into that trap.
Every single other podcast or piece of writing from the Bulwark has taken the "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it" approach, but with more vitriol, going into pains to emphasize that they think he is deplorable. However, nobody actually says what statements or beliefs they actually find deplorable. Mona Charen has been the biggest culprit, but both JVL and Sarah Longwell have also taken that approach.
I'd suggest actually looking up what he's said. Sarah even grudgingly admitted that Khalil does not say objectionable stuff, but even that concession implied that Khalil secretly holds abhorrent views. I believe her phrasing was that Khalil is "careful" not to make such statements.
This is an actual quote from Khalil:
"As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other." He characterized the movement as one "for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone".[12] Of concerns about antisemitism, Khalil said, "There is, of course, no place for antisemitism. What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that's taking different forms and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism [are] some of these forms."
And no, he never said that Zionists don't deserve to live--he's vehemently denied saying that and there is zero proof he ever said that.
He was the chief negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), whose main goal was to get Colombia to divest from it's holdings that were supporting weapons manufacturers supplying weapons to Israel. That's a bad thing?
Have some of its members said offensive antisemitic stuff that the broader organization denounced? Absolutely.
It's funny how Mona Charen holds Khalil responsible for utterances he didn't make, while giving Israeli MKs or even CABINENT MEMBERS a pass for openly advocating for genocide. Hell Netanyahu himself said:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you.”
Amalekites were persecutors of the biblical Israelites, and a biblical commandment says they must be destroyed. And by "destroyed" it means killing women and children as well. Not once have I heard JVL, Mona Charen, or Sarah Longwell criticize any such statement from Israeli government officials.
Of course, Charen also failed to condemn Israeli students for spraying peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors with a noxious substance on the Columbia campus.
Khalil is in no way an extremist. He's been vetted by the British Government and worked for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, managing the Chevening Scholarship and projects related to accountability, justice and gender equality in Syria. He also interned for UNRWA and met his American wife in Lebanon when they were both working on an aid program.
The irony is that by instinctually holding that Khalil is a deplorable extremist, Bulwark contributors make it harder to defend his freedom of speech. Whereas, if his speech isn't problematic in the first place, it makes the Trump Administration's attempt to have him deported even more objectionable.
He is a Hamas supporter. Hamas wants genocide of Jews. End of story.
The Israeli brutality in Gaza has created more Hamas supporters in Gaza and around the world than there ever were before. BTW - I am not a Hamas supporter, tho I'm sure you will assume that I am because I have the temerity to criticize the actions of Israel.
Gazans celebrated the death, cruelty and genocide exhibited on Oct 7th. They continue to celebrate and support Hamas. They have no desire to live side-by-side with Israel and jews, they wish to wipe them off the map. Israel is justified in the actions they've taken and it would end tomorrow if Hamas handed over the hostages! They bring this on their own people and the blood and responsibility lies at their feet
To quote Peter Beinart in "Being a Jew after the Destruction of Gaza":
"I still believe in the metaphor of Jews as a family. But it has been corrupted. Jewish leaders have turned our commitment to one another into a moral sedative. They have traded on our solidarity to justify starvation and slaughter. They have told us that the way we show we care about the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas is to support a war that kills and starves those very hostages, and that the way to honor the memory of the Israelis Hamas murdered is to support a war that will create tens of thousands more scarred, desperate young Palestinians eager to avenge their loved ones by taking Israeli lives. We need a new story--based on equality rather than supremacy--because the current one doesn't endanger only Palestinians. It endangers us."
And Beinart is no liberal squish, he's a former editor of The New Republic and editor-at-large at Jewish Currents.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Because the people of Gaza are very much aware that there’s something Hamas could do that would end all this immediately: surrender and release the hostages.
It would be the rational thing to do. They’ve picked a fight with a hopelessly superior enemy, have no chance of victory, and their entire plan is to sit in tunnels while their people suffer above ground, take no responsibility for what is happening and pretend Israel started all this, steal the bulk of the humanitarian aid sent in, and then prepare to declare a perverse victory just by not having all died while their senior leadership profits handsomely from Iran’s largesse sent their way from safety in Qatar.
The people of Gaza aren’t blind. They know their misery is being used as foil by Hamas, and they do not love their erstwhile masters for it.
I wouldn't be so sure about that reaction.
I'll give you a historical example. In WWII, Nazi commanders would execute a dozen random civilians in a village for every German solder killed by resistance fighters in that village.
The "appropriate" response would have been to identify the actual culprit and punish the resistance operative for espionage (operating in enemy territory without a uniform violates the rules of war).
Now, do you think the villagers held the resistance fighters morally responsible for the execution of their peers? Or the Nazi commanders?
You are Hamas supporter. You want the genocide of Jews. End of story.
See how easy it is to throw around unfounded allegations?
I was a child abuse prosecutor for almost 30 years. Several years ago, I handled a very disturbing case that involved a green card holder* who lured a teen with a developmental delay from a bus stop into his car and took her to a different location and sexually assaulted her. This was a very difficult case to prosecute, primarily related to the victim's deep trauma and communication deficits, and it was resolved with a plea to a felony sex offense that involved nearly a decade in prison and registration as a sex offender. It seemed like a good resolution, the family of the victim was relieved that there was no trial, and I believed that he would be deported after he served his sentence.
Imagine my horror when, rather than being deported, I learned that he was set to be released into my community years later. I couldn't figure it out. I thought that there had been a mistake, and all I needed to do was give them a call, point them in the right direction, and an ICE hold would be placed on him. I called the federal authorities to let them know that they needed to fix this oversight before he was released. It took a few days, but I ultimately got a hold of an attorney with the correct agency.
What I learned shocked me. I was told that, although he pled to a felony and that the felony was both a sex offense AND required sex offender registration, the federal government did not consider the state charge to which he pled to constitute a "crime of violence" such that his green card/permanent residence status could be revoked. They told me, basically, that he had a "property right" in his status, and it could only be revoked for certain statutory reasons. Those statutory reasons, apparently, did not include a sexual assault under my state statute, to which he pled guilty and served approximately 8 1/2 years in state prison.
So, to hear that they are taking the position that this guy can be deported is, genuinely, baffling to me. Also, if they're going to go after green card holders, I assume that the guy I'm talking about isn't the only one that fell through the cracks here, and I'm thinking maybe they could start with him, and others like him.
*Let me hasten to add, as well, that while this defendant was not the only immigrant I prosecuted for child abuse/sexual assault, the vast, vast majority of the (mostly) men I prosecuted were white, straight, married, American and self-identified as Christian.
I read your story and it sounds gut-wrenching. I am curious about your point of view. Is it that our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed? What is your opinion on the Khalil story?
Thank you for laying this out so well that I shared it with my overwhelmingly Republican Facebook feed. I have typically avoided talking about immigration issues there as I know that is an issue that won't sway most of them, but Khalil goes well beyond "shut down the border."