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Three days ago, Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai tweeted that Columbia student and lead encampment negotiator Mahmoud Khalil was a foreign national, and suggested that Khalil’s Barnard Library sit-in was a “deportable offense.” Canary Mission followed suit only a few hours later. Columbia University’s faculty and administration have failed to protect Arab students protesting the Zionist genocide in Gaza for almost two years. Their silence and capitulation to the state has set a terrifying precedent. Khalil now sits in ICE detention. On Saturday, at around 8:30 PM, two plainclothes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents followed Mahmoud Khalil and his wife into their New York City apartment building. The officers then detained Khalil without reason. “Agents told him his student visa was revoked. But he had a green card. Agents then said that was revoked too,” reported Zeteo. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, was threatened with arrest if she obstructed. Since then, The White House has bragged about Khalil’s detention: “The first of many to come.” Trump and his cronies are watching the reaction to this disgusting escalation against those who protest Israel and the American Empire’s genocidal war on Palestine. The Administration and its Zionist allies hope to pave a road to genocide right through any opposition — not just on campuses. But the foundations of this road have been supported by America’s feckless academic and intellectual class. During the height of the spring encampments, supposedly pro-Palestine faculty and public intellectuals spouted feeble statements about liberal humanist values of free speech, education, and civil discourse rather than naming the crux of the issue: a Zionist genocide. “Well-meaning” liberal academic institutions simultaneously sought to infantilize and contain the student protesters’ boldest demands. Unions and civil society failed to allow divestment conversations to take place, releasing statements promoting the appearance of “both sides.” Academic associations failed to unequivocally oppose scholasticide in Gaza, pontificating about whether or not it is “outside their scope.” All of these failures emboldened Zionists even further, crystallizing what people in the movement have known all along: Academic institutions collaborate with the United States and the police, who serve state interests. In the aftermath of the student intifada, repression intensified. Recently uncovered documents show that Columbia trustees spent over half a million dollars to bribe Zionist students to push for a mask ban and the further militarization of campus under the guise of a “Student Leadership Engagement Initiative.” Now the full force of U.S. Immigration enforcement, in conjunction with a foreign nation and vicious nonstate actors, has been brought to bear against those who stand against genocide. But this is not a time to be afraid. This is a time to step up, speak out, to push ourselves to do more — to act together, and to never cower. Refusal to Zionism and genocide must continue. Resistance without qualification is the only way forward. We will not stop.
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