A Campus Radical Rebranded as Victim

Mahmoud Khalil, now freed from ICE detention after 104 days, is being recast by the press as a victim of government overreach, some even daring to call him a symbol of free speech.

Khalil isn’t a casualty of political persecution. He’s a calculated ideologue, a radical campus agitator whose words and actions have made life unbearable for Jewish students across the country, starting with Columbia University.

Actually, what Khalil unleashed on campus didn’t stay there, it spread like a virus. His rallies, his rhetoric, his normalization of antisemitic hostility have seeped into high schools, social media, and everyday life. It’s not theoretical, we’ve seen Jews beaten in the streets, shot, stabbed, and hunted down in places they once felt safe.  Jewish kids are afraid to wear a Star of David, afraid to speak Hebrew, afraid to exist as Jews. We’ve seen this happen in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Paris, and Berlin. The same slogans Khalil helped normalize—chanted through megaphones at Columbia—are now shouted before assaults. His brand of protest hasn’t just spilled into high schools. It’s spilled into morgues.

And yes, we’re tired. Tired of being told this is “activism” while watching our kids pay the price for other people’s moral theater. Tired of being erased from every story except the one that paints us as overreacting.

When my son goes to concerts in Ventura, California, he says the standard greeting by performers on stage is: F–k Trump, F–k the police, F–k Israel, and free Palestine!

It’s not just intimidation anymore; it’s erosion of safety and identity, of the right to be visibly Jewish without fear. Khalil helped light a fire, and now it burns far beyond Columbia. We’re not watching a protest movement, we’re watching the next generation learn that hating Jews is acceptable, even applauded.

Amid that fire Khalil had the audacity  to claim that “The liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand in hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.”

It sounds like a plea for coexistence. But it’s not. This is rhetorical bait, a polished way of saying, “You can be safe, Jewish student, as long as you abandon Zionism and align with our political cause.”

Let’s be clear, Jewish liberation does not require Jews to forfeit their sovereignty. But in Khalil’s world, it does. Because in his framework, the only “liberated Jew” is the one who disowns Israel.

That’s not peace, it’s coercion and ideological extortion. And Khalil doesn’t just say these things, he acts on them.

Khalil served as lead negotiator for CUAD—Columbia University Apartheid Divest. This group openly endorsed “armed resistance,” praised Hamas and Hezbollah leadership, and declared solidarity with violence as a means to “liberation.” He worked for UNRWA—a UN agency repeatedly tied to terror-linked staff—and held a diplomatic post at the British embassy in Lebanon, which he failed to disclose on U.S. immigration forms. His defenders know this, but prefer to rewrite the story as if a harmless protestor was dragged off for holding a sign.

What’s most galling is the calculated transformation of his public image. The Mahmoud Khalil now flooding sympathetic media coverage—soft-spoken, sad-eyed, a father wronged—is a far cry from the man filmed on Columbia’s campus, shouting through megaphones with clenched fists, leading occupations that targeted and terrified Jewish students.

The contrast is theatrical: rage on campus, innocence in court. But the fear he created was real!

At Columbia, Khalil’s brand of activism created an environment where Jewish students were doxxed, stalked, followed, and excluded. Hebrew speakers were told to “go back to Europe.” Graduation ceremonies were overtaken. Tents were filled with chants glorifying October 7. Some protestors openly praised Hamas.

And Khalil was the architect.

For months, they intimidated and harassed Jewish students. No one can study under siege. No one can learn when Jewish identity itself becomes a provocation.

I remember my daughter, nearly a decade ago, phoning me up shaken after witnessing a pro-Palestinian protest on her campus at UCLA. The rage in the crowd, the aggressive chanting, the flags, the slogans—it was visceral. She stood her ground, but there was something deeply unsettling in the air, something that made it unmistakably clear: Jews were the target. That kind of hostility doesn’t just pass, it lingers then buries itself in your gut.

But let’s not pretend Khalil was an unknown. University administrators knew exactly who he was. The student groups he led weren’t subtle. Their slogans praised armed resistance and their encampments demanded a world without Israel. They silenced Jews and glorified violence.

Columbia did what so many elite institutions do when faced with antisemitism–they blinked. Definitely hesitated before issuing statements about “all forms of hate” and waited for the storm to pass.

They didn’t protect Jewish students at all, all they did was protect themselves.

And the media? They’ve done Khalil an even bigger favor: soft profiles, emotional headlines, no context, no follow-up. They weep for his pain but ignore the trauma he helped inflict. The Jewish students whose lives he upended? Erased.

The narrative now is this: Mahmoud Khalil is the victim. And the Jews who feared him? Overreacting.

Have we not seen this movie before?

We’re done being told to “stay calm,” to “make room for dialogue,” to trust that those shouting for our destruction just mean it politically. We know what danger looks like. We’ve lived it for 2,000 years.

Khalil is not a symbol of justice. He’s a symbol of how antisemitism now marches openly under banners of “liberation.” Of how institutions have grown too cowardly to distinguish between protest and persecution. And of how the media bends over backward to humanize those who would never extend the same courtesy to us.

This is not about disagreement over borders or policy. This is about the normalization of menace disguised as speech, cloaked in victimhood, and given cover by every administrator and editor too afraid to call it what it is.

Mahmoud Khalil may have walked free. But Jewish students now walk campus halls knowing no one will protect them: not the school, not the press, not the government!

And if you think we’re exaggerating, that’s exactly the problem.

Extra Reading:

“Bobby B. Sprout” is a story about a sweet, optimistic little sprout who leaves the comfort of his vegetable patch, eager to make friends and explore the world. But when he meets a group of rotten, bitter vegetables who mock him for being different, Bobby learns firsthand what it feels like to be judged and excluded. At its heart, the book is a gentle but powerful allegory about prejudice, antisemitism, and the importance of standing tall—even when surrounded by cruelty. Through Bobby’s journey, children learn that kindness is strength, and that staying true to who you are is the most nourishing thing of all.

Find your copy on Amazon.