“Columbia University, once again, finds itself as an elite ground zero for the darkness that threatens to engulf our civil liberties.”
If you think this was written last summer during the pro-Hamas campus protests that saw university students calling for “intifada, revolution,” expressing blatant anti-Semitism, and supporting the violence in Israel on October 7 that left thousands dead, you are sadly mistaken.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah is referring to the recent arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia student and Syrian national with U.S. permanent resident status who has been a ringleader of anti-Semitic activity. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson explained that Khalil was arrested because he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” and that the move was “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”
And yet, Attiah goes on to warn: “What happened to him should chill all Americans.”
Maybe it will chill those Americans who support terrorists.
It gets better.
Attiah writes: “I heard from students how professors were too scared to even discuss the Middle East. I watched as journalists were blocked from access to what was happening to students who—taking a page from the tradition of Columbia anti-apartheid activists—took over a building and were arrested, and later suspended or expelled.”
Never mind the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students or the constant footage broadcast in real time by journalists, official and unofficial.
As Manhattan Institute Fellow Hannah E. Meyers wrote recently, “Mahmoud Khalil does not deserve American residency if he uses his time here to support a murderous international movement.”
If Attiah is so distraught about this “direct attack on personal and civil liberties,” maybe she should rethink her own U.S. residency.
