Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil was interviewed by Ezra Klein for the NY Times. The transcript of the interview is titled “Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story” but it should really be called Mahmoud Khalil Sanitizes His Story because that’s what he does throughout with very little pushback from Ezra Klein. I never had much faith in Klein as anything but a progressive partisan but I expected some kind of professional obligation to do his job well would at least motivate him to try. I came away disappointed. He barely tries at all.
Regular readers are already familiar with Khalil. He was a leader of the student protests at Columbia who literally was the person transmitting CUAD’s demands to Columbia administrators. As a leader with the group it seems fair to hold him at least partly responsible for the actions of the group. That’s not to say he was responsible for every act of anti-Semitism but he’s certainly accountable for the tenor of the movement he’s helping organize. And the tenor of that group was clearly anti-Israel and explicitly pro-violence and pro Hamas. To be blunt, CUAD supports terrorism and Khalil helped lead CUAD.
And yet, throughout this interview, Khalil repeatedly downplays the actions of Hamas and claims he merely supports peaceful protest. Here’s his take on the 10/7 attack by Hamas which he describes as an unavoidable moment in “the Palestinian struggle.”
Oct. 7 happens. What do you think that day?
At that day, I was at the cinema with my wife, Noor, at Lincoln Center. When I left the cinema around midnight, 12:30 a.m., I started to receive all these notifications.
To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle. I remember I didn’t sleep for a number of days, and Noor was very worried about my health. It was heavy. I still remember. I was like: This couldn’t happen.
What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this?
I was interning at UNRWA at that point — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — at the U.N.’s New York office. As part of my internship, my research and work were focused on Palestine, on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.
You can see that the situation is not sustainable. You have an Israeli government that’s absolutely ignoring Palestinians. They are trying to make that deal with Saudi and just happy about their Abraham Accord without looking at Palestinians — as if Palestinians are not part of the equation. They circumvented the Palestinian question.
It was clear that it was becoming more and more violent. By Oct. 6, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Over 40 of them were children.
So that’s what I mean by: Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid such a moment.
The Hamas plan for 10/7 had been in the works for well over a year. This wasn’t just an escalation of violence happening at the moment, it was Hamas’ attempt at a 9/11 attack, one they hoped would inspire Hezbollah and others to join them in a final conflict aimed at destroying Israel and driving the Jews out of the land. Klein points this out and then lets Khalil deny it.
I remember I did a piece right after Oct. 7, and one of the things that seemed clear to me very, very quickly on that day — as you’re watching the images, you’re hearing the screams, you’re seeing the videos of Jewish Israelis being paraded around, of corpses — is both that this attack is horrific and that the counterattack is going to be overwhelming.
On some level, I understood that as something Hamas must have wanted. Pull Israel into this attack, pull it into some kind of war. Maybe you involve other players in the Middle East. But a lot of lives are being used there as chips on the table.
Was that your perception? Or did you see this as something that needed to happen to break the equilibrium?
It’s more the latter — just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard. And to me, it’s a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Because at that point, there was no political process. It was clear that the Saudi-Israel deal is very imminent, and Palestinians wouldn’t have any path to statehood and self-determination. So they had to do that, according to their calculations — which, it’s obvious, were not right.
So how do you feel about killing Israel civilians, Khalil? Surprise, surprise, he’s against it. But also, nothing else worked so…can you blame them?
I’ve heard you in other news be very clear about condemning the killing of civilians. Oct. 7 was obviously an operation that did target and kill a lot of civilians. Do you see that as unavoidable, that Hamas had no other choice? Do you see it as a mistake?
What I know is that targeting civilians is wrong. That’s why we’ve been calling for an international independent investigation to hold perpetrators to accountability. It’s very important, for those of us who believe in international law, that this should happen.
And it’s very important to underscore, as well, that Palestinians have tried all forms of resistance — including nonviolent resistance. However, this was always targeted by Israel. Palestinians who participated in the Great March of Return were killed or maimed because of that.
He’s totally against killing Israeli civilians but also it’s okay if Palestinians are imperfect (by intentionally murdering a few hundred Israelis). Let’s give them a break, okay?
But also, there’s another point to this, Ezra: Palestinians don’t have to be perfect victims. That’s what the world is asking of Palestinians amid the dispossession, the occupation, the killing, all of that. Horrible things happened. Nothing can justify that. I would do everything in my power to stop that from happening.
But we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims after 75 years of dispossession, of killing people in Gaza, being under siege — at that point for over 17 years. Palestinians in the West Bank being stopped at checkpoints, settlers attacking them at every opportunity. The human dignity of Palestinians was absent — and still is, unfortunately.
So that’s why, when discussing this — unfortunately, these horrible things happened, but we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims.
Also, Khalil is still upset that Columbia took a pro-Israel stance immediately after the attack by Hamas because the murder, rape and kidnapping of over 1,000 people should generate any sympathy for the bad people.
And the ask here would have meant in these communications being more —
Being more balanced in terms of acknowledging the Palestinian death, acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, acknowledging that Palestinians are occupied. You either should be consistent with these matters or just don’t say anything.
I guess the perspective of Israeli Jewish students at Columbia would be that there was a huge attack that murdered some 1,200 people — that they were afraid of antisemitic violence erupting around the world, and that they needed to hear something about that.
Again, what we asked is not to omit their suffering or their perspective. We wanted to have equality — as we want in the whole movement. This movement is about equality and justice.
Columbia did that without the students even asking for it. The first statement coming from Columbia was on the evening of Oct. 7.
At any point, Klein could have pointed out that other people involved in his movement at Columbia, the one he helped lead, seem to be very much in favor of Hamas and its murder of Israelis. They held a walk-out/protest on 10/7/24, the first anniversary of the attack, where students chanted “Long Live the Intifada!”. Did Khalil help organize that? We don’t know because Ezra Klein didn’t ask.
When another student leader said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” CUAD initially condemned that language but later reversed course and apologized, making clear they supported “armed resistance.”
“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said in its statement revoking the apology.
The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.
Did Khalil have anything to do with that statement or the newspaper celebrating Hamas? We don’t know. Instead we get another generic denial.
Famously a student saying — this got attributed to you, but it wasn’t you — that Zionists don’t deserve to live.
Some people hear “Palestinian liberation” and hear “Jewish eradication” or “expulsion.” Is that what you mean when you say it? Is that what you hear in the movement when you say it?
No, absolutely not.
There are deliberate attempts to demonize the movement. Again, the movement as a whole is not homogeneous, but also there is some ignorance in the movement in terms of what Palestinian liberation could mean. But in no way does it mean the eradication of the Jewish people.
Deliberate attempts to demonize the movement? They published the statement saying they supported armed resistance and Hamas’ 10/7 attack. How is that anything but taking them at their word. And how does Klein allow Khalil to deny this as if these weren’t communications from the group itself? We know Klein knew about this because he said so later:
I had to prepare for this show — I needed to make sure I knew the really inflammatory things you’ve said.
And I found inflammatory things said by people near you at different times. Or by an Instagram account that’s part of a group you’re a part of. That kind of thing. But I couldn’t find that much from you.
Again, the Instagram account for CUAD was “part of a group you’re a part of?” What is Klein even saying here? The fact that Khalil never objected to any of this stuff when it was happening suggests strongly that he agreed. Eventually, Khalil even denies there was any significant anti-Semitism at Columbia:
I would push back regarding antisemitism at Columbia. I would really push back on that.
There was none?
I wouldn’t say there was none. I would say there is this manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests.
Because Proud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right-wing group. And there are incidents here and there. But it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement.
And those chants they chanted on the anniversary of 10/7 when they seemed to be celebrating Hamas, totally not about killing anyone.
I want to get into the chants — like “From the river to the sea,” “Globalize the intifada.” I heard someone on your podcast say: Oh, I don’t like the chant “Globalize the intifada.”…
You have people dictating what your chants should be. And with “Globalize the intifada” being made to be about violence and globalized killing. It’s not. It was overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation.
Finally, at the very end, Klein seems to push back a bit. Is he starting to realize he’s interviewing a very deceitful person?
I’m just saying that the fact that many Jewish people hear “Globalize the intifada” as “Globalize the violent struggle” is not based on nothing.
I think it’s based on policing Palestinian thought and speech. That’s what it’s based on. Because “From the river to the sea” — from the Palestinian perspective — no one ever said that it’s a violent call…
There have been plenty of periods when what Hamas meant from things like that was much more annihilatory.
Yes. But the intifada was not started by Hamas.
No, I agree. But the second intifada very much involved them.
It involved — but that doesn’t mean it started because of —
I’m just saying that when you say that nobody ever said it this way —
No, no, I’m saying the way that the students are saying that.
So, to summarize. “Globalize the Intifada” doesn’t mean anything about violence even if the students chanting it are part of a walk-out for the anniversary of 10/7 and even if they explicitly say in writing they support armed resistance and even if they bring pro-Hamas lecturers for teach-ins and even if they praise the name of 10/7 planner and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Columbia students hold a memorial for Yahya Sinwar and all the “martyrs.” pic.twitter.com/x2F6FZswA6
— Eli Kowaz – איליי קואז (@elikowaz) November 11, 2024
And even if they were handing out literal Hamas propaganda literature at a protest Khalil personally led. And even if they were praising Hamas for terror attacks that killed Israeli civilians. Despite all of that, Khalil is denying his group ever said they supported violence.
.@Columbia Apartheid Divest (CUAD) praises the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, “targeting security forces and settlers”. The terrorists murdered Inbar-Segev Vigder who was protecting her 9 months old baby.
Do members and advisors of the 116 student groups in CUAD support this? pic.twitter.com/ZrnVXCYNDa— Gil Zussman (@gil_zussman) October 3, 2024
I mean, this isn’t even hard. Ezra Klein really just did not try at all to pin Khalil down on the very public statements and actions by his own group. He mentioned that he’d seen them and then never brought them up as if they weren’t relevant.
Klein was clearly looking to do a softball interview in which Khalil was a victim of the Trump administration but instead of being accurate about why people oppose Khalil, Klein chose to let him dodge and to dismiss the uncomfortable facts about the group he was leading. It’s embarrassing.
