Mahmoud Khalil dictates letter to Columbia from ICE detention: "History will redeem us"
Jena, Louisiana - Palestinian human rights activist Mahmoud Khalil penned a damning letter to Columbia University amid his ongoing ICE detention.

"Since my abduction on March 8, the intimidation and kidnapping of international students who stand for Palestine has only accelerated," Khalil said in a new letter published in the Columbia Spectator.
The message, dictated over the phone and verified by Khalil's attorney, was addressed to "Columbia – an institution that laid the groundwork for my abduction – and to its student body, who must not abdicate their responsibility to resist repression."
Khalil, a green card holder and prominent member of Columbia University's Palestine liberation movement, was transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center after his sudden arrest last month. He was taken away from his wife, who at the time was eight months pregnant with their first child.
"The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia’s repression playbook concerning Palestine," Khalil charged. "In the 18 months since the genocidal campaign in Gaza began, Columbia has not only refused to acknowledge the lives of Palestinians sacrificed for Zionist settler colonialism, but it has actively reproduced the language used to justify this killing."
The Columbia graduate went on to slam students and faculty who "run doxxing platforms, submit our names to websites and groups like Canary Mission and Betar, and turn our lives into targets." He also noted that some students served in the Israeli military during school breaks "only to return to campus and claim victimhood in the classroom."
"If I am deprived of my child in the first moments of his life, the people responsible will have been, among others, these students," Khalil insisted.
Mahmoud Khalil warns silence on Palestine will not protect Columbia students

Khalil and his legal team are currently engaged in a legal battle challenging his ICE detention.
The Trump had sought to have the case moved to Louisiana, but a federal judge in New Jersey denied the transfer motion this week. A US district judge in Manhattan last month moved the case to the Garden State after previously blocking Khalil's deportation.
In an earlier letter from ICE detention, Khalil described himself as a political prisoner.
Amid the fight for his release, he has called on members of the Columbia University community to rise up for justice.
"To the students who remain apathetic to Columbia’s disregard for human life and its willingness to discard student safety: As pressure from the federal government intensifies, know that your neutrality on Palestine will not protect you," Khalil warned.
"When the time comes for the federal government to target other causes, it will be your names that Columbia will offer on a silver platter, it will be your pleas that fall on deaf ears, it will be your just causes that are stonewalled."
"The student movement will continue to carry the mantle of a free Palestine. History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence."
Cover photo: Collage: REUTERS