Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Mahmoud Khalil’s Letter From A Louisiana Jail

By

Persecuted by a diabolical regime simply for believing a certain way, deprived of every possible right, including the right to a blankie, by a police state that, if it can suppress the rights of the brave truth-teller Mahmoud Khalil, will soon be setting up concentration camps from sea to shining sea for those who will emulate him, Mahmoud Khalil is — as he repeatedly assures us — a profile in courage. His stirring letter, smuggled out of jail, will no doubt be seen by future historians as a foundational document in the universal march for freedom. It made a deep impression on me. It should do the same for you.

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices under way against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours – I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns – based on racism and disinformation – to go unchecked.

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their BA degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC [Student Workers of Columbia] President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change – leading the charge against the Vietnam war, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my firstborn child.

For the facts, as opposed to this maudlin and self-aggrandizing twaddle, see here.

Comments

  1. Send him to Gaza. That’s where he wants to be. Grant him his wish, and dump him there ASAP. All countries have rules for tourist and immigration visa holders – when you come, do not get involved in political activities that result in trashing your host country and interering with its citizens rights.. Try this in Mexico on a studen visa, and you will be on the plane that day.

  2. He professes to hate America. Then why is he here???

    Spare us the gibberish son. Your words are hollow as a duck fart.

  3. How, in what way, is Mahmoud Khalil a “Palestinian”? He was born in Syria. His parents were born in Syria. He is a citizen of Algeria.He is only a “Palestinian” if you accept the UN’s preposterous insistence that any progeny — no matter how distant — of someone who left Mandatory Palestine/Israel in the period between late 1947 to 1949 and 1949– should be considered a “Palestinian refugee.” No other refugee population in the world receives this bizarre and privileged treatment, whereby the status of “Palestinian refugee” becomes an inherited trait, passed down from generation to generation.

    • President Hafez al Assad once told Yasser Arafat that there is no such thing as “Palestinians”: you are all Syrians. When that region was under Arab rule, “Syria”, or ash-Sham, was defined as the area west of the Euphrates, east of the Mediterranean, south of Anatolia and east of Egypt. Under that definition, Assad was right, at least when it came to all Arabs. Other people, like Jews, Maronites, Druze, Kurds…. could claim their own nations

      If Mahmoud Khalil is an Algerian, that’s where he should be deported. I’m sure the Trump administration can give Algiers an offer that they can’t refuse?

    • As Mosab Hassan Yousef says: There are no true ‘Palestinians’ there never was a Palestinian state. Mahmoud Khalil is just an Arab.

  4. Oh, boo hoo. The whining liar, a.k.a. mozlum. complains of ‘waking to cold mornings’ in LA. Mornings there are currently in the upper 50’s or lower 60’s.
    Perhaps he’d prefer the desert in SA. (that’s the home of his perverted belief system, according to mozlums)

    I couldn’t keep reading this garbage from this hideous ghoul. It was like inviting him into my house. The sooner he is sent packing, the better for everyone.

    Ot,…I’d like to tell the people who run search engines that LA is Louisiana, not Los Angeles (L.A.)

  5. I know I am preaching to the choir. But here goes:

    1) The Nukba,: Iit did not happen as you say Mr. Khalil. Maybe that is what the Qatari funded Middle East studies departments teach, but it is revisionist history. The Grand Mufti of Jerusakem collaborated and met with Hitler. His plan was to aid Hitker in the final solution when Hitler reached Palestine.
    2) When Israel was granted statethood in 1948 the 5 surrounding Arab countries informed the Arab population of what was now Israel that they were going to attack. After they wiped out Israel and the zJews they ( the Arabs)could return to their homes.Israel told all of the Arbs living in Israel they are welcome to remain and would become full citizens 8g Israel. Approximately 150,000 Arabs remained in Isrsel. 770,00 left at the behest of the Arab leaders. That is MK’s provenance. He is a Syrian.

    3) 1948 was nearly 4 generations ago. Mr. Khalil was born in Syria. He is a Syrian of Arab extraction. What he refers to Palestine was known as South Syria. The Palestinians before 1948 were the Jews The Arab residents of the area were Arabs. Period.

    4) Unfortunately MK, you are here under false pretense. You are a plant of a a world Jihadist organization, possibly funded by Qatari money, Soros money, Turkey, etc. to act on their behalf to inculcate college students to believe in a manufactured cause to further a global Islamist caliphate.

    5) Marco Rubio, is correct in his interpretation of the Amerucan law.

    6) Why should we care about you and your unborn child? Your freedom fighters cared less for the Israeli pregnant women whose babies they carved out of their mothers’ wombs.

    7) MK stop whining and get out of Amerika the country you love to hate!!

    • He won’t leave without a degree from a university that won’t bds from a country he can’t stand.

  6. No one is making him smile for the camera and a goodie bag at the barrel of an ak47?

    Oh the humanity

  7. I love how the genocide is off and on again. I know what they say about 2 Jews and 3 opinions, but this is getting ridiculous

  9. I read it all to see what he would say about 7 October 2023.
    Nothing.
    He wants Israel to end the war.
    Easy. Hamas just has to give up the hostages.
    He wants Israel to end the war -because Hamas is losing the war it started.
    He wants us to cry for him, his wife and future child, but not for any raped or murdered Jewish women and children.
    Maybe he can do a Count of Monte Christo and escape from prison in a Jewish body bag.

  10. So, why are we giving this cockroach more and more oxygen?

    Deport already!

    • No no,,, don’t be in such a rush. America is very “pink” these days. We must hold hands and sing “we are the world” first.

  11. How false of this reprobate, Mahmoud Khalil, to try in any manner to compare himself to Martin Luther King, a la the letter from the Birmingham jail by King.

    MLK rightfully called out all of America for not living up to its promises with this letter of his but MLK always loved America and why most anywhere he spoke he made certain an Americana flag would be standing beside him (when has Khalil ever had an American flag displayed beside him?). King knew something someone like Khalil will never know and that is that there is nothing wrong with America that the best of America can’t fix.

    Khalil does not want to fix America. Khalil wants to destroy the Great Satan, i.e., America, just as he wants to destroy the Little Satan, i.e., Israel. Thus his letter from a Louisiana jail, in extremely pale comparison to what King wrote some sixty years ago, fails miserably on its face for all those who know where the truth and facts actually reside.

  12. We need to punt his wife from our borders too, before she delivers their anchor spawn in July.

    • Absolutely deport her along with him. Many of these muslim countries send these hate America individuals to our country through our student visa program. That visa program needs to be updated and islamic countries need to be added to the NO visa list.

  13. His incarceration is not as bad as the Jewish kidnapped hostages taken by Hamas on Oct, 7th. Many of them died or were murdered by Hamas. Others were kept in tunnels where they were unable to stand up at all and were given one pita bread a day while Hamas gorged themselves on stolen humanitarian food for Gaza people. And these Jews crime? For being Jews. Same crime in the Nazi book of “Law”.

  14. This muslim terrorist is lucky I wasn’t in charge of his arrest. He should be terminated .end of problem. He will play the victim, and at the same time plan more violence and chaos. Look at the shit he has planned and organized in the United States of America. Our universities have been turning out home grown domestic terrorists and now we have muslim terrorists leading them around like mindless zombies.we have even elected muslims in Congress thanks to Obama. America had better wake up or we will be in trouble like Europe, UK and Ireland. The difference is we Americans have not or ever will give up our constitutional right to bear arms. God bless America!!

Discover more from

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Skip to content