Mohsen Mahdawi is a Palestinian, a close friend of Mahmoud Khalil, with whom he participated in antisemitic and anti-Israel demonstrations on the Columbia campus and has now been detained by ICE, which hopes to deport him. Mahdawi has been assuring the world that he has nothing to do with terrorism, and is simply a fighter for Palestinian rights, whose own story shows the full horror of the IDF’s murderous campaign against innocent Palestinians. The researcher David Collier has been looking into Mahdawi’s stories and finds no truth to any of them. More on the mythomane Mohsen Mahdawi can be found here: “Vermont, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Mountains of Useful Idiots,” by David Collier, April 18, 2025:
All it takes is two days of digging to unravel an entire story.
Let me tell you the real story of Mohsen Mahdawi, the latest student to have been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the PR campaign he launched to publicize his detention and play an entire state of elected officials, turning many into fools, patsies, and mouthpieces to cover his terror-affiliated history.
The bottom line here is really scary. Mohsen has 17 years of university experience in total. Almost a decade of those 17 years were spent around US campuses – starting up anti-Israel groups and radicalising students. He does not appear to have a single degree to his name. If this man was either Chinese or Russian – and had spent a decade radicalising students on campus; if he also had a semi-fictional backstory, came from a family of terrorists, and had spent much of his life promoting extremist genocidal positions, there is not a politician in the US who would be seen anywhere near him. Red flags would be seen by all.
But he is not Chinese or Russian. Mohsen is a Palestinian – and for whatever reason that changes everything. Politicians, activists, NGOs and the media all become blind to an antisemitic genocidal fetish when it comes from the mouth of a Palestinian. It is almost as if their collective brains all just fall out. And this presents a real danger – not just for Jews – but for wider US society as well.
Making up a BS background
Mohsen may have learnt very early on the lesson that most Palestinians in the West come to learn: that he can claim anything – say anything – pretend he had personally experienced anything – and not a single person on the left would have the brains to question any of it.
Mohsen Mahdawi’s background story, as he tells it, is rough and makes you want to hug him instead of ask him questions. His mum left him when he was young. A sibling passed away. He saw his best friend shot and killed. Mohsen had to scale the wall to help his escape to the United States. He was shot himself as a child. There is even a story of 12-year-old Mohsen scraping seven bodies from walls. He narrowly escaped death several times.
Unless of course – most of it isn’t accurate.
In this 60 Minutes clip, despite 60 Minutes messing around with the year of the event, Mohsen Mahdawi explicitly says he was 10 years old when he saw his best friend shot in the chest and killed.
Mohsen was 10 years old between 12 Sep 2000 and 11 Sep 2001. And here is the first problem. Mahdawi grew up in the al-Fara refugee camp in the Tubas district. That is also where Mohsen went to school. There is a record on the B’tselem website of fatalities during the Second Intifada. From that record we know for a fact that not a single child was killed at the al-Fara refugee camp during the time period Mohsen was 10 years old. Something is wrong.
He names his friend as Hemeida. Nobody going by that name was killed at the camp at all during the Second Intifada. He says his friend was shot in the chest, yet the only child from the camp who died during the Second intifada was 14, his name was Mohammed, and he was tragically killed by an exploding gas canister in June 2002…
The story of Mohammed’s death, that had nothing to do with the IDF, but was the result of an exploding gas canister, is reported in the Al-Ittihad newspaper on June 30, 2002.
In the 2019 article, Mohsen paints a picture of himself dodging bullets all the time. “Mahdawi had heard bullets whiz by him many times while he was in the al-Fara camp, and was determined to make it to America alive and well.”
The truth is that the al-Fara camp is quite remote and was rarely in the thick of the action. Consider this: in the 4+ years of the Second Intifada (September 2000 – February 2005) only four people were killed by Israeli forces in the al-Fara camp. Three of those were targeted strikes where the terrorist was killed from the air….
In a clip of Mohsen from Al Jazeera he claims that there were seven Palestinians killed at the camp in one night, that he collected all of their bodies himself and he “peeled off the skin from the walls” with his bare hands.
Seven killed? In a single night? And “he peeled off the skin with his bare hands”? This is all nonsense. How on earth did a single serious media outlet not pick up on any of this?
Mahdawi is feeding into antisemitic tropes and the anti-Israel delusion, and it seems elected officials and the public [in the US] are more than happy to eat it up….
Most claim Mohsen is a peace activist, when all the evidence suggests something very different. What is laid out above presents a dark picture of a student spreading lies, while he shields a family full of terrorists and terrorist supporters. The Canary Mission has a long list of pro-terrorist talk and extremist anti-Israel positions from some of Mohsen’s campus activity.
Mahdawi even went back to the days of the Mandate to find terrorists to honor online. One of his posts showed a photograph of Muhiba Khorshid. She was killing Jews back in the 1940s, before modern Israel was created….
Those who naively and stupidly stand behind this terrorist supporter, claiming he is not antisemitic, suggesting he is not a terrorist supporter: how do they explain this activity? He posted, as he prepared to move to the United States, a video honoring the PFLP terrorist Moataz Washha, containing the infamous Khaybar chant, promising a massacre of Jews.
As part of its case for deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, I hope the Trump administration will take note of all the evidence David Collier has collected of his close family ties to terrorists (several of his uncles), his mother (who runs support groups for terrorists and runs a Facebook group celebrating them), as well as his series of lies about his own biography, and what he claims to have witnessed and himself endured.
somehistory says
So he lies. That is not news. mozlums lie. He may claim to be a Buddhist, but that too appears to be a big fat lie.
He’s being given air time which some goons claim he deserves. Put him in isolation and then ship him home. We know all we need to know about this lying ghoul.
Verk says
Of course he lies. He’s a palo muslim. Lying is woven into his Orc DNA.
The truth is like kryptonite to his rancid ilk.
James Lincoln says
Verk,
I like your “kryptonite” analogy.
Hoi Polloi says
Yes. Easier to assume they’re lying. Teaching how just much a part of their religion that practice is should be an integral part of instruction on islam. If we could make that standard practice, a big shift would occur in time to stop islamic advance in the US; at least I hope it would.
Hoi Polloi says
*just how
Hoi Polloi says
*just how
Rick Gordon says
Assuming all of this is true a number of questions ought to be asked – j
– how did he arrive/enter the US ?
– what government decision let him in?
– what university accepted and supported him for years?
– and most importantly, how do we disassemble this 5th column in our country before it grows past a point of no return?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
The best lie I’ve heard from him is his claim of being a Buddhist. Luckily for him, no court would ever test that, since we don’t have religious tests. But it would be funny to drop him in, say, Syria, and have the HTS regime probe him, and then see whether he’s really a Buddhist, or just pretends to be one in America
Billy says
Islam is a totalitarian system of lies, deceit, and terrorism as taught in Islam’s Quran(Quran 7:99; 8;30; and more). Allah, the best deceiver, is the actual source of Muslim deceit. Allah in Qur’an 3:54 says, “And they deceived, and Allah deceived. And Allah is the best deceiver.” Allah in Qur’an 8:30 says, “…And Allah is the best deceiver.” Allah in Qur’an 13:42 says, “And indeed, those before them deceived, so to Allah all the deception…”
Non-Muslims CANNOT have peace with Islam, a Terrorist-Criminal Enterprise, and its deceitful believers because Islam and its murderous god, Allah, demand a continuous Muslim war, a RELIGIOUS DUTY, against unbelievers where Non-Muslims are CRIMINALS under Islam due to illegal UNBELIEF and unlawful BLASPHEMY against Allah when despicable Allah in Qur’an 8:39 says, “And engage in war with them[Non-Muslims] until there will not be sedition and the religion will be completely to Allah…” Similarly, contemptible Allah in Quran 2:208 says, “O you who have believed[Muslims], enter completely into Islam and do not follow the steps of Satan; surely he is an obvious enemy to you.”(see also Quran 30:30) Islam contradicts Western Laws and incites violence and terrorism against Non-Muslims as Allah punishes Non-Muslims by Muslim hands(Quran 9:14 and more). HENCE, NON-MUSLIMS MUST MAKE ISLAM, ITS MOSQUES, ITS SCHOOLS, ITS COURTS, ETC. ILLEGAL UNDER WESTERN LAW(Quran 9:29 and more). Similarly, Islam and its many Organizations must be identified and publicly declared to be MUSLIM TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS(MTO) for their funding, teaching, and support of terrorism, violence, and discrimination against Non-Muslims as taught in Islam’s Quran(eg. Quran 3:151; 9:5,29,111; 60:4; 98:6-7 and more).
Winston 101 says
Hello Billy,
Is there such a thing as a study Quran by subject? Where the Quran is taken apart and reorganized by subject i.e. “Non believers”, “Jews”, “Christians” etc.? I would not expect the Muslim world to produce such a book, but perhaps someone else.