Mohsen Mahdawi: More to the Story

According to much of the media, Mohsen Mahdawi was unjustly arrested by the fascistic and racist Trump administration. Mahdawi, that media assures us, has neither done nor said anything wrong. He says so himself, and who would know better what Mohsen Mahdawi is all about, what are his hopes and dreams, than Mohsen Mahdawi? He works for “peace.” He’s become a martyr to free speech. After all, with two weeks in a Vermont jail, he’s practically another Sharansky or Solzhenitsyn. And when he was released, he came out swinging against the fascists who held him for so very long: “I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you.” This is courage. This is someone not afraid to speak truth to power. This is someone whose story should be told in our schoolbooks. For our children. And our children’s children.

Now we have learned a bit more about Mohsen the Martyr, in a piece which you can find here: “Potential Deportee Mohsen Madawi: I Like to Kill Jews [Allegation],” by David Bernstein, Reason, May 1, 2025:

Whatever one thinks of the relevant legal and constitutional issues regarding the Trump administration’s campaign to revoke visas from and deport students it deems antisemitic and supportive of terrorism, one should be clear on exactly what views and backgrounds some of these people have. You often won’t find out from mainstream media sources.

A case in point is Columbia [edit: undergrad]* student Mohsen Madawi, who won a habeas petition yesterday. Judge Geoffrey Crawford bought the portrayal of Madawi’s as a peace-loving conciliator hook, line, and sinker. This despite a rather significant detail buried in the opinion:

In its response, the Government directs the court’s attention to an incident in summer 2015 when a gun shop owner told Windsor, Vermont police officers that Mr. Mahdawi had visited his store twice, expressing an interest in learning more about firearms and buying a sniper rifle and an automatic weapon and that he “had considerable firearm experience and used to build modified 9mm submachine guns to kill Jews while he was in Palestine.” (Doc. 42-2.) The store owner stated that Mr. Mahdawi took photos of the store and its merchandise. (Id.) The store owner gave the police the name of a fellow gun enthusiast who stated that he had a similar conversation with Mr. Mahdawi at the “Precision Museum” in Windsor where the enthusiast served as a volunteer tour leader. During that conversation, Mr. Mahdawi allegedly told the gun enthusiast, “I like to kill Jews.” (Id.)

Mahdawi denies the allegation, and his lawyers told the court that the FBI agent who investigated “was satisfied with his explanation and closed the investigation.” The government acknowledged that the investigation ended without charges,  but it was not “closed” in any official way….

To my utter lack of surprise, the story on the case in the New York Times today makes no mention of Mahdawi’s apparent history of wanting to kill Jews. The Times also gave Mahdawi a laudatory profile a while back, with the headline, “He Wanted Peace in the Middle East. ICE Wants to Deport Him.” No mention that he wrote a poem circulated on Facebook in 2013 celebrating a terrorist responsible for the notorious Coastal massacre in Israel in 1978, which left 38 Israelis dead, including many children….

Mahdawi’s poem was about Dalal al-Mughrabi, the leader of the terrorist group that took over an Israeli bus and murdered more than three dozen Israelis, 13 of them children. This was the Coastal Road Massacre, the deadliest terrorist attack until October 7, 2023.

Contrary to my original post stating that he is a grad student, Mahdawi is an 34 year old undergraduate student at Columbia’s School of General Studies. This is a program for “nontraditional,” often foreign, students who generally would not have the credentials to get into Columbia College. This raises some interesting questions. He’s been here since 2015 but is still pursuing an undergraduate degree? Even though he already has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Birzeit University in the West Bank, and previously studied at Lehigh University? According to the Judge Crawford’s decision, his permanent address is in Vermont. But he’s pursuing a degree at Columbia in New York City? He was married to a US citizen for several years, but now is divorced. If he has employment, the judge didn’t mention it in discussing why he’s not a flight risk. How is he sustaining himself? Judge Crawford didn’t seem to be interested in these questions, but they are certainly worth asking.

How is it that Mohsen Mahdawi managed to remain an undergraduate for ten years? How did he pay his tuition and his rent during all that time? Was he ever employed in the U.S.? And why did he want to take a picture of the guns for sale in the Windsor, Vermont gun shop? Did he want to send those photos to other people, to see if they approved of his purchasing them in order to do….what? Or were the photos simply to remind himself of what guns were for sale, and at what price, so that he could do some comparative shopping? Why was he contemplating buying a gun or guns? And where is the evidence that Mohsen Mahdawi is working, as he claims, for “peace”? So many questions. We can all wait right here for the answers.