Chutzpah, Or Mahmoud Khalil’s Waqahatan in Manhattan

First, it must be said that Mahmoud Khalil is not on my list of favorite people. During his tenure as a leader of anti-Israel activities at Columbia, Jewish students with mezuzahs on their doorposts were harassed with nightly pounding on their doors. Some were forced out of their dorms. Students wearing kippot were spit on and called baby killers. Others had Judaica necklaces ripped off while on their way to synagogue. Jewish students were videoed, harassed, and intimidated by Khalil’s associates. Jews were excluded from campus groups. Intruders entered the Barnard College campus, assaulted an employee, and held administration offices hostage in the name of protests Khalil led. Classes on Israel or attended by Israeli students were interrupted by hooded and masked figures with Khalil advocating for the right to do so.  

At protests and at encampments under Kahlil’s watch, people shouted, “Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now,” “Yes Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets too,” or “We say justice you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.” Inverted red triangles began to appear on Jewish spaces at Columbia — the symbol that Hamas uses to identify its targets in the “trophy videos” where it showcases its killings. A student was confronted and told “we will follow you to Israel and burn your family.”  

Khalil also led the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (“CUAD”) coalition which sought to sever ties with Israeli universities, academic institutions, fellowships and study abroad programs. Keep in mind that Columbia has many native-born Israeli citizens on campus each year as part of exchange programs. Yet CUAD demands of its coalition members that no “Zionists” would be allowed in any coalition partner or student group. The CUAD went so far as to force the ostracization of an Israeli dancer from the Columbia dance team as the price of membership in the coalition. At its heart, the CUAD coalition wants to deny academic freedom to anyone remotely associated with Israel and deprive students of their right to learn.  

When officials sought to obtain his disciplinary records from Columbia over the protests, Khalil fought the records’ release of his specific involvement in the attacks on Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia. He filed suit to prevent his discipline and his involvement from being disclosed. That case is still pending in a New York Federal Court.

And now, this same Mahmoud Khalil, who headed the anti-Israel pro-Hamas students responsible for so much hysteria and hate, is suing Columbia for “failing to prevent the harassment against him and other members of a pro-Palestinian campus group.” He further charges that Columbia “retaliated against him and others when they reported the “harassment” they endured. “Mahmoud Khalil lawsuit says Columbia University failed to protect pro-Palestinian activists,” by Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press, September 14, 2026:

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil sued Columbia University on Monday, alleging it failed to address harassment against him and other members of a pro-Palestinian campus group and retaliated against them when they reported it.

The university’s “deliberate indifference” led to the doxing of multiple group members and Khalil’s detention by immigration agents, according to the civil rights lawsuit filed in federal court in New York City.

At a news conference announcing the lawsuit, Khalil accused the university of “discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students.”

“We are suing because no student, regardless of their background, should go through the hell that Columbia put us through over all these years,” he said.

The pro-Palestinian stormtroopers on the Columbia campus, who intimidated Jewish students, broke mezuzahs off their doorposts, surged into classrooms to prevent Jewish and Israeli professors from teaching, vandalized campus buildings by pouring liquid cement into toilets and daubing walls with red paint to symbolize the blood shed by “genocidal Israel,” are now complaining that they were the real victims, they whom the Columbia administrators did not protect.

The university declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said in an email that “creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a University.”

“Columbia is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment, and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns arise,” it said.

Khalil also sued Columbia last year to block the release of student records to a congressional committee….

Why did he try to block the release of student records? What was he afraid that Congress, and the world, would find out about him? If he is, as he claims, an innocent guilty of nothing, harassed by the pro-Israel bigots on campus, he should welcome the release of such records.

At the news conference Monday, Khalil also accused the university of surveilling pro-Palestinian students and hiring private investigators to monitor him.

Couldn’t the university have had good reason to surveil pro-Palestinian students, to see if they were indeed harassing Jewish and Israeli students and faculty, or vandalizing student dorms by ripping off mezuzahs, or painting slogans and pouring cement on university property? Or was Columbia, out of nothing more than sheer malevolence and bigotry, determined to keep track of pro-Palestinian students who never gave the university cause for alarm?

What Chutzpah. What Cheek. Or as the Arabs say, what waqahatan. As in the song: “A little waqahatan in Manhattan.”

Columbia’s lawyers — and I should imagine a great many lawyers in New York, not all of them Jewish, are lining up to offer their pro-bono services if needed — will make short shrift of this preposterous case. And soon after his case is thrown out, and he is properly pauperized by having to pay lawyers’ fees and court costs — or will CAIR pay them for him? — one hopes that Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation back to Algeria, of which he is a citizen, will be promptly enforced.