Middle East ......

Halifax2TheMax

Lerxst1992 said:

Protest what, the right of the government to determine if a green card holder violated terms of the privilege given to them to live here? And others here on visas, they can easily  be revoked.

If you have issue with how the US treats their guests protesting US national Security issues, go to Gaza and protest there. See how long that lasts. 

 

https://www.voanews.com/a/under-what-circumstances-can-a-us-green-card-be-revoked/8009714.html

So much for free speech and equality under the law. Good to see that some are all for a suspension of constitutional guarantees. We’re being warned. From the Guardian:

How antisemitism avoided the fate of antiracism

The promotion of Israel’s national narrative remains exempt from Trump’s wholesale attack on DEI

On 7 March, the Trump administration announced that it had cancelled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, saying the school’s “Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and antisemitic harassment on their campuses” and that “universities must comply with all federal anti-discrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding”.

The “harassment” leveraged by the president and other pro-Israel ideologues was a reference to the paradigm-setting pro-Palestinian activism that energized the campus over the past year. Columbia’s students became national leaders in the anti-genocide movement, and the Gaza solidarity encampment they established garnered international attention – including from the US Congress, which held hearings on so-called “campus antisemitism”.

Trump’s cynical attempt to protect an allegedly vulnerable class of students came just after executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs – initiatives whose prime directive has historically been to ensure equal opportunity for marginalized groups – within institutions that receive federal funding. In the first few months of his presidency, Trump has augmented the “Palestine exception” – that amorphous but consequential social limitation of the first amendment that enables suppression of pro-Palestinian/anti-Zionist speech – with an “Israel exception” from DEI prohibitions. In effect, the promotion of Israel’s national narrative not only remains exempt from the wholesale attack on DEI, but it also functions as a weapon used to attack people and communities previously protected.

The current blow to Columbia’s funding came after a culmination of administrative efforts to pander to Trump’s war on DEI, beginning with the removal of Columbia athletics’ transgender inclusion policy from its website in early February, followed soon after with the altering of DEI language on a number of Columbia websites, and a directive to department chairs to “temporarily” remove any “DEI language” from departmental websites.

Where did this cowardly compliance, this last-ditch effort at saving the university from federal funding cuts, get the school? Columbia’s leadership has transformed the institution into an international laughingstock, a rudderless ship, poorer in every way – from its balance sheet to its moral vision. And after more than a year of many powerful Zionists purposefully conflating the way that some Jewish students feel unsafe on campus with actual danger, we have now witnessed a Palestinian student, Mahmoud Khalil, literally being abducted from New York to a detention center across state borders notorious for its mistreatment of detainees.

The ground for Trump’s attacks on Columbia has been well prepared by all manner of Zionist Jewish entities – with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) at the front, as usual. The ADL has come under sustained criticism in recent years for the ways it has used the halo effect of its origins as a civil rights organization to support racist policing, surveil progressive groups and cozy up to actual antisemites who happen to also be supporters of Israel.

But the group has been joined by a range of swaggering actors: the newly emboldened Kahanist group Betar Worldwide; Columbia’s own professor Shai Davidai, who has terrorized numerous Arab and Arab American students, including Mahmoud Khalil just before his kidnapping; and Zionist Jewish alumni groups. All have conspired to gin up a topsy-turvy mythology of what they call a crisis of “campus antisemitism”, but which is really a reactionary crisis surrounding the increasing popularity of campus anti-Zionism.

As a father and daughter who represent two generations of anti-Zionist Jewish scholars and activists – one of us a professor at University of Massachusetts Boston, and the other a graduate student at Columbia University – it seems manifest that we are witnessing a purposeful and devastating bait and switch. Every articulation of anti-Israel speech (or even the simplest affirmation of Palestinian human rights) gets recoded as dangerous antisemitic action.

Columbia University now serves the Trumpist agenda of ‘free speech except Palestine’ and ‘free of DEI except Zionism’

The “Israel exception” to DEI means that the university’s post-October 7 antisemitism taskforce, formed on the pretext of protecting Jews on campus, was never paired with an Islamophobia or anti-Arab taskforce, despite the fact that Arab and Muslim students have been continually subjected to doxing campaigns from far-right organizations such as Canary Mission and Accuracy in Media, and singled out in a WhatsApp group comprising faculty, administrators, students, alumni and parents seeking to persecute student activists and get them deported.

The “Israel exception” means that the faculty member Gil Zussman remains on the taskforce even after it was exposed that he is part of the WhatsApp group actively putting student’s lives at risk. Meanwhile, the longtime pro-Palestinian Columbia law professor Katherine Franke was essentially forced out of her tenured position for what many saw as a relatively minor speech infraction.

The “Israel exception” means that the antisemitism taskforce only concerns itself with certain kinds of Jews; anti-Zionist Jews do not register in the furrowed-brow rhetoric of university administrators, politicians or self-appointed Jewish community leaders, except as a problem to be eradicated. Columbia University is now at the vanguard of our political and cultural moment, serving the Trumpist agenda of “free speech except Palestine” and “free of DEI except Zionism”.

What is most significant in the focused dismantling of DEI protocols is how Jewishness and Zionism has been spared. The banned word list issued by the National Science Foundation includes terms from “disabled” to “transgender” to “racism”, but no censoring of anything having to do with Zionism, Israel or Jews. As civil rights gains having to do with race, gender, ability and sexuality are rolled back, it has become exceedingly clear that the animus is not against DEI protocols and protections per se: Zionist Jews will remain a specially protected class. This serves the Republican party in ways concerning foreign policy, the cultural wars and electoral politics, and stands as the culmination of over a year’s worth of moral panic over the “safety” of Jewish students on college campuses.

The writer Lucien Baskin outlined this moral panic in an article that argues the current hysteria has roots in both liberal and rightwing premises. Baskin explains that for liberals, the putative antisemitism crisis is one more articulation of their understanding of racism as rooted in bad individual acts, rather than systemic injustice. On the right, the antisemitism hysteria is a Trojan horse for well-organized and well-funded attacks on American education at all levels – targeting libraries, secondary school curricula, and university teaching and publishing.

The basic premise that influential Zionists have been promoting is that widespread pro-Palestinian activity on campuses across the country proves that US universities are essentially anti-Zionist institutions and that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. This promotion has happened as pro-Palestinian students have been doxed and had job offers rescinded, as three Palestinian students were shot in a hate crime in Vermont, and as pro-Palestinian professors have been fired.

The US has a legible history of antisemitism, but American antisemitism has never been a sustained systemic force in our history – like the way that anti-Black racism has been, for instance. There have been plenty of isolated antisemitic acts (up to and including lynching) and plenty of anti-Jewish thought and expression in the US. But by and large Jews have been remarkably safe in the United States. When Jews have faced sustained antisemitism there has almost always been a powerful white Christian man at the wheel, from Henry Ford to the radio preacher Charles Coughlin to Donald Trump.

We are in a moment when many Jewish Americans and their rightwing allies have strategically weaponized the history of European antisemitism, and the more episodic American version, to prosecute a case against free speech and academic freedom. It is a deft trick that has been staged by powerful figures from the campus of Columbia University to the Oval Office, and one that is familiar to anyone who has read Amy Kaplan’s work on the Americanization of Zionism. Depicting Israelis as “invincible victims”, at once always under attack yet also preternaturally powerful, this social project of having the most cake and eating it too is turning out to be one of the most consequential political formations of our era.

This is one of many reasons we have to pay attention to the current “campus antisemitism” crisis – because ultimately it is doing two major things at once: it is distracting us from the genocide and continued siege of Gaza, and it is obscuring the reality of relative safety for American Jews in favor of a hyped-up narrative of fraught vulnerability. This almost certainly will not – as the idiom puts it – be good for the Jews. As pawns in a larger game being run by Christian Zionists (who often happen to be white supremacists), the safety of American Jews, Zionist or not, is hardly the endgame.

Jeff Melnick is a professor of American studies at UMass Boston

Jessie Lee Rubin is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Columbia University

https://apple.news/AvWROnQsYT4Wyuh8hiPQ7Tg

mickeyrat

what statements specifically has he made before , during or after that affected the US ability to be ignored by the Israeli regime in regards to the so called biden plan eventually agreed to by both parties after the election?

Lerxst1992

What. About. Ism.

The protesters broke a long list of laws. They were our guests here. They deserve their day in court. The government has the right to determine whether they violated terms of the privilege granted to them.

mickeyrat

and thus far only one "arrest" , that individual sent from NYC to a detention center in Louisiana,  surely with the volume of "guests" in this country that are in NYC there is an ICE center there or closer by than Louisiana,  no?

using the broadly vague language available to SoS in this regard, specificallythe admin stating cracking down on antisemitism,  when this same admin employs folks outwardly espousing same, including dear old Leon and his "roman salute" with nary a word said about THAT suggests this whole thing is bullshit.

you may not like his speech , but please answer this question, what statements and actions directly line up with what Rubio is doing in regards to the green card?

video would be helpful, or at a minimum confirmed attributable quotes by Khalil.

Reporting I have seen shows he in fact was vocally against antisemitism in any form anywhere.

and then answer the question I have asked for going on a year now.

Do you equate all Palestinians with Hamas?

yes or no.

previous statements leave a strong impression.

Halifax2TheMax

Lerxst1992 said:

What. About. Ism.

The protesters broke a long list of laws. They were our guests here. They deserve their day in court. The government has the right to determine whether they violated terms of the privilege granted to them.

Which long list? Perhaps you’ll list them? What or how did Khalil’s arrest warrant read? What are the specific charges? Was he read his Miranda rights and offered an attorney prior to detention? 

Get_Right

All I know is that if one of my kids was lucky enough to get into Colombia and a protesting group impeded their graduation or the ability to attend classes, I would be pissed and call everyone I could. Speak your mind, be active for your cause, but do not mess it up for the other students. For better or worse, cops and Gov agents in the US have the right to detain you, cuff you, and throw you in jail, even if it is just an allegation. They do not care about the merits or facts of a case. They do not need a warrant. It is their job to detain and jail a person for even something as minor as disorderly conduct. Then the legal system takes over. 

HughFreakingDillon

Get_Right said:

All I know is that if one of my kids was lucky enough to get into Colombia and a protesting group impeded their graduation or the ability to attend classes, I would be pissed and call everyone I could. Speak your mind, be active for your cause, but do not mess it up for the other students. For better or worse, cops and Gov agents in the US have the right to detain you, cuff you, and throw you in jail, even if it is just an allegation. They do not care about the merits or facts of a case. They do not need a warrant. It is their job to detain and jail a person for even something as minor as disorderly conduct. Then the legal system takes over. 

I agree. I’d be pissed too. But, to be frank, the law’s mandate is “fuck your feelings”. The law deals in facts. I have zero problem with due process, however, as I understand it, he hasn’t been charged. Detainment without cause isn’t due process. If he did something illegal, charge him. If he didn’t, let him go. 

Edit: I didn’t realize he’d been charged. I thought he’d simply been detained. 

Edit 2: ok, I was right. He hasn’t been charged. I must have been resding dated sources. 

Halifax2TheMax

Get_Right said:

All I know is that if one of my kids was lucky enough to get into Colombia and a protesting group impeded their graduation or the ability to attend classes, I would be pissed and call everyone I could. Speak your mind, be active for your cause, but do not mess it up for the other students. For better or worse, cops and Gov agents in the US have the right to detain you, cuff you, and throw you in jail, even if it is just an allegation. They do not care about the merits or facts of a case. They do not need a warrant. It is their job to detain and jail a person for even something as minor as disorderly conduct. Then the legal system takes over. 

Another voice for authoritarianism. The protests at Columbia ended months ago. Where are all the other protester arrests? Did Khalil act alone? Talk about jack booted thugs. Remember, that’s how the right referred to the ATF.

The “accused” used to have rights in ‘Murica. Not anymore.

And in case you forgot, “policing” is part of the “legal system.” Good lord are we so fucked.

HughFreakingDillon

This is what you support: 

What’s more, the “adverse foreign policy consequences” argument for deporting Khalil is vague enough that it could in theory extend not just to any international student who participated in the Gaza protests, but just about any non-citizen protesting on behalf of the Palestinians – or, indeed, any other issue the government declares to be a “foreign policy” aim. The legal journal Just Security points out: “If the government has an objective to promote fossil fuel use across the globe, for example, then the secretary of state could deem climate science advocates – or even non-citizens who own green technology firms – deportable on the ground that their residency ‘undermines the policy objective’ of promoting fossil fuels.”

Halifax2TheMax

Warrantless arrests. That’s what folks are advocating for, defending and seemingly totally okay with. From The New Yorker:

Last Saturday evening, a recent Columbia University graduate student named Mahmoud Khalilwas greeted in the lobby of his apartment building, in Morningside Heights, by four plainclothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security. They said that his student visa had been revoked and that he was being arrested, with a plan to deport him. Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, had been a leader of the pro-Palestine protests that consumed Columbia’s campus life last year. He called his lawyer Amy Greer, and she spoke with one of the agents. When Greer told him that Khalil did not have or need a student visa, because he is a permanent U.S. resident with a green card, the agent said that D.H.S. had revoked his green card, too. When Greer asked to see the warrant, the agent hung up.

Halifax2TheMax

They can kneel on your neck until you can’t breathe too. 

Get_Right

A warrant is not needed for an arrest. Or application of immigration rules. 

Halifax2TheMax

Get_Right said:

A warrant is not needed for an arrest. Or application of immigration rules. 

Glad you’re comfortable with it, then. From The New Yorker:

Khalil is thirty years old, has earned a master’s degree in public administration, and once interned at the United Nations. (His wife, an American citizen of Syrian descent, is about to give birth.) Within the protests that he was associated with, a university task force found a “serious and pervasive” atmosphere of antisemitism, in which Jewish students were targeted and harassed. But Khalil had served as an interlocutor with the university administration, and in public statements he disavowed antisemitism and insisted that a change in the government of Israel would represent liberation for Palestinians and Jews alike. Was this really the fight the TrumpAdministration wanted to pick?

As it turned out, once the Administration explained what it was up to, this was exactly the fight it wanted. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” a White House official told the Free Press. A statement from D.H.S. said, vaguely, that Khalil had “led activities aligned to Hamas,” wording that smudges the crucial distinction between antisemitism and opposition to Israeli policy. The government’s deportation order relied on an obscure 1952 immigration statute that allows the Secretary of State to revoke permanent residency from anyone he judges to be undermining U.S. foreign policy. The Administration seemed prepared to argue that Khalil’s “continued presence in this country,” as the Times put it, made the American goal of combatting antisemitism more difficult. No specific actions were even alleged; Khalil was evidently being deported simply because the Administration did not like what he had to say.

Get_Right

 "[s]tudents were targeted and harassed" that is all I need to know. Whatever your cause. I would guess some of the behavior was close to assault. I do not want my 19 year old being shouted at or forced to go around a demonstration. That behavior is not acceptable and what is a 30 year old doing on campus? Seems like just a troublemaker. Go protest at the UN or the embassies. Leave the college kids alone or do it with kid gloves.

Halifax2TheMax

Get_Right said:

 "[s]tudents were targeted and harassed" that is all I need to know. Whatever your cause. I would guess some of the behavior was close to assault. I do not want my 19 year old being shouted at or forced to go around a demonstration. That behavior is not acceptable and what is a 30 year old doing on campus? Seems like just a troublemaker. Go protest at the UN or the embassies. Leave the college kids alone or do it with kid gloves.

Who “targeted and harassed “the students? Khalil? He was arrested in the foyer of Columbia University graduate housing. Seems he had every right to be there. But fuck him, right?

The fucking excuses.

Get_Right

It is your quote from the New Yorker. Why would a 30 year old be living, or even visiting, campus housing?  What was his right to be there? 

Halifax2TheMax

Get_Right said:

It is your quote from the New Yorker. Why would a 30 year old be living, or even visiting, campus housing?  What was his right to be there? 

Guess you’re not familiar with campus housing, graduate students, PhD candidates, etc? Lots of reasons but maybe, just maybe because he fucking lived there and was scheduled to graduate from a masters program in May, maybe? From wiki:

Khalil completed work on his master's degree in December 2024 and was due to graduate in May 2025.[20][21]As a student, he interned for UNRWA, a United Nations relief agency that supports Palestinian refugees.[16]

Halifax2TheMax

That peace loving nation at it again, violating ceasefires as a matter of practice.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/middleeast/israel-strikes-gaza-hamas-ceasefire-intl-hnk/index.html

mickeyrat

I didnt go to college. So I cant say from experience.  So I'm asking, those who went , was the point if it the end ceremony or the fucking education and degree?

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

I didnt go to college. So I cant say from experience.  So I'm asking, those who went , was the point if it the end ceremony or the fucking education and degree?

For me, it wasn’t the destination but the journey. Hard to believe, I know. Kurt Vonnegut gave a great commencement speech though.