Hundreds protest pro-Hamas Columbia graduate’s deportation orders

A dozen protesters were arrested in clashes with police as they blocked streets while calling for Mahmoud Khalil’s freedom and shouting against Israel.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A dozen people were arrested Tuesday during clashes with police as hundreds more demonstrated in the streets of New York City in support of a pro-Hamas graduate of Columbia University who has been a campus leader of the anti-Israel demonstrations and building takeovers that have roiled the school over the last year and a half.

Mahmoud Khalil, who just completed his master’s degree at Columbia in December, was arrested Saturday because he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

The U.S. government is determined to deport him for promoting the terrorist organization.

In explaining the move, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that he had taken advantage of “the privilege” of coming to study in “one of our nation’s finest universities to “side with terrorists — Hamas terrorists who have killed innocent men, women, and children.”

Some 500 people marched against the deportation proceedings, which have been temporarily blocked by a U.S. District Court judge.

While their stated motive was to protest the alleged criminalization of Khalil’s right to freedom of speech, the march was an anti-Israel hate fest, with protestors calling for an “intifada revolution,” among other slogans.

The authorities moved in after the participants would not adhere to warnings broadcast repeatedly over a loudspeaker. Instead of moving along as instructed, they blocked the street in front of the federal courthouse where protest leaders were trying to make speeches. They then tried to enter City Hall Park but were blocked by police.

Video clips posted to social media showed many shoving matches occurring between police and protestors, some of whom wore keffiyehs over their shoulders and masks to block their faces while the arrests were being made.

One person was charged with disorderly conduct and 11n were handed summonses, the police said.

Citing a White House source Monday, The New York Post reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “presented with intelligence” that Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian who has a green card, “was a threat to national security.”

Rubio revoked Khalil’s green card, which he has the legal right to do for individuals who are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”

President Donald Trump applauded Khalil’s arrest and promised many more in order to rid the country of those foreigners “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activities.”

anti-Israel demonstrationColumbia UniversitydeportationMahmoud Khalilpro-Hamas