Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, and Protest Expectations

Photo by ProudFarmerScholar, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

What this observer knows about Mahmoud Khalil would scarcely fill out a tweet, let alone an entire entry at Ordinary Times. A piece was published last October, or semester if one lives the college life, explaining just exactly what the protestors could expect from the US government and the escalation of the war in Gaza.

What the people inspiring you to join protests want from you is to saddle your own self-identity with a conflict that pretty much gave birth to modern terrorism. These passionate people are trained and paid to recruit you precisely because you came up in the age of Justice. Your cause becomes their cause until, seamlessly, their cause is yours.

After recruitment, they convince you to escalate tactics because the cause isn’t getting enough respect and exposure. That is when they hook you, like a cult. This is where good sense should tell you to bail, but there are those who double down. You will be convinced that enthusiasm and zealousness are the only currency in the cause. The more you escalate the closer you come to a machine that is designed to catch bad people with evil intentions.

Poof, you’re on a radar. Now it is no longer seen as a protest and you will be monitored and assessed by the national security community. This is what you’re signing up for when you make Palestine your cause. It’s not deep state surveillance; it is standard operating procedure.

When you cross into this world the stakes become incredibly high. American federal law enforcement does not pretend. They are not playing games to make their stepdad mad. How they operate is not political theater. They don’t investigate things because their college boyfriend is way into it. And this is all the precursor to what terrifying force will come crashing down around you. It will absolutely change your life forever, if you make it out alive.

Through your actions you will be seen as collaborators with religious nut jobs who believe with every fiber of their being that God wants them to wage war in his name. You’ve become de facto holy warriors. That’s not what you planned when you started but that is where you will you end up.

This follows up on that original post accurately predicting realistic expectations.

Since October 8th, 2023, the organized protests on college campuses across America in response to the attack on October 7th have been grotesque and counterproductive. Continued obliviousness and dismissals from the public have compelled an escalation among the hardline campus protestors, reflecting the aesthetic of the extremists they sympathize with.

This all begs the question to the protestors as tensions intensify in another semester: is this what you wanted? Has the resistance gotten the progress sought? Looking from the outside in, it’s yes and no. Yes, in that they got attention. But no, in many ways they weren’t expecting.

Khalil’s case is centered around his immigration status as a student at Columbia University. The controversy is over his leadership of the hotbed of pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah protest movements on college campuses. The resistance aligned with the Palestinian cause of independent statehood has not gotten its ultimate wish in America. Tiny Judea and its two-state demand is in focus for what is considered a Roman Circus, yet again.

The eye and ire of the White House has placed the issue on an honorary back burner. Opponents of the deportation seek to exalt the status of the story to free speech on the cross. Placing the bait there entices Democrats to pounce on the free speech angle just for Republicans to switch it out for immigration enforcement. It has a very “Lucy from Peanuts yanking the football on Charlie Brown”…Junior Varsity vibes, but the Progressives keep falling for it.

When they pivot to the moral condition of his detention, it is pointed out that Kahlil has 17 immigration lawyers, while children housed together in custodial center pods share their legal counsel. The contrived shock at his detention loses credibility when examining the ethics of proportionate allocation of humanitarian assistance. The intense focus on someone’s tenure track comes across like mismanagement of philanthropic efforts and aid.

Kahlil reportedly has $93,000 for legal fees at his disposal as a grad student. When pressed or questioned, his camp of supporters simply declines to answer. When given a chance to speak freely about his actions, intentions and means, the question is sheepishly punted. The proof in this pudding is always tested in that pesky legal process of discovery. A step in the legal process where political and legal Islamist activism usually bows out in the American legal system.

Discovery is where financial records and information otherwise protected by rights of privacy are made public. An inconvenience and embarrassment Mahmoud and his impressive legal team would want to avoid as it likely incriminates him and justifies his deportation.

The true gust of realistic wind that topples this ridiculous house of cards isn’t the free speech of Kahlil’s that they defend, which is disgusting and barbaric in its tactics and ultimate end goal; the destruction of the State of Israel. No. The tangible moral outrage is that the universities and media ignore the rights of American students being violated by these protests.

The civil rights being violated are those of the hundreds of Jewish students harassed and threatened on the college campuses. An issue that has required congressional oversight. Why? Greed. Students like Kahlil pay full tuition for the right to be welcomed in only to attempt to dismantle the American system from a kush dorm room in Manhattan.

It is easy to calculate these kinds of students, who apply in good faith and openly express an agenda to harm the very system they exploit, by driving the price of tuition up for American students who can never afford such a prestigious academic pedigree. This undermines any hope for the protestors to pivot to something framed in a working-class narrative. There is no way for them to expand this “event” beyond being a self-indulgent coordinated media happening.

Is this what the protestors set out to be? Was this where they wanted their theatrics to end? Was the goal to look like spoiled elitists who hate the realities of a war they don’t understand? It’s unclear what they want or expect after this media splash.

What is clear is none of the students actually thought they’d be in the world of counterterrorism and extremism for their beliefs in college. It’s conceivable they thought Trump was bluffing or wouldn’t have the legal standing. This miscalculation could cost some their citizenship, education, careers and even freedoms. The only step after those is offering themselves to a culture of martyrdom and fealty to a cause through sacrifice. A hologram of atonement.

What can be asserted with some confidence is how illiterate the protestors are with the media they choose to broadcast their revolution on.