Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of antisemitic protests on the Columbia University campus whom the Trump administration sought to deport, told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein that the protests on the Ivy League campus led to “manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia.”
When Klein said on his show that Jew-hatred took place at Columbia, Khalil said, “I would really push back on that,” according to an edited transcript that the Times published.
“I wouldn’t say there was none,” Khalil added. “I would say there is this manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests.”
The anti-Israel Columbia graduate allowed that there have been some incidents but told Klein that “it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement.” He also said that chants of “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” aren’t violent and are “overwhelmingly civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation.”
In the interview, Khalil also said the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were “a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation.”
“We cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims after 75 years of dispossession, of killing people in Gaza, being under siege,” he said.
