“The government now claims “he had willfully failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March,” reports The New York Times. “The government also said that Mr. Khalil failed to list his continuing employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after 2022.” If these allegations are true, they may put the deportation on firmer footing: It is easier for the authorities to argue that the First Amendment isn’t a relevant factor when the issue is whether Khalil disclosed relevant information during a green card application.
But even if that is true, the Justice Department has shown its true motivation, even if it may be able to weasel out of the hole it’s dug. Since it told The Free Press that “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law” and suggested that “he was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the U.S.,” it sure seems obvious that it was Khalil’s role in the Columbia protests that attracted ICE agents initially. If officials can now find a better pretense to deport him, that may pass more legal muster, but they already made clear that this is retribution for protest. This will have a chilling effect on speech. And if they legitimately believed he was a threat, they should have actually spent the time to substantiate this.”
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“As for what actually happens to Khalil, it’s not clear these new allegations will make much of a difference: “In order to deport Mr. Khalil on the basis of the new allegations, the government would have to convince an immigration judge that any failure to disclose the relevant information was willful, and that it would have made a difference in his chances of receiving legal permanent residency status””
Trump paused tariffs on automobiles because big auto companies called him and convinced him to pause them. What about all those companies and consumers who do not have Trump’s ear?
“The same ceasefire agreement was almost signed in May 2024. Instead, the pointless violence continued for several more months—at Americans’ expense.”
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“Hundreds of Israeli troops have died since May 2024, as well as several Israeli hostages who would have been released under this week’s deal, including at least one American. Hamas has nearly recovered from its military losses by recruiting new fighters, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in his farewell speech on Tuesday. As Israeli troops withdraw, Hamas fighters will once again be in charge of Gaza.”
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“Hamas will rule over a traumatized population living in bombed-out wreckage. The dead have still not been properly counted; the official death toll of 46,600 may have missed 40 percent of violent deaths, and it doesn’t include deaths from starvation and disease. Back in May 2024, the United Nations estimated that rebuilding Gaza would take decades and cost $50 billion, money that will not be forthcoming to any Hamas-led government.”
Did all the death and destruction wrought by Israel trying to get Hamas achieve anything? If Gaza is still ruled by a terrorist organization, won’t it just rebuild, then attack Israel, and this happens all over again?
“Last year, student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war broke out at dozens of college campuses. With the new school year well underway, student demonstrations have begun again in earnest.
While many students expressed their opposition to the war in Gaza through peaceful means, some protests devolved into property destruction, trespassing, and even violence on a handful of college campuses, including at some of America’s most elite universities. Many students erected large encampments claiming public space on campuses—a form of protest that colleges are generally free to limit under reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), attempts to deplatform speakers were surging by this April. Of the 67 attempts it had recorded from January to mid-April, 73 percent involved controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So how did a year of raucous—and occasionally disruptive and destructive—protest affect student opinions on free speech?
In September, FIRE released its fourth annual College Free Speech Rankings. The survey, which polled almost 60,000 undergraduates from more than 250 colleges, asked students a wide range of questions about free speech and the campus climate affecting it. The survey—as in past years—also asked questions about whether they would find it acceptable for students to engage in various kinds of disruptive protests of a hypothetical controversial speaker on campus.
About 37 percent of respondents agreed it was “sometimes” or “always” acceptable for students to shout down a campus speaker; last year, only 31 percent said the same. In all, fewer than one in three students said that it would “never” be acceptable to shout down a speaker.
Less than half of all students said it was “never” acceptable to protest by blocking other students from attending a controversial speech—a decline from last year’s 55 percent. Nearly one in three said they would support violence to stop a campus speech in at least some circumstances. In 2023, only 27 percent of students said the same.
These results don’t necessarily show the percentage of students who would engage in these activities themselves—rather, they reveal the proportion of students who might condone actions from other students that restrict speech. ”
“Airwars, a team of conflict researchers affiliated with the University of London, went back and cross-checked the casualty lists from the first 25 days of the Israeli air campaign against news reporting, social media, and other local sources. And unlike the Palestinian ministry, they differentiated between civilians and fighters, using data such as social media funeral notices to determine Hamas affiliation.
The Airwars report, released on Thursday, shows a rate of civilian slaughter “incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented.” The Palestinian ministry reported 8,525 wartime deaths, including 3,542 children, from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2023. Airwars was able to verify a minimum of 5,139 civilians killed by Israeli air raids in that timeframe, including at least 1,900 children.
Most of them were not the collateral damage of combat against Hamas. Out of 606 incidents of civilian casualties studied by Airwars, only 26 overlapped with the death of a militant. And in those 26 incidents, the killing was still incredibly lopsided, with 32 militants killed in total, at a cost of 522 civilian lives.”
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“”Families were killed together in unprecedented numbers, and in their homes,” the Airwars report states. Over 90 percent of women and children killed by Israeli air raids died in their homes, and in 95 percent of cases where a woman was killed, at least one child was also killed, according to the Airwars report.”
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“Although the Israeli government and its supporters often argue that its military tactics are more humane than the American “war on terror,” Airwars found the exact opposite to be true. Before October 2023, the deadliest month for civilians ever recorded by Airwars was March 2017, when a U.S.-led coalition was battling the Islamic State group for Mosul, Iraq. That campaign killed 1,470 civilians, only one-fifth of the verified Palestinian civilian death count in October 2023. Children made up 9 percent of casualties in Mosul overall, and 36 percent of casualties in Gaza in October 2023.
These numbers are a conservative estimate, based on the minimum reported casualties in cases that Airwars was able to verify were Israeli bombing rather than Hamas misfires. And the study only covers one month of the war. More than a year later, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that 45,600 people have been killed and 11,000 are missing. Again, unlike the Airwars report, these numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters.
But with hospitals overwhelmed, communications cut, and thousands of bodies left in the street or trapped under rubble, 45,600 deaths is possibly an undercount. Other researchers have estimated that the total death toll from war, starvation, and disease in Gaza could be greater than 100,000 or even 300,000.”
“Video clips purporting to show torture of Palestinian civilians by the Hamas militia in the Gaza Strip during the years 2018 to 2020 were published by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday.
The IDF said the material had been found during its operations in the area and proved “severe abuse perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization against the civilian population,” along with human rights violations and oppression of those opposed to its rule.
The videos are reported to show torture carried out by Hamas operatives in so-called “Outpost 17″ in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The material shows people with bags over their heads, tied up, sometimes into twisted and painful positions. One of the men is suspended by his feet from the ceiling and beaten on the soles of his feet with a stick.
The victims are reported to include political opponents of Hamas, suspected collaborators with Israel, suspected adulterers and homosexuals.”