The anti-Semitic New York Times featured an op-ed from an arrested Gazan Columbia student claiming the Trump administration dictatorially detained him for his beliefs and for demanding peace. What they’re not telling you is that he is actually a radical pro-Hamas activist who endorsed the Oct. 7 atrocities against Israel.
Endorsement of genocide is not protected free speech, and foreigners do not have Constitutional rights — or any right to remain in America. Yet the New York Times, like so many other leftist outlets and politicians, is determined to pretend that actively promoting terrorism against Jews is not only free speech but in fact praiseworthy, and that only an irrational dictator would wish to end it.
Fixed it for you @nytimes pic.twitter.com/yoDAoN8bsY
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) May 3, 2025
“I Was Detained for My Beliefs. Who Will Be Next?” sobbed Mohsen Mahdawi. “On April 14, 2025, I was detained during what should have been my citizenship naturalization interview. After more than two weeks of unjust imprisonment, a federal judge ruled in favor of releasing me. In a major victory for democracy, I may be the first of the many student activists who have been detained by the Trump administration to be freed from detention.” He has an activist judge who secured his release on his side, and we can only hope he and the judge will not win out in the end.
Mahdawi falsely accused Israel of “relentless killing and destruction in Gaza.” He also ridiculously claimed that he loves America’s founding principles, and that the same principles are espoused by “the Palestinians, who are fighting for their right to life and justice, too.”
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In reality, Israel will even endanger its own soldiers to avoid killing civilians, even though the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support genocidal jihad against Israel. The “Palestinians,” who started calling themselves that in the 1960s, have always rejected peace and their own state (they already were given Jordan) in favor of wiping Israel off the map, in accord with the endorsements of exterminating Jews found in Islamic sacred texts. So when Mahdawi claimed he was “opposing war and promoting peace,” it was the exact opposite of the truth. But anyone who accuses Israel of apartheid, as he did, is obviously a habitual liar. He comes out of the Jew-hating indoctrination of the Palestinian cesspool, and it shows. We don’t want thugs like him in our country.
The Washington Free Beacon explained the situation, with the important context the Times left out:
Mohsen Mahdawi had his green card revoked by the Trump administration and was taken into custody on Monday in Burlington, Vt., where he was scheduled to take a citizenship test… But Mahdawi, an undergraduate who was expected to enroll in a Columbia graduate program in the fall, has also said he "can empathize" with Hamas over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 slaughter and has publicly called for the destruction of Israel. Last year, he honored a commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a U.S.-designated terror group that participated in the attack alongside Hamas.
Most recently, Mahdawi served as co-president of Columbia’s Palestinian Students Union, a coalition of anti-Israel student groups, including Columbia’s suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters. The union has organized protests calling for Columbia’s divestment from Israel alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student organization behind the illegal encampments that plagued the school last spring and led to the violent storming of a campus building, Hamilton Hall.
Thus when Mahdawi’s attorney asserted in comments to The Intercept that Mahdawi was detained because of his “Palestinian identity” and that his client came “to this country hoping to be free to speak about the atrocities he has witnessed,” he was lying. The real atrocities are the ones committed by the baby-killing, Jew-hating terrorists Mahdawi supports.
