Journalist Ezra Klein recently invited Khalil, an Algerian-Palestinian activist and former grad student known for his role in Columbia University's anti-Israel protests in 2024, to tell his story to his podcast listeners.
He was arrested earlier this year for immigration fraud, specifically for allegedly failing to disclose information about his past work with a UN agency and his involvement with a pro-Palestinian group on his green card application.
His detention drew criticism from the Left, including from New York City's frontrunning mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani. He called it a "blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump."
Susan Tuchman, director of with the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Law and Justice (ZOA-CLJ), says the podcast interview covered Khalil's upbringing, his take on the conflict against Israel, and antisemitism at Columbia University.
"There's nothing that can justify the killing of civilians, and the international law is very clear about that, and we cannot pick and choose when international law applies to us or it applies to others," he said. "But also, like, there's another point to this. Palestinians don't have to be perfect victims. And that's what the world is asking of Palestinians amidst the dispossession, the occupation, the killing – all of that."
Tuchman says he minimized antisemitism on Columbia's campus and seemingly justified the massacre that Hamas committed on October 7, 2023.
"He acknowledged that the murder of innocent civilians is a violation of international law, but he neglects to point that overwhelmingly, the almost 1,200 people who were killed and murdered and butchered and mutilated on that day by Hamas terrorists were innocent civilians," Tuchman notes.
Khalil told Klein that Gaza has been oppressed for 75 years, which is why Palestinian Arabs cannot be expected to "perfect victims." But Tuchman says that claim against Israel is simply not true.
"In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza," she recalls. "There's not been an Israeli civilian or soldier in Gaza since that date;" any oppression the Gazans have suffered has been conducted solely by the people who are ruling them – which is Hamas.
Khalil was released on bail in late June when a federal judge ruled that his continued detention likely violated the Constitution. The activist has since filed a complaint against the Trump administration and is seeking $20 million in damages for alleged false arrest and imprisonment, among other charges.
Meanwhile, he continues to defend his past actions and statements.
