Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. More coffee.
What's going on?
Just another example of the tolerance paradox. It's easy to recognize it when it swings against our convictions, not so much when it turns in our favor. Yet it is exactly when it turns in our favor that it is most dangerous. And yes, I am talking about Mahmoud Khalil.
Mahmoud Khalil is an antisemite. He was issued a student visa and by extension, according to his lawyer, a green card. I have no clue how the visa process works for a student. In my case, my EU passport was my visa and I had to apply for a work permit, a residency permit (green card) and citizenship in that order. I assume Khalil went through a similar process to get his visa turned into a green card. The role his US citizen wife played in it may have been relevant.
There are a number of questions you answer under penalty of perjury when you apply for a green card. Legal residents don't have as many rights as citizens but they have pretty much the same obligations. The difference is you are not required to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, as citizens do, you are just asked if you are willing to, as in willing to become a citizen. You are asked, however, if you ever broke any laws or were ever involved with a terrorist organization.
Of course, 100% of green card applicants reply "no" to both questions and it's on the US government to verify if that's true. I will assume Khalil was vetted and cleared of these obstacles. It's a fair assumption. Then begins the "probation" period that never ends until you become a citizen and is extended to new citizens in many instances. Depending on your actions you may lose the right to both, but it is more difficult to lose citizenship than the right to residency.
Mahmoud Khalil didn't violate the terms of his residency agreement by protesting against Israel, or even by being openly antisemite. As much as we'd like to see hate speech cut off from the first amendment it is not. He may as well have been openly Nazi or advocate for white supremacy or the rise of the Confederacy. Those are 1st amendment rights, no matter how much we wish they weren't. He did do something else, though.
Khalil's actions involved breaking instituted university regulations (which may be interpreted as civil disobedience) but they also damaged property, caused physical harm to others, and threatened a group of students in the process, all the while expressing solidarity with terrorist organizations and glorifying the murder of human beings. The reason I did not identify above which human beings, terrorist organizations or group of students is important.
It is important because if you replace those generalizations by specific people, other than the ones targeted, you get a much clearer picture. Try reading it again using "black students”, "ККК", and "black people". Now read it again using the accurate descriptions: Jewish students, Hamas and Hezbolah, and Jewish people. Any green card holding student involved in racist activities of this nature would be immediately expelled from school and lose the right to reside in the United States.
Apparently, engaging in antisemitic activities is "not as bad" and tolerated. Here's the problem with this situation: Universities do not enforce their own rules regarding protests and they turn a blind eye to blatant crimes, such as damaged property and inflicting physical harm on students and staff. They allow these actions to go unpunished and the situation to escalate. I am all for extreme civil disobedience but it comes with a steep price.
When you engage in civil disobedience you are risking to break the law and the risk things get out of hand is extremely high. There are no legal protections for damages caused or injuries inflicted during protests. Being a "hard core" protester is not a protected activity, nor is standing by watching and cheering. Keep that in mind for our own anti fascist protests. Khalil knew the risks. He said it himself.
"I am here on a foreign visa. That's why for the past six months, l've barely appeared on the media", Khalil stated in April of 2024. He was well aware of what he was doing, he just overestimated the "power" of the green card he got after that. It's not a "get out of jail free" card. Any unlawful activity will be used against a green card holder to revoke that status, meaning deportation with the penalty of no reinstatement.
We should not tolerate those who preach hate, regardless of the hate they preach, but above all we cannot tolerate those who use that intolerance to further their own. No matter what Khalil did he can't just be thrown in a hole and kicked out of the country away from public eyes and without due process. There's ample evidence of his behavior to justify his loss of residency privileges and subsequent deportation. No need to violate his rights in the process or make it "secret".
The course of action this administration is taking led to the so called "Khalil bandwagon" and makes us have to suffer watching other antisemites rally around yet another "human rights" cause. That's really the worst part of it: watching people who select which humans have rights covered in righteousness, pretending to be on "our side". There's no bandwagon here. We must not allow this process of dealing with foreign chaos agents to become acceptable.
I have stated many times that when democracy fails to uphold the law, fascism will take over and destroy it completely while seeming to protect it. I want people like Mahmoud Khalil to be deported legally as a result of their actions in broad daylight, not in the cover of the night. If you agree with the way this situation is being handled just know the basis for it is the "Immigration and Nationality Act" of 1952, which was used against (you guessed it) Jewish immigrants.
By all means, let's get these foreign Islamic fascists out of our universities and our streets. But let's do it on legal grounds and in public, giving them the right to due process. Not to do it only emboldens both Christian and Islamic fascists to double down on their goals to destroy our democracy. They may come at it from opposing sides, but their name is just the same: fascists. Tolerate either at your own peril. For you will be next.
