Bahar Azmi
Appearances
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
Mr. Khalil's detention has nothing to do with security. It is only about repression. The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest detained and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally protected activism. In this case, activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
The government takes the position that because the Secretary of State finds his dissent unacceptable or contrary to U.S. foreign policy, he can be deported. As Ramsey suggested, it's largely unprecedented, save for ugly historical precedents, including the Red Scare and McCarthyism. That's what we're talking about.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
We're also talking about a period of repression that the Center for Constitutional Rights knows well, following 9-11, when we were in the courts trying to get people out of secret detention. One thing that's different now is the legal infrastructure is so much stronger and everyone out here on the streets knows that we cannot hide in the face of this amount of repression.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
We will be fighting in the courts and fighting in the streets to bring Mahmoud home and prevent this level of repression from spreading to many others as the administration has threatened to do.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
It is always dangerous to speak in public for Palestinian rights, safety, and freedom with your face uncovered and your name declared. You can be sure you will be harassed, ducked, terrorized. People will try to get you fired from your job. For speaking here, I will receive a new round of death threats, slander, complaints to my employer.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
When I step down from here, I will publish these remarks to protect me from the inevitable attempts to misrepresent my words. And Mahmoud, as a student negotiator, took these same risks and many more. Mahmoud is a man of decency, honor, and kindness. He has distinguished himself in his work as an advocate and negotiator, as someone committed to peaceful resolution of difficult situations.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
He is a consummate diplomat in his disposition and his character. What the Trump government is doing to Mahmoud is obscene. It is unreasonable, intolerable, unconstitutional. So why do they think they can get away with it? The Trump administration is betting that Americans will happily look the other way as one more Palestinian is victimized here on American soil.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
They are betting that when you hear Mahmoud's name or the word Palestinian, the parts of you that make you a thinking and rational and caring person will switch off, and you will believe the worst about him, and you will turn a blind eye to these grave violations of his rights. And after what I've seen over the last year and a half, I'm not sure they're wrong.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
Anti-Palestinian groups have spent all year casually leveling the most dangerous accusations on the flimsiest grounds, and members of our own community have repeated them. Don't like seeing a kafia? Call them a terrorist and call the cops. Don't like their views? Call them anti-Semitic and get them expelled. Don't like that your Jewish colleague has the chutzpah to say, free Palestine?
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
Report him for Jew hatred to a university task force. Don't like seeing a broad and diverse movement of courageous young people standing together against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza? Call your friends in the government and send the feds to their door. As an educator,
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
As an educator, it disgusts me that anyone who wants to be taken seriously in association with the university would deal so ignorantly with language and truth. But more than that, I am ashamed as a Jewish person that this kind of slander has found currency in some parts of my own community in service of the racist and anti-Semitic Trump agenda.
Candace
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158
Trump's claim that this atrocity combats anti-Semitism is insulting.