THE NEW ZEALAND government, like every other western government, has remained silent about the plight of Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University and a pro-Palestinian activist, was arrested on Saturday and now faces deportation. He is a legal permanent resident, but still faces being sent back to Syria, which he left in 2022 to pursue his university studies.
Yet, Khahlil has committed no crime. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Khalil was arrested 'in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.' In Trump's America any criticism of Israel and its genocidal war in Gaza is considered to be 'anti-semitism'.
That the arrest of Khalil is a clear violation of his first amendment right to free speech appears to be of little concern to the Trump administration. It says that his arrest will be 'the first of many' in it attempts to clampdown on the growing campus opposition to Israel's barbaric assault on Gaza.
Where does it end? Is everyone who protests of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza now a target for possible arrest? A considerable number of Jewish students have participated in campus protests against the war in Gaza; will they too be deemed to be in violation of Trump's orders prohibiting so-called 'anti-semitism'?
This is the same Donald Trump who, in January, pardoned the nearly 1500 rioters who stormed Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. Just 14 offenders were not pardoned, but they still had their prison sentences commuted and walked free. None of them were demonstrating peaceably: some threatened to kill members of Congress, attacked police with weapons and fire extinguishers and caused millions of dollars in property damage.
But, according to Trump, he ended 'a grave injustice'.
There have been widespread demonstrations protesting Khalil's arrest, and there surely will be more if further arrests occur.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more than two dozen other New York elected officials have signed a letter calling for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil. 'The administration’s pattern of targeting the rights of students and immigrants to speak against injustice undermines democracy and makes everyone less safe,' says the letter.
Many of the signatories, like AOC, are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. It is not an exaggeration to say that America's largest socialist organisation could, at a future date, also be the subject of some unwelcome attention from the Trump administration.
In a further statement AOC said: 'Seizing a person without reason or warrant and denying them access to their lawyer is un-American and tyrannical. Anyone celebrating this should be ashamed. If the federal government can disappear a legal US permanent resident without reason or warrant, then they can disappear US citizens too. Anyone—left, right, or centre—who has highlighted the importance of constitutional rights and free speech should be sounding the alarm now.'
Mahmoud Khalil is as much a political prisoner as the political prisoners western governments express concern about in authoritarian countries like Russia and China. But it seems that western governments, including that of New Zealand, will continue their efforts to appease Donald Trump even as the iron heel of authoritarianism descends on America and grinds its democracy into the dirt.
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