Anti-Israel campus leader Mahmoud Khalil was ripped Thursday over his attempt to “justify” the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks in a recent interview — with elected officials saying it boosts the Trump administration’s case seeking to kick him out of the country.
New York and national officials condemned Khalil for his statements seemingly sympathizing with Hamas’ rationale for the cowardly assault on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage in Gaza.
“Mahmoud Khalil must be immediately deported,” Upstate New York Rep. Elise Stefanik told The Post.
The Republican congresswoman has long lambasted Khalil, a green card holder, for his role in fomenting virulent anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
“He is a chief pro-Hamas terrorist agitator who contributed to the antisemitic encampments at Columbia, the rioting and violent takeover of Hamilton Hall, and the harassment and physical assault of Jewish students,” she said.
Khalil, who was born to Palestinian parents in a Syria refugee camp and later became a permanent US resident, was released from federal custody in June by a New Jersey judge.
“Naturalized citizenship is an earned privilege of our nation, and he has not earned it. The government should continue taking every lawful step necessary to remove this enemy from the United States,” Brooklyn Assemblyman Kalman Yeger seethed in response to the interview.
Speaking with New York Times journalist Ezra Klein on his podcast this week, Khalil, 30, called Oct. 7 a “desperate” moment which Palestinians “had to reach” in order to have their voices heard.
“To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,” Khalil said, when asked about the attack by the terrorist group — which is still holding 50 hostages in Gaza, of which just about 20 are believed to still be alive.
He told Klein that the terror attack was “to break the cycle” of Palestinians “not being heard” by Israel, explaining it away as “a desperate attempt to tell the world that the Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation.”
The White House said the campus activist’s interview was just the latest example of Khalil downplaying Hamas’ monstrous deeds.
“Mahmoud Khalil has not been shy about his support for Hamas – a brutal terrorist organization that violently attacks innocent men, women, and children,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Post.
“And no matter how much Khalil may try to justify the horrific October 7 terror attack perpetrated by Hamas, there is no justification. Hamas is a despicable terrorist organization, full stop.”
The Department of Homeland Security told The Post in a statement that Khalil’s actions speak for themselves, and he should consider self-deportation.
“Mahmoud Khalil not once, not twice, but three times refused to condemn Hamas because he IS a terrorist sympathizer. It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.
“When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, take over buildings and deface property, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country. We encourage him to use the CBP Home app and self-deport today.”
Khalil was arrested at his Columbia University-owned apartment in March as Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to deport him over his participation in the anti-Israel Columbia demonstrations, which the Trump admin claimed — under a Cold War-era law — posed a threat to US foreign policy interests.
During his time as a graduate student at the Ivy League, Khalil was the lead negotiator for Columbia United Apartheid Divest — a group that sympathizes with terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and which has called for “the end of Western civilization” on social media.
Around a month after Khalil’s arrest — which he calls his “abduction” — he penned a scathing op-ed in the Ivy League school’s student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, in which he mocked classmates for “manufactured” fears of antisemitism and compared the university’s administration to Nazi collaborators.
“In a cruel irony, the students who publicize manufactured safety concerns regarding antisemitism are the same ones who repeatedly show up at your events looking for provocation, leaving only disappointed,” he wrote of his Jewish peers at Columbia.
A White House source told The Post in March that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “presented with intelligence” that determined Khalil — who obtained his green card in 2024 — was a threat to national security.
Republican Assemblyman Ari Brown, representing Nassau County, offered his own sharp criticism of Khalil’s interview remarks.
“Calling the massacre of Israeli civilians a ‘desperate attempt’ is not political speech — it’s moral depravity. This man praised the bloodiest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and now he wants to sue America for daring to detain him? Give me a break,” he said.
Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder said Khalil should be removed from the US because “he hates America and everything this wonderful country stands for. He wants to be here to destroy it.”
Late last month, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a pair of setbacks to the Trump administration’s bid to deport Khalil.
First, the court rejected an attempt by the administration to put him back behind bars pending an appeal of the district court’s order granting him bail.
The circuit court also denied the government’s attempt to stay an earlier lower court ruling that it could not seek to deport him over First-Amendment protected speech.
Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the Khalil’s lawyers, claimed in a statement to The Post that the pols’ interpretation of his statements in the interview were taken out of context.
“This is a grotesque and willful distortion of what Mahmoud actually said. Mahmoud repeated several times that he unequivocally opposes the killing of civilians, including on October 7, which is grounded in his faith in international human rights law,” Azmy said.
“It is this faith in law and humanity that also makes him so passionate about stopping Israel’s continued slaughter and starvation of civilians in Gaza.”
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