The professor at the center of the Columbia University deportation scandal is a former Israeli intelligence official, MintPress News can reveal.
Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), was abducted by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Saturday for his role in organizing protests last year against Israel’s attack on Gaza. Khalil’s dean, Dr. Keren Yarhi-Milo, head of the School of International and Public Affairs, is a former Israeli military intelligence officer and official at Israel’s Mission to the United Nations. Yarhi-Milo played a significant role in drumming up public concern about a supposed wave of intolerable anti-Semitism sweeping over the campus, thereby laying the groundwork for the extensive crackdown on civil liberties that has followed the protests.The corporate media are complicit in the Gaza genocide. Never forget what they did. Never forgive them for it.
.. that MacLeod hasn't mentioned the fact that Mahmoud Khalil's 'career' in collaboration against Palestinians has not been mentioned. Time after time he is presented as Palestinian activist and yet this fact is never mentioned. Perhaps he had a change of heart or whatever, but facts are facts. I don't have a ref but recall it well.
I think you are confusing him with someone else
Posted by RaskolnikovX on March 20, 2025, 1:12 am, in reply to "Curious .."
The cherry on the cake is that he is a former British Government employee, having worked in the British Embassy in Lebanon, on Syrian affairs.
This is where the story starts to become very murky. I was told by Resistance-linked contacts in Lebanon that not only was Khalil not viewed as pro-Resistance to Israel while there, he was believed to be involved in UK government attempts to undermine the Assad regime by promotion of jihadist groups.
Free Palestine TV, which is Lebanon-based, has the same information.[1]
It is important to understand how deeply the UK has been involved[2] in anti-Syrian activity in Lebanon. Training and equipping of al-Nusra/ISIS/HTS units was carried out by British special forces based at Rayak airbase in the Bekaa Valley, who were certainly still there in January after HTS conquered Damascus.
Contrary to some reports, Mahmoud Khalil would not have worked for MI6 in the Embassy. MI6 stations do not employ foreign nationals. He would have worked for the Political and Information Sections, under diplomats who cooperated closely with MI6 or in some instances were active "undeclared" members of MI6.
Middle East Eye describes Khalil's[3] role in the Embassy as a "programme manager" running Chevening scholarships. I know this programme extremely well. While I have no reason to doubt Khalil did this, it would amount to no more than 10% of anybody's time and would not require the UK security clearance which the article states that Khalil received.
The simple truth is that anybody working in good faith in the British Embassy in Lebanon can be no friend of the resistance to Israel. Everything the British Embassy do in Lebanon is intrinsically linked to the overriding goal of promoting the interests of Israel, particularly through weakening Hezbollah, and this is especially true when it comes to programmes into Syria running out of Beirut.
So how did Khalil move from British government operative to Palestinian student activist?
And then, why on earth did the Trump regime pick him for its first high-profile deportation?
I can see three plausible explanations for Khalil's behaviour: 1) He was never pro-British but was infiltrating the Embassy for the Palestinians
2) He was never pro-Palestinian but was infiltrating the protest movement for the British government
3) He was not very political but was moved recently to activism by the genocide in Gaza
Of these, option 3) seems to me the most plausible, though all are certainly possible.
It would be a delicious irony if the Trump regime had arrested a British agent by accident, but this seems to me unlikely. I do not think MI6 would run a Palestinian agent in the USA without informing the CIA - although they may have done if there were a specific concern that the CIA would leak the identity.
If Khalil were a British agent he could have been arrested for protection if there were concerns he had been "made", or he could have been arrested because the Americans found out and were furious at not being informed. But I do not think these are the likely scenarios.
It seems to me much more probable that a once-complacent Khalil changed his mind and became more - righteously - radical due to the genocide in Gaza.
In which case the motive for choosing him as the target for arrest is very plain. Both the US and UK will be worried about revelations Khalil might make about support to jihadists in Syria from his time working on this in Lebanon. Whisking him into incommunicado detention, whilst maximum pressure is applied to persuade him to keep silent, is then an obvious move.
It is important for freedom of speech and for the rights in general of immigrants in the USA that Mr Khalil is free. It is obviously profoundly important for him and his family. I do not want anything I have written to detract from that.
But the puzzle of why such an extremely complicated target for the test case was chosen, when there exist far lower-hanging fruit, is one that needs to be considered. I hope I have offered some possible lines of thought you find useful.
I'd seen the Middle East Eye article but given what I've learned about them, I believe from one of your posts under a video I posted about Syria, I thought it was likely bad faith but perhaps not. It seems concrete that he was in charge of these scholarships but the rest of it is "someone told me they felt he was this way..." which is not exactly concrete.
The Telegraph has reported he was empoyed as "local embassy staff" and not by the Foreign Office:
"...led an educational program that helped Arab students get scholarships and a masters degree in the UK.
He was probably doing paperwork for students all day, translating, helping people with visas and applications etc and you’re portraying him the backbone of UK’s Syria foreign policy."
AS the MEEye article also says:
"It [the Chevening scholarship] brings the brightest students from around the world to UK universities. Mahmoud ran its Syria programme and interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants on behalf of the British government."
Khalil was also a "local staff political officer", responsible for providing the "contextual understanding and linguistic skills to translate meetings," Waller recalled.
The second paragraph answers Craig's query as to why he might have needed clearance and what he was spending the rest of his time doing. Sure, cover story and all that, but he was 23 and the only thing he was confirmed as being involved in has very limited geo-political influence. Are we supposed to be believe this (then) 23 year old was masterminding the overthrow of Assad because of his completely non-existent intelligence background?
All of this is a long way from "...a 'career' in collaboration against Palestinians" and none of it changes the content of the Mint Press article re: the zionist spook influence nor the disgusting, and most likely illegal/unconstitutional nature of his arrest and attempted deportation.
The corporate media are complicit in the Gaza genocide. Never forget what they did. Never forgive them for it.
Laith Marouf is more vehment and another diplomat speaks
The case of #MahmoudKhalil is a perfect example of the limits of Liberalism and collaboration with the Zionist Empire in hopes of gaining some equity or change in the power structures. For those who don't know, Khalil is a Syrian citizen who collaborated with the Imperialist plot against his homeland, and worked for the UK embassy in Lebanon coordinating destabilization programs. He also worked in the NGOs in the USA designed to drive the Syrian diaspora youth astray from decolonization, and into the arms of Wahhabi and Ikhwani collaborationist rule.
As for his role at Columbia University, he was a go-between agreed upon by the Zionist Administration and the Palestine liberation supporters; ie he was not a member of the movement, and only a messenger. He was also against the Hind Hall movement and actions.
So, here is Mahmoud Khalil, a man who sold his country to the wolves for a few measly dollars, who acted as reasonable messenger of Zionist power to the Palestinians at Columbia, and all he got in return was to be disappeared by Zionist Master in the White House.
Moral of the story here, as an Arab or Muslim, no matter how much you suck up to Zionists, they will never treat you as an equal human, and the more you suck up to them, the more they will humiliate you when you outlive your usefulness.
We hope Mr Khalil returns home safely to his family, but you should all know what you are supporting, and to do so in spite of his shortcomings, because his disappearing even though he is a tool, fool or even agent, signals that all Arabs and Muslims in the USA could be treated even worse.
This guy could be spooky too but he puts some meat on the bones of what he was doing and why he would have clearance in contrast to Craig's "ooh this is dodgy, he must be a spook" inference.
[url=
The corporate media are complicit in the Gaza genocide. Never forget what they did. Never forgive them for it.
Greyzone discuss this, starting about 25 minutes in.
As I have written here before, if you set foot on US soil you are immediately protected by the US constitution which is precisely why so many seem desperate to do so.
...none of it changes the content of the Mint Press article re: the zionist spook influence nor the disgusting, and most likely illegal/unconstitutional nature of his arrest and attempted deportation.
For a party packed with originalists they sure seem to pick and choose when they adhere to the constitution. The corporate media are complicit in the Gaza genocide. Never forget what they did. Never forgive them for it.
on March 19, 2025, 10:00 pm