Key Takeaways:
- Mahmoud Khalil filed a lawsuit against Columbia University, claiming the university did not protect pro-Palestinian protesters on campus.
- Khalil was the president of the SIPA Palestine Working Group, which is part of a coalition with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the organization responsible for the protests.
- By taking part in and acting as the spokesperson for the encampments, Khalil played a significant role in creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students.
The protests that erupted on campuses following October 7, 2023, didn’t spring up organically. They were coordinated campaigns aimed squarely at Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus. In the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks, university campuses became key hotspots, bringing the war to a new front.
At Columbia University, a coalition of pro-Palestinian student groups, including the SIPA Palestine Working Group (PWG), led by Mahmoud Khalil, and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), became central to the student protest movement that culminated in the encampments beginning in the spring of 2024.
When the encampments sprang up, the campus environment had deteriorated to the point that Columbia’s Jewish chaplain urged Jewish students to leave campus for their own safety.
The chaos, destruction, and violence caused by such protesters are undeniable. Mahmoud Khalil was not watching from the sidelines. He was leading the charge, advocating, coordinating, and cheering on the protests.
This stands in stark contrast to what Khalil has now claimed in a lawsuit. In coordination with his “friends” at the Palestine Working Group, Khalil is suing Columbia University and SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo for “their gross and systemic discrimination against Palestinian students” at Columbia University.
Khalil has effectively reversed the role of the victim and perpetrators, saying “no student should ever have to go through the hell Columbia put us through all these years.” But Jewish students were the ones going through exactly that, with Khalil’s help, for the past several years.
As the president of the SIPA Palestine Working Group (PWG) from 2023 through 2025, Khalil took an active role in planning campus protests and encampments, especially as PWG is part of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition of 116 student groups.
CUAD, which has previously stated it is fighting for the “total eradication of Western civilization,” led the encampments at Columbia University in April 2024, while the university has maintained that the radical group is “unaffiliated” with it. It was under this umbrella network that Khalil helped orchestrate the violent environment he now says the university failed to protect him from.
When students were seizing buildings, turning open areas into encampments, and disrupting the normal university routine, Khalil was not on the sidelines. He was actively taking part and effectively acted as the spokesperson, negotiating with the university for the demands of CUAD, even as he cheered on terrorism and broke into academic buildings.
Beyond the protests, CUAD and SIPA PWG were both part of the “Resistance 101” on March 24, 2024, that welcomed terrorists and extremists to Columbia. The event was proposed and partly organized by Catherine Curran-Groome, the co-president of SIPA PWG, and Aidan Parisi, who was involved with the extreme anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime (WOL).
The event’s guests included Khaled Barakat, a senior Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member and member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil; Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator of the PFLP-linked Samidoun and Barakat’s wife; and Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder and leader of WOL.
Following the Resistance 101, four students were suspended. Nonetheless, CUAD and SIPA PWG remained active, including organizing a joint sit-in against Hillary Clinton the following September. In November, the two campus groups worked together again to organize an anti-Hillel protest outside the campus’ main Jewish center.
Khalil can claim all he wants that pro-Palestinian students were not protected. But when you are the party that created such a hostile and violent environment, claiming anything else and suing Columbia for not being protected is not only dishonest – it is an irrational contradiction at the heart of his lawsuit.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
