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      The ADL and the Heritage Foundation are helping to silence dissent in America | Ahmed Moor

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      The repression that began under the Biden administration has accelerated under Trump. Mahmoud Khalil’s detention by federal agents – reportedly Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – despite his legal, permanent resident status will probably have its intended effect. People will speak up less; their fear of the irreversible harm meted out by a vengeful state is justified. Now we are all left to contend with the wreckage of the first amendment to the US constitution, which used to guarantee the right to speech in this country.Responsibility for the erosion of our rights is attributable – in part – to the bipartisan embrace of the non-governmental, non-profit sector. That’s because from the 1940s onward, the federal government has ceded much state authority to philanthropies and non-profits. Those groups, in turn, have acted to craft policy – everything from how to develop equitable housing or the benefits of inoculating children to ensuring that speech targeting Israel is punishable by law.The tax code ensures that we subsidize special interest groups, such as the Israel lobby, even as it skirts the ordinary mechanisms of democratic policymaking and accountability. Today, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a rightwing Israel advocacy group, has taken the lead in seeking to undermine bedrock American freedoms in support of Israel. The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther roadmap explicitly describes its goal of having “foreign [‘Hamas Support Network’] leaders and members deported from the US”.It should be said here that “Hamas Support Network” is a made-up, strangely emotional and overwrought phrase used by the Heritage Foundation to describe college students who oppose Israel’s genocide in Palestine.In her essay How Philanthropy Made and Unmade American Liberalism, Lila Corwin Berman, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, argues that the rise of the philanthropic apparatus in America, defined broadly as tax-exempt, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), presented special interests with the means to exercise power in an unregulated, nontransparent way.Starting in the early 20th century, when the federal income tax was codified into law, special effort was made to exempt “public-benefit associations” from taxation. The argument was that they acted in the public good while simultaneously representing the best of capitalist success, a core tenet of American liberalism.There was a practical component to the argument, too. Philanthropies could act as policy labs – in the 1930s, the Carnegie Foundation could support educational programs away from the public. If policies were successful, they could be implemented across a broader swathe of society. For their utility, NGOs and philanthropies received tax-exempt status. Yet, as Corwin Berman said, “any time there’s a tax exemption, it’s a tax expenditure, but it’s an expenditure which avoids public scrutiny”. When Nixon restructured USAid through the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973, it was in part to obscure government efforts “that doubled as global capitalist and neocolonial ventures” – all without democratic oversight or public participation.Early opposition to private policymaking for the “public good” came from anti-elite quarters and from the right. In the 1960s, Wright Patman, a populist Democratic representative from Texas, kicked off a series of investigations designed to curtail the power of what’s sometimes called the “submerged state”.But in the 80s and 90s, the right began to co-opt non-governmental frameworks. The Heritage Foundation and others learned how to leverage “philanthropy as a tool and a cudgel”, as Berman said to me. Today, non-profits work across a broad range of policy issues both domestically and abroad. Many of the groups that have engineered the bipartisan consensus on the suppression of speech that is critical of Israel are non-profits. They obtain tax-exempt status and simultaneously craft policy, and they do so on behalf of Democrats and Republicans, away from public scrutiny.The ADL, which controls total net assets of 200m tax-free dollars, in particular lobbied for policy responses to student activism in both the Biden and Trump administrations. In 2022, the ADL – which regularly conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel – commended the Biden administration for developing a “national strategy to combat antisemitism”.The statement went on to take credit for the policy: “This is one of the steps that we have long advocated for as part of a holistic approach to address the antisemitism that has been increasingly normalized in society.”After Khalil’s detention, the ADL, whose leader, Jonathan Greenblatt, was paid more than $1.2m in 2022, issued a statement on X that reads in part: “We appreciate the Trump Administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism.”There is an irony in all this. The right is now on a mission to defund universities, a process which started with angry pro-Israel billionaires on X. It seems reasonable to expect the IRS to be weaponized to revoke the tax-exempt status of philanthropies and other elite institutions deemed to be sympathetic to the Democratic party’s agenda.Khalil’s detention – a shocking assault by the Israel lobby on American freedom – is not the first time that constitutional rights in this country have been assailed by a president. Abraham Lincoln famously suspended habeas corpus during the civil war, this country’s first major constitutional crisis. But this may be the first time that a dramatic erosion in Americans’ constitutional liberties has been engineered by policymaking organizations that are subsidized by the public but are accountable to no one at all.

      Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges the US state department with circumventing the law to fund Israeli military units accused of human rights abuses More

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      Mahmoud Khalil’s treatment should not happen in a democracy | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Forced disappearance, kidnapping, political imprisonment – take your pick. These terms all describe what has happened with the Trump administration’s first arrest for thought crimes, something that should never happen in a democracy.But it has, to Mahmoud Khalil, a recently graduated master’s student from Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs. And for each minute that Khalil is held in detention, every one of us should feel like our own individual rights in this country are being shredded. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is a barefaced attempt by the Trump administration to destroy free thinking while murdering due process and free speech along the way. This is an ominous development.On the evening of Saturday 8 March, Khalil, who is a lawful permanent resident of the US (a green card holder), and his US-citizen wife, who is eight months pregnant, were returning home to their Columbia University apartment in upper Manhattan. According to reports, the couple had just unlocked the door to the building when plainclothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security pushed their way in like thugs and demanded Khalil surrender himself for arrest.The lead agent told Khalil’s lawyer, whom Khalil had immediately called, that his student visa was being revoked. But Khalil doesn’t have a student visa for the very simple reason that he is a lawful permanent resident! Apparently confused, the agent next responded that Khalil’s green card was being revoked – which, by US law, cannot be done without a lot of due process. When pressed by Khalil’s lawyer to show a warrant for arrest, the agent simply hung up on the lawyer, shoved Khalil into handcuffs, and carted him away. As of this writing, Khalil is in a detention facility in Louisiana.Let’s be clear. If you grew up in Egypt or Nicaragua or Russia, you would recognize this behavior. If you have read the work of Milan Kundera or Ariel Dorfman or Breyten Breytenbach, you will recognize this behavior. This is how the authoritarian regimes always operate, seeking to demonize their critics and neutralize their opposition by lies, exaggerations and the blunt force of state power. This despicable and dangerous conduct has now come to the land of the free and the home of the brave as official policy.The Trump administration doesn’t even bother to disguise the ideological assault that characterizes Khalil’s arrest. Khalil was an active member of Columbia University’s protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, a war that has been characterized as a genocide by Israel by experts and multiple human rights organizations around the world. Khalil also served as a negotiator between the university administration and student activists who had set up an encampment on campus.It was in that role that Khalil’s profile grew, particularly among extreme rightwing organizations supporting Israel that began sending lists of students to the Trump administration who, they said, should be deported from the US because of their views. This blatant attempt to shut down free speech picked up after Donald Trump issued two executive orders in late January that called for deporting “perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment”. (It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the Trump administration is actively canceling every form of protection for other minority populations, while appearing deeply concerned about antisemitism, as it also tacitly supports antisemitic behavior.)Khalil had already suffered so much harassment by these pro-Israel groups that the day before his arrest, he wrote to the interim president of Columbia University, telling her that he was afraid that government officials or private actors would target him or his family, urging her to provide him legal support and protection. After his arrest, the official White House account on X issued a post that said: “Shalom, Mahmoud,” using a Hebrew word that can mean goodbye. Haha. Whoever wrote the post must think this very clever. But in a court of law, the post will only buttress the argument that Trump is on a rampage to shut down any types of speech he doesn’t like.Exactly which crime has Mahmoud Khalil committed? Which activities has he engaged in to warrant arrest and deportation? The best the Department of Homeland Security can come up with are the same flimsy innuendo that we hear over and over again. Any show of concern for Palestinians is, presto, turned into “activities aligned to Hamas”.That “aligned to Hamas” is not a legal standard is hardly surprising. It comes after all from the Trump administration, which operates almost definitionally as the opposite of a legal standard. Expecting something reasonable from this administration is like eating a razor-blade sandwich and thinking you won’t come out all bloodied, which is of course why the Trump administration is repeatedly offering you such aromatic and enticing fresh bread.I expect as much from Trump, but I demand more from Columbia University, my own alma mater. After Trump withdrew some $400m of federal funding over an unproven and completely ideologically driven allegation that Columbia was a hotbed of antisemitism, the interim president didn’t bother to defend her institution. Instead, she immediately sent us Columbia affiliates an email to “assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns”. I’m educated enough to know that the word “appeasement” has a specific history. I also know that cowards run away from Palestine, even if they too will be the ones who suffer in the end.I also demand more from my local officials. This federal assault on protected speech from a New Yorker should raise huge alarms from the mayor of New York, but all we’ve heard from Eric Adams thus far is … well, what sound would crickets make if they were flying business class on Turkish Airlines? If it’s any sound at all, I imagine the jet engine hums louder than the lack of objection he’s made. His silence is matched only by Andrew Cuomo, Adams’s new competition for the next New York mayoral race. Together, they might have enough courage to lose a game of chicken to the lion in the Wizard of Oz.But mostly, I demand a whole lot more from the Democratic party. Where is Hakeem Jeffries? Where is Chuck Schumer? They seem to believe the best way to defend free speech in this country is not to speak at all. Irrelevance has never been so recognizable.Democracy has always been a fragile, improvised, teetering wall of bricks that extends high in the air. It takes a lot of people to support it, but it gives quickly when faced with pressure from the other side. The thing is, even if you’re not supporting it, you’ll still get crushed when the wall falls. Too many people seem ready to be crushed. That’s only the tiniest reason to support Mahmoud Khalil. We all need to rush to the wall and do what we can to free him from his unjust imprisonment. For him and also for us. Because, you know what? He won’t be the last.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Threaten campuses, shut down debate: that’s what free speech looks like under Trump | Owen Jones

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      For those who fear Donald Trump is a despot in the making, don’t worry: he has an answer. “I’ve stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America,” he triumphantly declared in his State of the Union address. “It’s back!” JD Vance scolded Europe in his speech at the Munich security conference last month, declaring that “free speech is in retreat” across the continent.Like all authoritarian creeds, Trumpism turns reality on its head and empties words of their meaning in an effort to sow confusion and disarray among its critics. On the same day Trump announced the revival of free speech in Congress, he posted on Truth Social that federal funding for educational institutions that allow “illegal protests” will be ceased. Notably, illegality was not defined, but the issue Trump is referring to, of course, is Palestine. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” he declared. “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”Trump’s first target: Columbia University, which has had $400m of federal funding slashed because of what the government says is “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”. At least nine other campuses – including Harvard and the University of California – could be next. All were the sites of overwhelmingly peaceful encampments protesting over Israel’s genocidal attack against the Palestinian people. They weren’t simply opposing their government’s facilitation of this atrocity, through weapons, aid and diplomatic support, but demanding their colleges divest from companies linked to Israel.Just as Trumpism is no guarantor of free speech, nor is it a vanguard of anti-racism: it is, in fact, the opposite. The very real menace of antisemitism has been systematically conflated with any critique of crimes committed by the state of Israel. This is what is meant by “anti-Israel hate”, as Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick as new ambassador to the UN puts it, who became a rightwing icon after facing down university presidents over Israel. The president’s most powerful ally is Elon Musk, a man who in 2023 expressed his agreement with a tweet claiming Jewish communities were pushing “hatred against whites”, and recently performed Nazi salutes at a Trump rally.Trump himself declared that Jewish Americans who support the Democrats – that is, the vast majority – “hate their religion”, “hate everything about Israel” and “should be ashamed of themselves”, and menacingly said they would have a “lot” of blame if he lost the presidential election. The university protests, on the other hand, had a large Jewish presence, and hundreds of Jewish students signed a letter rejecting “the ways that these encampments have been smeared as antisemitic”.Indeed, Columbia in particular victimised its own students. The university banned Jewish Voice for Peace before the encampment began, ordered police raids which led to more than 100 students being arrested, disciplined and expelled, and targeted sympathetic academics.One was Katherine Franke, a professor who was publicly denounced by Stefanik and forced into retirement. Far from protecting Jewish students, Franke claims, this is about “radical advocates for Israel” lying about the campus protests. “This university has bent a knee and coddled bullies,” she says of Columbia’s repression of students’ free speech – and still it had its funding slashed.It gets more sinister. The Department of Homeland Security arrested one of the lead negotiators of Columbia’s encampment: Mahmoud Khalil, a US green card holder of Palestinian origin, married to a US citizen who is eight months pregnant. Unknown to his wife, he was sent more than 1,000 miles away to a notorious detention centre in Louisiana. The department’s claim: that “he led activities aligned to Hamas”, a blatant attempt to conflate Palestinian solidarity with the militant group responsible for war crimes on 7 October.Far from restoring free speech, Trump’s administration is incinerating the first amendment. When it comes to Palestine, free speech simply does not exist. Surely there is one man who will be particularly incensed by this outrage. After all, just last week he grandly proclaimed: “We have to ask ourselves the question as leaders: ‘Are we willing to defend people even if we disagree with what they say?’ If you’re not willing to do that, I don’t think you’re fit to lead Europe or the United States.” That was the vice-president, JD Vance.But the truth is, the US right never actually cared about free speech. It was simply a ruse, intended to stigmatise any attempt to rebut its bigotry against largely voiceless minorities. The Trump administration has escalated the biggest onslaught against free speech since McCarthyism: even before its assumption of power, those opposed to Israel’s genocide have faced being deplatformed, victimised and indeed targeted by institutions like Columbia.Yet it was not just the hardcore right who defamed these protests. Many self-described “liberals” and “centrists” joined in, smearing those opposed to some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century as hateful, dangerous extremists – Jewish Americans among them. In doing so, they helped legitimise the inevitable authoritarian crackdown that is now under way. Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of Jewish American campaign group IfNotNow, told me we are now seeing “the terrifying logical conclusion of smearing anyone calling for Palestinian freedom as an antisemite: a white nationalist administration carrying out its war on civil rights and free speech under the banner of ‘fighting antisemitism’. We are all endangered by this blatant assault on our democracy.”It would be deeply naive to believe this repression will end with the attacks on people expressing solidarity with Palestine. A precedent that is established can swiftly be expanded. As it is, the US media are increasingly menaced by – among other things – Trump’s libel actions, the threat of vexatious investigations and plutocrats like Jeff Bezos bending the knee to the would-be king. Free speech is being pummelled by those who claim to be its greatest advocates.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      Trump calls arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil ‘first of many to come’

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      Donald Trump said on Monday that the arrest of a prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year, was the “first arrest of many to come”.“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” the US president wrote in a post on Truth Social.He added: “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country – never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”The White House amplified Trump’s comments in a post on X reading “Shalom, Mahmoud”, using a Hebrew word for goodbye.Trump’s remarks come as over the weekend federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card who is a recent Columbia graduate, and took him into custody, reportedly acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.In his statement on Monday, Trump said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) took Khalil into custody after his executive order and claimed, without evidence, that similar activists on college campuses are paid agitators, not students.Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, served as a lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University last year, mediating between protesters and university administrators.Khalil’s attorney said this weekend that the arrest took place on Saturday night, when Khalil was in his university-owned apartment building, just a few blocks from Columbia’s main campus in New York. Several Ice agents entered the building and took him into custody.According to emails obtained by Zeteo, Khalil appealed in an email to Columbia for protection one day before Ice entered his apartment, telling the university’s interim president that he was being subjected to a “dehumanizing doxxing campaign” led by Columbia affiliates.“I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that Ice or a dangerous individual might come to my home,” he wrote to Katrina Armstrong on 7 March, according to Zeteo. “I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”In a letter posted online Monday, Armstrong said that “rumors suggesting that any member of Columbia leadership requested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on or near campus are false”.At first, it was reported that Khalil was taken to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, but his wife said she could not locate him there.As of Monday morning, it appeared that he was now listed as being in Ice custody at La Salle detention facility in Louisiana.Free speech organizations, first amendment advocates and some New York City leaders expressed outrage in response to the unprecedented arrest and ongoing detainment of Khalil, calling it unconstitutional, “an egregious violation of the first amendment” and a “frightening weaponization of immigration law”.On Monday, a judge set a hearing for Wednesday in Manhattan federal court to consider Khalil’s challenge to his detention. More

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      Ice arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia protests, lawyer says

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      A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested on Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who claimed they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a state department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated last December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.The arrest comes as Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.The administration has placed particular scrutiny on Columbia, announcing Friday that it would be cutting $400m in grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the elite school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.The authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, why he was being detained, Greer said. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”A spokesperson for Columbia said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property. The spokesperson declined to say if the school had received a warrant for Khalil’s arrest.Messages seeking comment were left with the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice.Khalil had become one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia. As students erected tents on campus last spring, Khalil was picked to serve as a negotiator on behalf of students and met frequently with university administrators.When classes resumed in September, he told the Associated Press that the protests would continue: “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”An immigration court can revoke a green card but government departments do not have that power.Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals.Khalil was among several investigated by a newly-created university disciplinary committee – the Office of Institutional Equity – looking into students at the institution who have expressed criticism of Israel, according to records shared with the AP.In recent weeks, the committee has sent notices to dozens of students for activities ranging from sharing social media posts in support of Palestinian people to joining “unauthorized” protests.“I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” Khalil said last week.After refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, Khalil said the university threatened to block him from graduating. But when he appealed the decision through a lawyer, they eventually backed down, Khalil said.“They just want to show Congress and rightwing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” Khalil said. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”Columbia students kick-started the tent encampment protests at their Manhattan campus last spring, with the idea catching on at dozens of campuses across the US. At Columbia and many other colleges, their academic administrations called in the relevant local police department and hundreds of students were arrested.“Targeting a student activist is an affront to the rights of Mahmoud Khalil and his family. This blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America. Furthermore, Khalil and all people living in the United States are afforded due process. A green card can only be revoked by an immigration judge, showing once again that the Trump administration is willing to ignore the law in order to instill fear and further its racist agenda,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of New York Immigration, Coalition said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.“DHS must immediately release Khalil,” he said. More

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      The Guardian view on Israel’s aid blockade: pushing Palestinians toward catastrophe | Editorial

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      Israel’s decision to block aid to Gaza, as ceasefire talks falter, is a devastating blow to 2 million hungry, vulnerable civilians in the shattered territory. As the occupying power, Israel is legally bound to allow relief into Gaza under the Geneva convention. Denying it isn’t just inhumane – it’s a war crime. But Benjamin Netanyahu already faces an international criminal court arrest warrant for “starvation as a method of warfare” and “crimes against humanity”.Mr Netanyahu’s ability to flout international law is thanks to Donald Trump, who remains firmly in his corner. Washington now appears to accept starvation as an Israeli bargaining chip to pressure Hamas into accepting a US-devised truce extension – one that secures hostage exchanges while ensuring Israeli forces remain in Gaza. Hamas, which sparked the war with its 2023 massacre of Israeli civilians, insists Israel honour its commitment to a second phase of Gaza ceasefire negotiations – ending the fighting and withdrawing troops.Palestinians in Gaza are on the brink. Food is running out, hospitals are unable to function and families scavenge for clean water. Any further aid restrictions will turn desperation into catastrophe. It would be far better for a negotiated peace to be worked out that would see the Palestinians stay to rebuild their lives and for the remaining Israeli hostages to return home.After 15 months of war, and having achieved many of its declared objectives, Israel is no closer to peace in Gaza. That view is echoed by Scott Atran of Paris’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, who polled civilians in Gaza in January, shortly before the ceasefire came into effect. Prof Atran correctly argues that Israel lacks a political strategy for Palestine’s future and is only fuelling Palestinian anger.From the outset, the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive, unilateral approach to Gaza, aligning firmly with Israeli interests while disregarding Palestinian concerns. According to Nabeel Khoury, a former US state department official, the Abraham accords – Mr Trump’s flagship Middle East initiative – remain central to Washington’s evolving strategy, one that envisions Israeli territorial consolidation and unchallenged regional dominance.Mr Khoury has noted the US’s immediate priority is the wholesale removal of Palestinians from Gaza, followed, if conditions permit, by a gradual takeover of the West Bank. That vision coincides with the Washington visit of Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a pro-annexationist who has warned Mr Netanyahu that he would collapse the government if Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza under a truce.An Arab-led plan for Gaza’s post-war reconstruction – allowing its 2 million residents to remain – was rebuffed by the US and Israel. Yet it marked an important show of force: a pan-Arab coalition pushing back against the visible Netanyahu-Trump effort to erase Palestinian self-determination. In contrast, reports suggest the Trump administration is in direct talks with Hamas.If true, this would be a striking reversal of US policy. Engaging Hamas – once deemed untouchable – as a US negotiating partner might be pragmatic realism, an example of Trumpian transactional diplomacy or both. The UN estimated in 2019 that oil and natural gas resources in the occupied Palestinian territories could generate hundreds of billions of dollars for development. But Palestinian national aspirations are impossible under occupation.

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      Trump invites freed Israeli hostage to White House

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      Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has been invited to Washington to meet Donald Trump this week, his brother told Israeli media on Sunday.Sharabi, who was released from Gaza after 16 months in captivity, expects to meet Trump with other freed hostages on Tuesday, after the US president watched him describe the severe hunger and violence he endured on Israeli television.Excerpts from Sharabi’s moving interview on Israel’s Channel 12 “were shown to Trump, with English subtitles, and he was shocked once again, but also expressed great sympathy for those who survived captivity”, his brother Sharon said, according to a translation from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.Israeli advocacy groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), have posted subtitled versions of the interview online.When Sharabi and two other hostages, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, were released on 8 February alongside after nearly 500 days in captivity, their physical condition outraged Israelis, and Trump. Sharabi was at home in Be’eri kibbutz with his British-born wife and their two teenage daughters when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023.In the Israeli television interview , Sharabi recalled being tied up, losing consciousness and experiencing extreme hunger.“I remember not being able to fall asleep because of the pain,” he said. “The ropes are already digging into your flesh, and every movement makes you want to scream.”Sharabi’s brother said the freed hostage is flying to the US aboard a plane provided by Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and a major Trump donor.“Tomorrow morning, we’re boarding the plane with Mrs Adelson’s kind help. We’ll arrive to see Trump and explain to him up close the urgency of continuing the first stage or beginning the second stage – it doesn’t really matter,” Sharon Sharabi said, referring to the tenuous ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.During the 7 October attack, after the armed group kidnapped Sharabi from his home, they shot the family dog, locked his wife Lianne and their daughters in a safe room, and set it on fire, according to Lianne’s parents, who spoke to the BBC. Sharabi only learned that his wife and daughters had been killed that day after his release.Sharabi’s other brother, Yossi, was also taken hostage that day. He died early last year in Gaza, Israel’s military said, when the Israeli army bombed a building near where he was being held.The Trump administration continues to support Israel amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Friday, it approved a nearly $3bn arms sale to Israel, bypassing congressional review to supply more 2,000lb bombs used in the war against Hamas.Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of a blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza on Sunday, the White House said it “supports” Israel’s decision.At a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Sunday, the families of Israelis still being held in Gaza urged their government to stop violating the ceasefire/hostage deal that puts the lives of their loved ones at further risk. More

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      The ugly truth of American violence has never been plainer

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      View image in fullscreenAmong my hazier memories of early adolescence in Qatar is a screening, at a friend’s home, of an obviously pirated Betamax copy of Red Dawn. My friend’s father – most everyone’s father or mother or uncle, whoever – would, while on business trips overseas, visit the occasional video store or flea market and return with whatever films or books or albums they happened to find. It’s a haphazard, incomplete thing to consume the culture of a faraway place in this manner, like trying to divine the contours of a mouth from the texture of spittle.Red Dawn is a bad movie. Bad in a special, sincere kind of way. It’s about a bunch of teenagers who fight back against a Soviet invasion of the United States. Released in the early 80s, it belongs to a large fraternity of films in which scrappy underdog Americans fight back against the seemingly insurmountable but of course ultimately very surmountable power of the Soviet empire. In a couple of decades, the Russians would pass the baton of villainy to people who look like me, though in our case there was no real empire to speak of, and so we were mostly small-batch insidious, our specialty less tank-and-jet and more suicide-bomb-level violence. It didn’t much matter; Red Dawn with Arabs instead of Soviets for villains would have still been shit.In 2012, almost 30 years after I first watched the original, someone decided to remake Red Dawn. This time, there was no Soviet empire to invade the mainland, and so instead the Chinese would have to do. Again, it didn’t much matter – the point isn’t geopolitical fidelity, the point is 90 minutes of rah-rahing American tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds. Never back down, never surrender, that sort of thing.Problem is, China is a big market for movies. And so, at the last minute, for fear of missing out on millions in potential box office returns, the producers decided to change the villain. In the final cut of the Red Dawn remake, it’s North Korea that invades the United States. It’s always the sign of a well-crafted movie when you can change a central narrative beam in post-production and it doesn’t make any difference at all. I’m reminded of a guy in one of my old writing groups who, fearing his story didn’t have enough female representation, did a find-and-replace and changed every instance of “Sam” to “Samantha”, then went through and changed the pronouns accordingly, leaving everything else the same.View image in fullscreenAgain, it didn’t much matter. Except that it does, over time – this glaring disconnect between cultural self-image and pragmatic reality. In a 2016 essay, the writer and former soldier Roy Scranton describes watching Star Wars while stationed in Baghdad. He is forced in that moment to confront the reality that so much of the American self-image demands a narrative in which his country plays the role of the rebel, the resistance, when at the same time every shred of contemporary evidence around him leads to the conclusion that, by scope and scale and purpose of violence, this country is clearly the empire.A central privilege of being of this place becomes, then, the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously. The first being the belief that one’s nation behaves in keeping with the scrappy righteousness of the underdog. The second being an unspoken understanding that, in reality, the most powerful nation in human history is no underdog, cannot possibly be one, but at least the immense violence implicit in the contradiction will always be inflicted on someone else.I’ve seen this person many times – they occupy a hallowed place in American culture, catered to by so many of the nation’s dominant cultural forces, from Monday Night Football to the Country Music Awards to the entirety of AM radio. It’s the person who in self-image professes to be a rule-breaker, untamable, wild – and in the next breath sides unquestioningly with every facet of state power. I’ve seen the Punisher decal on the bumper, the stylized American flag denoting the thin blue line: I’m an outlaw; also, anyone who disobeys the cops deserves to be killed.My first impulse is to mock the contradiction, but there’s no contradiction, not really, because the bedrock of this particular identity isn’t conformity or nonconformity – it’s self-interest. Anyone who buys into both the narrative of American rebelliousness and the reality of American authority understands that both have been created to serve them. The man in the action movie looks one way, the man the cops just shot in a traffic stop another.View image in fullscreenToward the end of December 2023, the South African government brings charges of genocide against Israel at the international court of justice. The case rests on Israel’s wholesale destruction of health facilities and the blocking of aid as evidence that what is being destroyed here isn’t a single terror organization, but a whole people. Much of the initial South African brief relies on the words of Israeli officials themselves, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s referencing of the complete destruction of Amalek in the Bible.Among those who have been calling for an end to the relentless killing, the development inspires a set of conflicting emotions. First, there is the basic relief of watching some official entity – any entity – do something. Time and again, in conversation with friends, some of whom have lost family members in this killing spree, there is a sense that one must be going mad: to see so plainly the destruction, the murdered children filmed and presented for the world to look upon and then to hear the leaders of virtually every western nation contend that this is not happening, that whatever is happening is good and righteous and should continue and that in fact the wellbeing of the Palestinian people demands this continue – it’s enough to feel like you’re losing your mind.Second, there is the realization that of course it would be a country like South Africa that would take this step – a country deeply versed in the ugly mechanics of apartheid, for whose citizens checkpoints and forcefully sealed-off towns are not abstractions, but the very recent past that, from the safety of the present, everyone now claims they always opposed.Beyond relief and recognition, there is a more complicated thing – an understanding that the machinery of the west has never had much of a capacity for self-diagnosis. Who does? Who that achieves power of this scale ever does?Waiting on a western judicial institution to cast judgment on a killing spree financed and endorsed by the west means, inevitably, watching a disjointed ballet of impossible reconciling. The narrative – as enshrined in countless constitutions and declarations and charters which are so often held up as the differentiating marker of superiority of this world over the other – demands moral purity, opposition to injustice, adherence to the principle that all innocent lives are equal and deserving of dignity. The reality is that an ally of the west is killing civilians by the tens of thousands and it would be politically inconvenient to call this wrong now when for months, years, decades it has been deemed perfectly fine.View image in fullscreenAnd so we must watch the impotent pantomime of a Canadian prime minister declaring that while his government absolutely supports the international court of justice, it doesn’t support the premise of the South African case, whatever that tortured rhetorical construction is supposed to mean. We must watch the German government – whose police forces, in the name of fighting antisemitism, arrested Jewish protesters calling for a ceasefire – come to Israel’s defense at the court.In time there will be findings of genocide. There will be warrants issued, even. The structures of international law, undermined at every turn, will nonetheless attempt to operate as if law were an evenly allotted thing. As though criminality remains criminal even when the powerful support, bankroll, or commit the crime.It’s no use, in the end, to scream again and again at the cold, cocooned center of power: I need you, just this once, to be the thing you pretend to be.There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: these horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they’ll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they’d tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness? Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.In the summer of 2014, I began writing the first draft of my debut novel, American War. It’s a piece of speculative fiction set in the 2070s and covers the aftermath of a second civil war. I never thought of it as a particularly American book, but rather an attempt to superimpose stories from the other side of the planet onto the heart of the empire. It didn’t seem like a particularly clever narrative trick on my part.Three weeks or so after I finished the first draft, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president. The novel would end up being published in April 2017 and come to be almost universally read as an exclusively American story, a literal prediction of where this country might be headed. A bidding war breaks out for the film rights. Time and again, various production company executives tell me how perfectly the novel has managed to capture this moment in American life, and I can’t help but think that the exact opposite is true. Something of American life has captured the novel. The word “dangerous” is used quite often, always as a compliment.Then, in January 2024, I receive an email from the director who was set to work on the American War adaptation, letting me know he and the production company are stepping away from the project. “Prudence suggests this is not the time for making movies about freedom fighters or terrorists (no matter which side of that argument one is on),” he writes.A few weeks earlier, a novelist I know tells me her appearance at a small book club has been canceled – the organizer tells her it’s because they “stand with Israel”. My friend is an American of half-Egyptian, half-Scottish descent. A Palestinian artist’s retrospective at the University of Indiana is shuttered. People who call for a ceasefire are demoted, fired, called antisemites and terrorist-supporters.View image in fullscreenIt all feels so petty, the stakes so low. On the other side of the planet entire bloodlines are being wiped out and here in the sheltered world we are subject to relatively pathetic indignities – loss of income, disinvitations, cold shoulders from people who in a different time might have been quite proud of themselves for having a Brown friend. Every now and then we hear about those instances when the stakes turned out not to be so low, when this passive punishment transformed into something much more active, sometimes deadly. But for the most part it’s just a constant trickle of reminders of one’s place in the hierarchy – and it is precisely because of this that it becomes so tempting to just shut up, let what’s going to happen happen to those people over there and then, when it’s done, ease into whatever opinion the people whose approval matters deem acceptable.I start to see this more often, as the body count climbs – this malleability of opinion. At a residency on the coast of Oregon, I read the prologue to this book; a couple of days later, one of the other writers decides to strike up a conversation.“I’m not a Zionist,” she says. “But you know, I’m not anti-Zionist either. It’s all just so complicated.”I have no idea what to say. I feel like an audience at a dress rehearsal.There’s a convenience to having modular opinions; it’s why so many liberal American politicians slip an occasional reference of concern about Palestinian civilians into their statements of unconditional support for Israel. Should the violence become politically burdensome, they can simply expand that part of the statement as necessary, like one of those dinner tables you lengthen to accommodate more guests than you expected. And it is important, too, that this amoral calculus rise and fall in proportion to the scale of the killing, so that one might always be able to say, “Well, we could never have known it would get this bad, but now, now everything has changed.”It’s almost refreshing, then, when one is faced with the ugliest and yet most honest face of western apathy, the face that knows full well the scale and severity of the horror but believes it to be absolutely justified, absolutely necessary. I know this face, too. It appears on talk shows and atop opinion pieces stating, euphemistically or not, that the same world in which you can buy avocados all year round and your iPhone keeps getting more powerful and you never have to live in fear of an occupying force obliterating your family with missiles is the world in which an insignificant group of people you’ll never meet simply have to die. And whatever disgust this equation, laid bare, might inspire, many know it to be true. This is the world we’ve created, a world in which one privileged sliver consumes, insatiable, and the best everyone else can hope for is to not be consumed. It is not without reason that the most powerful nations on earth won’t intervene to stop a genocide but will happily bomb one of the poorest countries on the planet to keep a shipping lane open.How long can the fabric of a pleasing story hold? Presented the facts of the situation without label, without real-world anchor, like actors asked to read the screenplay and pick a role, how many Americans would instinctively choose that of the Palestinian calling for an end to occupation? The South African calling for an end to apartheid? The Haitian calling for self-rule? How many would want to believe, as so much of the culture here has always strained to believe, that they side with the underdog, the downtrodden who refuses to give up, the rebel in the face of empire? And then, should the scenes be transposed back to the unforgiving reality of the world as it is, how many, knowing the limitations of the stories we tell ourselves, would just as instinctively retreat into the comforting fold of empire?One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad is out now in the UK published by Canongate. It will be released tomorrow, 25 February, in the United States by Knopf, and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart.

      Spot illustrations by Ben Hickey More