By Matt Golden
Matt Golden
Chief Impact & Strategy Officer, Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC
Last month, Community ran a cartoon about the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil that received more responses — both positive and negative — than any other cartoon run since I’ve been working here. As most of you know, Khalil was one of the lead organizers and negotiators for the student anti-Israel protests at Columbia University that erupted the day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Today, Khalil sits in a Louisiana immigration jail awaiting deportation following his arrest for those activities. The cartoon depicting his arrest was provocative but at its heart, it captured a particular tension that is impacting our community. On the one hand, Khalil represents for many the rise of a new Jewish hate on college campuses. On the other hand, his extrajudicial arrest is at odds with our Jewish identity of being protectors of civil liberties for all. Can we, as Jews, hold these two truths at the same time?
First, it must be said that Mahmoud Khalil is not on my list of favorite people. During his tenure as a leader of anti-Israel activities at Columbia, Jewish students with mezuzahs on their doorposts were harassed with nightly pounding on their doors. Some were forced out of their dorms. Students wearing kippot were spit on and called baby killers. Others had Judaica necklaces ripped off while on their way to synagogue. Jewish students were videoed, harassed, and intimidated by Khalil’s associates. Jews were excluded from campus groups. Intruders entered the Barnard College campus, assaulted an employee, and held administration offices hostage in the name of protests Khalil led. Classes on Israel or attended by Israeli students were interrupted by hooded and masked figures with Khalil advocating for the right to do so.
At protests and at encampments under Kahlil’s watch, people shouted, “Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now,” “Yes Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets too,” or “We say justice you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.” Inverted red triangles began to appear on Jewish spaces at Columbia — the symbol that Hamas uses to identify its targets in the “trophy videos” where it showcases its killings. A student was confronted and told “we will follow you to Israel and burn your family.”
Khalil also led the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (“CUAD”) coalition which sought to sever ties with Israeli universities, academic institutions, fellowships and study abroad programs. Keep in mind that Columbia has many native-born Israeli citizens on campus each year as part of exchange programs. Yet CUAD demands of its coalition members that no “Zionists” would be allowed in any coalition partner or student group. The CUAD went so far as to force the ostracization of an Israeli dancer from the Columbia dance team as the price of membership in the coalition. At its heart, the CUAD coalition wants to deny academic freedom to anyone remotely associated with Israel and deprive students of their right to learn.
When officials sought to obtain his disciplinary records from Columbia over the protests, Khalil fought the records’ release of his specific involvement in the attacks on Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia. He filed suit to prevent his discipline and his involvement from being disclosed. That case is still pending in a New York Federal Court.
Taken together, we know that Khalil was a leader when all these acts of antisemitism occurred. Is he any different than a Klan leader who seeks to verbalize wiping people off a map while a mass of thugs shouts violent slogans and do dirty work? While the hoods and the masks may be different than the white robes of yesterday, is the desire the same? Khalil certainly represents for many the new mouthpiece for this era’s iteration of antisemitism and hate.
But therein lies the second truth we must hold. Authorities have admitted Khalil has committed no crime. At present, no government authority has proven that Khalil has violated any laws. According to the U.S. Secretary of State’s April 10, 2025 memo, Khalil is being held only because of “his beliefs, statements or associations.” Our government has secreted Khalil away to a detention jail in Louisiana where access to lawyers is difficult and where not all the evidence against him has been released. That evidence which has been released is, in most cases, mere conjecture. Khalil was legally in our country with a status document that vests him with rights and those rights are in jeopardy. Khalil is not alone. Dozens of students are being rounded up and held in custody because of what they believe, who they have assembled with, or what they have spoken about.
We live in a place where deplorable people exist and where their viewpoints are part of the public dialogue. As much as I loathe their viewpoints — and I want to stress that it is fundamentally acceptable to loathe their viewpoints — Khalil and the others are entitled to the substantive and procedural due process rights that all Americans get to enjoy: the right to counsel, to notice, and to be heard. Even more fundamentally, our guarantee of the right to “speak,” “assemble” and “believe” underlies everything. It is no error that this guarantee is the First of our Bill of Rights. It is the bulwark of what we are as Americans and is of particular importance to us as Jews.
As an American lawyer and an American Jew, I am left struggling with those two truths: I want the safety to be a Jew free from antisemitism. I also want the fundamental freedom to be a Jew in America with equal rights guaranteed for all. That struggle is exemplified by Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest. We must endeavor to protect ourselves from the hate he represents and not sacrifice who we are in the balance. We must not deny either truth as we demand accountability.
And in the midst of that struggle between those truths is something that requires utmost caution. When fighting antisemitism becomes weaponized against any group, university or idea, we bear the responsibility to stand up and plead on behalf of those not proven to have violated the law. Abraham stood up and pleaded to intercede for the sake of ten righteous people, even among the wicked. Who are we to do any less? And that was the point of the cartoon Community provocatively ran: to draw attention to those two truths we must hold.
I am not alone in that struggle. Our local JCRC is confronting that issue right now. In these very pages, the JCRC Chair, Bill Altman, details just how carefully we’re working on striking a balance between fighting Jewish hate and embracing our Jewish value of equal and exact justice. As Mr. Altman details, Jewish Louisville and its representatives are already in the vanguard of Jewish thought across this country, and they are helping frame this dialogue around these two truths for ourselves both locally and nationally.
At moments like these I am always reminded of who we are. We are the people of Israel. In our collective story, we were given that name because we were capable of struggling even with our Maker. Our generation will not be free from wrestling with multiple truths. We cannot afford to be.
Matt Golden is Chief Impact and Strategy Officer of the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC