“It’s infuriating. I think it's the new kind of antisemitism. It's just using Jews in a very cynical way.”
This is what Israeli Columbia PhD student Sahar Bostock told Zeteo regarding the Trump administration’s arrest of Palestinian Columbia undergraduate Mohsen Mahdawi on Monday. And she’s not alone in feeling this way. Students and professors spoke fondly of Mahdawi, a green card holder who was detained at his scheduled citizenship interview.
Mahdawi was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank. As a child, he watched an Israeli soldier shoot and kill his best friend. After arriving in the US 10 years ago, he went to Lehigh University to study computer science, before transferring to Columbia to study philosophy. While there, he organized with Palestinian and Jewish students towards peace, served as Columbia’s Buddhist Association president, and co-founded the Palestinian Student Union, alongside now-fellow-detained classmate Mahmoud Khalil.
This week, Mahdawi was set to possibly turn his green card into full citizenship.
Instead, an hour after his appointment time at an immigration office in Vermont, ICE arrived to detain him.
“A Slap in the Face”
Mahdawi, like Mahmoud Khalil, reportedly wrote to the university asking for help finding a safe location to live, away from ICE. As with Khalil, the university appears to have ignored the repeated pleas. Mahdawi’s requests came after months of anti-free speech groups like Betar USA and Canary Mission targeting him, amid his involvement in the Columbia anti-war and pro-Palestine protests over the last 18 months.
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