“How Can I Take Anyone Seriously Talking About Mohsen Being Antisemitic?”

An Israeli associate of Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia University student detained Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said his targeting is a clear sign that no kind of activism in support of Palestine — even efforts to build peace with Israelis — is the right kind of activism for the Israeli and American right.

Mahdawi’s green card was revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio under an obscure provision of immigration law that allows the deportation of people deemed to be a threat to U.S. foreign policy. In Mahdawi’s case, according to the New York Times, Rubio said, without any evidence, that the student’s activism stoked antisemitism that undermined the peace process to end Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mahdawi was vocally opposed to both terrorism and antisemitism, said his Israeli associate, a former Columbia student named Mikey Baratz.

“The irony of him, of all people, being someone they target is so funny to me — this person who has denounced violence,” Baratz said. “This is a person who had a split from the protest movement because he felt like they were not self-policing. This is a person who has had many, many disagreements with the pro-Palestine movement for feeling that they are refusing to moderate.”

“The irony of him, of all people, being someone they target is so funny to me — this person who has denounced violence.”

Mahdawi was a leader of Columbia’s student protest movement against the war on Gaza. 

Battling often baseless allegations that pro-Palestine campus movements were suffused with support for terror and antisemitism, Mahdawi seemed to be the epitome of what the movement’s biggest critics said they wanted to see. He became an outspoken supporter of peaceful opposition to the war and, speaking in December 2023 on “60 Minutes,” the most watched news broadcast in the country, denounced antisemitism.

“Since the war has broken out, many of us Israelis have tried to say, ‘Well, where are the Palestinians who will take a stand? Where are the Palestinians who want peace? Where are the Palestinians who want coexistence?” Baratz said. “It’s like: ’Here it is! Here, this is what we’ve been asking for!’”

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“Every Reason to Hate Me”

Mahdawi had stepped back from the movement in the spring of 2024 to focus on building bridges with Israeli and Jewish students on campus. Shortly after stepping back from the movement, he began reaching out to colleagues in the protest movement to ask if they knew any Israelis on campus interested in discussing ways to build community and peace with Palestinians. 

In October 2024, Mahdawi was connected with Baratz, then a student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The two met for coffee. 

“He has every reason to be angry and want violence. And he doesn’t.”

“You’re nervous, you’re really nervous,” Baratz said of their initial meeting. “I’d had conversations with people in the pro-Palestine movement and they were often constructive but always difficult.” 

Once they started chatting, however, the mood quickly lifted: “Within 15 minutes, we were joking.”

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Baratz worked for the last six months with Mahdawi, who was arrested Monday after he arrived for what he thought was his citizenship interview at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont. Instead of leaving on the path to citizenship as he’d hoped, Mahdawi was detained by ICE and ordered to be deported to the West Bank. 

Born in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Mahdawi has over the years lost at least eight members of his family and had others tortured, imprisoned, and attacked by Israeli forces.

“He has every reason to hate me,” Baratz said. “He has every reason to be angry and want violence. And he doesn’t.”

Baratz said his conversations with Mahdawi were not always easy, but they were essential.

“Mohsen and I do not agree on everything, and some of his views have been challenging for me to hear, but the converse of that is that many of my views have been equally challenging for Mohsen to hear,” Baratz said. “As soon as we label all views that we do not like as outside the bounds of what’s acceptable, then we lose the ability to find a middle ground.”

Against Antisemitism

The Trump administration has targeted and deported pro-Palestine students in the name of fighting antisemitism. In the lead-up to his arrest, Mahdawi became the target of factions on Columbia’s campus and several Zionist groups that have named students publicly or said they’ve sent lists of students to federal agencies for deportation. 

“These groups are, one, doing so much more harm than good, and, two — I mean, talk about selective, right?,” Baratz said. “How can I take anyone seriously talking about Mohsen being antisemitic? They don’t know Mohsen. They don’t talk to him.”

In his 2023 “60 Minutes” interview, Mahdawi was asked about someone making an antisemitic remark at a pro-Palestine protest on Columbia’s campus. Mahdawi said he confronted the offender and used a bullhorn to publicly denounce the remark.

“To be antisemitic is unjust,” Mahdawi told “60 Minutes.” “And the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

A lawsuit filed against the government shortly after his detention referenced that Mahdawi’s detention relies on the same obscure provision of immigration law that was used as the basis for ICE’s abduction last month of recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. The government has used the provision to claim that Khalil and Mahdawi’s speech on Palestine have adverse policy consequences for the U.S. The Trump administration has routinely accused pro-Palestine protesters of supporting terror and conflated their actions with support for Hamas.

Responses to pro-Palestine campus protests have ranged from the absurd to hypocritical to explicitly violent — from claims that a student assaulted administrators by using a bullhorn indoors, to contractors painting over protesters, to counter-protesters attacking students with what students said was a chemical spray. 

The notion that targeting people like Mahdawi is working to fight terror not only lays bare the baselessness of claims about the protesters, but also exposes a double standard being applied, Baratz said. 

“Israel’s Minister of National Security has been convicted in Israel for supporting a terrorist organization,” he said. “The charges that are being leveled against Mohsen, the Israeli Minister of National Security has been convicted of in Israel. So when do Jews who support him start being evicted from the States?”

Baratz said Mahdawi reminded him that the only way forward was to keep humanity’s shared values in mind. 

“If there’s anything we as Jews should know, it’s that this is familiar to us. We see ourselves in the other, we see ourselves in the stranger,” Baratz said. “Our history is rife with expulsion and prejudice. And I hope that maybe this can be an opportunity to remind us that it doesn’t have to be this way.”