Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil argued Tuesday that the heinous Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israel was a “desperate” moment Palestinians “had to reach” in order to be heard.
The former Columbia University student, who was detained for over three months by the Trump administration for his prominent role in antisemitic campus protests, offered his thin rationale for the deadliest terror attack on the Jewish State in an interview with New York Times journalist Ezra Klein, who repeatedly asked Khalil to clarify his remarks.
“To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,” Khalil said, when asked about what he was thinking on the day of the attack that killed more than 1,000 people in Israel, mostly civilians.
“I remember I didn’t sleep for a number of days, and Noor [Khalil’s wife] was very worried about my health. It was heavy. I still remember. I was like: ‘This couldn’t happen,’” he added.
“The Ezra Klein Show” host followed up by asking: “What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this?”
“You can see that the situation is not sustainable,” Khalil responded, referring to tensions between Israel and Gaza and the West Bank in the run-up to Oct. 7.
“You have an Israeli government that’s absolutely ignoring Palestinians,” he argued. “They are trying to make that deal with Saudi and just happy about their Abraham Accord without looking at Palestinians — as if Palestinians are not part of the equation. They circumvented the Palestinian question.”
“It was clear that it was becoming more and more violent. By Oct. 6, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Over 40 of them were children. So that’s what I mean by: Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid such a moment.”
Klein later asked Khalil if he felt the attack was something “Hamas must have wanted” to drag Israel into an all-out war or rather an event “that needed to happen to break the equilibrium.”
“It’s more the latter — just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard,” Khalil argued. “And to me, it’s a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here, that Palestinians are part of the equation.”
“That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.”
Khalil declined to characterize the attack as a “mistake,” when asked by Klein, but acknowledged that “targeting civilians is wrong.”
“Unfortunately, these horrible things happened, but we cannot ask Palestinians to be perfect victims,” the activist continued.
Khalil was arrested by federal immigration authorities on March 8 and spent 104 days at a Louisiana detention center as the Trump administration fought to deport the Syrian-born permanent resident.
The administration said Khalil, who is now suing the federal government for $20 million over his detainment, engaged in activities “aligned to Hamas.”
Last month, in a heated CNN interview, Khalil flatly refused to condemn Hamas over the Oct. 7 attack – calling the question from host Pamela Brown “disingenuous.”
