Destroy Civilization, Mind My Feelings

By Abe Greenwald

Friday, May 01, 2026

 

Last week, the liberal media feted Hasan Piker. The influencer who adores Hamas and believes that 9/11 was a righteous blow to America was defended at multiple outlets and featured in a New York Times podcast where he advocated “cool crimes” as political resistance.

 

For this week’s most celebrated terrorist supporter, New York magazine has selected Mahmoud Khalil.

 

You remember Khalil. He’s the Syrian national who led Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest group, which calls for, in its own words, the “total eradication of Western civilization.” Khalil personally believes that Hamas’s October 7 massacre was necessary “to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard,” as he told the New York Times’ Ezra Klein.

 

The Trump administration heard Khalil loud and clear and has spent a year trying to deport him. He’s been out of detention since last summer (temporarily, one hopes), and New York gave him the opportunity to write about the horrible difficulties he now faces.

 

I found much of it quite cheering.

 

For example, he writes, “the government is relentless in targeting me, still using every road and alleyway it can find to punish me with the legal system and bureaucracy. So when I walk, I watch my back.” Let’s hear it for the Feds!

 

While eating with his wife at a restaurant in December, some fellow diners, he says, “stopped across from our table and began singing ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ over our heads for two minutes.” Didn’t know New Yorkers still had it in ’em.

 

“Now, I check,” he writes. “I look up every place before we go somewhere new. I scan for signs, flags, and cues.” Welcome to my world, buddy.

 

Khalil says that he misses his old life. He misses being able to visit Columbia’s campus (at 31 years old), which has apparently kept him at arm’s length. He misses walking through the city without a care, aimlessly strolling without fear of who’s approaching him. And he misses his ability to be present while at home with his family.

 

If Mahmoud Khalil is in fact unhappy, distracted, and fearful, that’s great. But I don’t believe him. I suspect, on balance, he’s thrilled with his new life.

 

In his old life, was he dining with the mayor of New York City? Was he championed by legions? Did New York offer itself up as a repository for his self-pity?

 

To a narcissistic sulker like Khalil, those aren’t bad trade-offs for a little heightened vigilance.

 

If he isn’t deported, Khalil will find deals of all sorts coming his way. More articles, lectures, books, TV shows, documentaries. Clearly, it’s already begun. He protested the United States so relentlessly that the United States just couldn’t resist rewarding him—with fame, fortune, and influence. No wonder he doesn’t want to leave the country that he hates so much.

 

But we can still do our part.

 

He lets us know how: “When strangers approach me and ask, ‘Are you Mahmoud Khalil?’ … I do not know whether they will say, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing,’ or follow me through midtown aggressively shouting, ‘Am Yisrael Chai.’ Both have happened. At first glance, I can never tell them apart.”

 

If the stranger is me, you can count on the latter.