If You Aren’t Speaking Up Today, You’ve Chosen The Side of Tyranny
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The stories of Mahmoud Khalil and Jasmine Mooney tell us all we need to know about the phase of political regression in which we have found ourselves today; the monstrous, bipartisan backsteps our elected representatives have taken for 25 years have crashed into relief as we ostracize allies, condemn the freedom of expression, and begin the process of mass detainment, deportation, and dehumanization of our own neighbors.
In the case of legal permanent-resident Mahmoud, we see a classic of the bumbling of first Trump presidency. Thinking him a visa-holder (read: easy target), the administration set to make an example of a troublemaking Arab who, by acting as a mediator between Columbia and student-led, pro-peace protestors, had done irreparable harm to the dignity of the university administrators. The US government arrested Mahmoud, taking him from his home Saturday and leaving his wife, US-citizen Noor Abdalla, in complete disbelief as her perceptions of the protections she believed herself and her family entitled to under US law were torn from her in an act of blatantly unconstitutional barbarity.
Since then, it has been a constant blitz of misinformation from media, legislators, and administration officials who maintain that Khalil’s actions pose a threat to the national security of the US, are harmfully antisemitic, or both. To the GOP, this is business as usual. But turn your gaze to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who prioritized the weaponization of antisemitism at-length before offering begrudging acknowledgement of the Constitutional crisis unfolding under his watch. Look to those who have said nothing at all while claiming allyship.
As for Mooney, a Canadian who co-founded “enhanced” drinking water company Holy! Water (good luck searching that on Google), she has been caught in the same crossfire. Detained entering the US from Mexico in San Diego, she had previously worked in the US for the LA-based drink brand but had had her Trade NAFTA (TN) visa revoked while she was out of country visiting home. Denied reentry in Canada, she returned to the San Ysidro checkpoint with renewed documentation and a valid offer for work in the US – a process which had secured her first work visa into the country – and was instead denied entry before being subsequently detained upon her request to return to Mexico to visit the US consulate and get her paperwork sorted out there.
She described conditions as inhumane. Telling of freezing rooms, aluminum foil blankets, and the inaccessibility of restroom facilities in the privately-owned Otay Mesa Detention Center, Mooney told of two-and-a-half days of being wrapped like a “dead body” in the reflective covering before being whisked away alongside 30 other women in the dead of night, of 24-hours spent in chains while being shuttled into the desert holding facilities of Arizona. Like Mahmoud, she was immediately isolated from family and legal representation before being shuttled across state lines to a jurisdiction presumably more favorable to the coming battle for basic protections of Rights in the US.
There is no question of why “antisemitism” has become both sword and shield in the rise of the greatest threat to world peace since 1934; the return of Trump to using “Palestinian” as a slur is all anyone should need to know about why we got here and where he is likely intending to go from here. Indeed, the arrests of more than 3000 pro-peace protestors across the United States in 2024, the isolationism of the socially conservative and war-mongering Biden administration in deference to pro-Israeli lobbyist, think tanks, and donors, was a call to action for a great many in the highest offices in the land today who recognized the groundwork being laid for them.
To our government, seeking to build alliances with the stalwarts of upper-class institutions while simultaneously dismantling the very system of education itself, Mahmoud serves as the perfect example for US interests at home and abroad; as the Biden administration did before, Trump and allies have issued a global shout of support for the continued destruction of Palestinian Peoples, the perpetual disempowerment of those whose lives we must extract from abroad. In the case of Mooney, she has found herself caught in the same gears, an unsuspecting and unlikely target which should serve as the final warning to the privileged White middle-class who believe the machine will never come for them and those they love. And while I don’t believe that Mooney was arrested to embarrass or inconvenience Canada – more likely she was caught in an overzealous restructuring of CBP policies – I can see no reason why it will not become so as the Trump Administration continues to search for leverage against the Canadian government and this case continues to gain traction.
The outrage many show toward the indignity of a Canadian stuck in for-profit prison for visa issues while ignoring the unconstitutionality of attempting to deport a legal permanent resident for bad words and ideas aside, we are truly coming to the end of the rope in terms of people’s ability to simply ignore the world crashing around them.
For our time, the poem of the Moderate who, once the genocide is safely in the folds of history will, have always been against it begins:
“First they came for the Palestinians, and I did nothing.”
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