Protesting is not a crime! We won’t leave Mahmoud behind!
Speech Lina Jabera, a member of the Anti-War Committee, given at the protest in solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil on 3/11/2025
We’re out here today to stand in solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, and one of the prominent organizers behind Columbia’s Palestine protests. Mahmoud was unjustly arrested and detained by immigration authorities on Saturday without charge or due process.
These acts of political repression—of plucking community leaders from movements, of threatening organizers with unconstitutional deportations or with phony felony charges, as we’ve seen here in our community—are NOT new for this country.
These are deliberate actions taken to make us fear retaliation for standing up against depraved injustices, to push us towards acquiescence.
We’re out here today, after witnessing months of harrowing genocide in Palestine carried out by Israel on our dime, to say that these tactics DO NOT and WILL NOT work on us.
We CANNOT be intimidated into inaction, we WILL NOT stop caring about Palestine, and any attempt to silence ONE of us will draw us all out in multitudes.
The efficacy of these intimidation tactics depends on the illusion that there is a greener side available to us if we allow others to become sacrificial fodder for imperialist interests.
But we know that we had NOTHING to gain from the SENSELESS genocide conducted on Palestinians with our tax dollars.
We know that caving to the threats of authoritarian forces and allowing them to terrorize our most vulnerable populations, does NOT ensure any amount of comfort or security for the rest of us. In fact, it guarantees the opposite.
We’ve witnessed the same technology and techniques used by Israel to track, surveil and ensnare Palestinians being employed within our own borders by the Department of Homeland Security and our police.
With the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, we’re watching these systems of oppression—brought on by US foreign policy and US immigration policy—harmonize exactly as they’re intended to against a lawful permanent resident who simply practiced his right to free speech by speaking out against a genocide.
In the eyes of US imperialists, there is ultimately no difference between us and Palestinians in Gaza, between us and our undocumented neighbors, or between us and those who stay silent.
There’s no reason for any of us to expect that what happens in Palestine or at Columbia can’t happen here. That’s why it’s so important that we’re all here today.
We have an obligation, one that’s only become more pressing with the current Trump Administration, to understand that fighting for our rights and for our just future means fighting for all oppressed peoples, regardless of their citizenship status or where they exist in the world.
The Anti-War Committee recognizes this and has been organizing to get the Minnesota State Board of Investment to divest from Israel and the corporations profiting from Israel’s apartheid regime in Palestine.
Many of the corporations we’re targeting have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and are also responsible for manufacturing the technology used by ICE and the US carceral system to track and surveil people in our communities here in the states.
The list includes the Israeli-owned Elbit Systems which brags about its products being “field-tested” on Palestinians, the AI-powered Palantir, and the bunker-buster bomb producing General Dynamics.
The SBI, chaired by Governor Tim Walz, has an opportunity to set itself apart from the Trump administration’s attacks on Gaza. Instead, they’ve continued to invest Minnesota tax dollars in apartheid Israel while evading their constituents’ comments.
We encourage everyone to join us in our fight for divestment when we pack the SBI’s meeting next Friday on March 21st at 9 AM at 60 Empire Drive in Saint Paul.
If you can’t make it to that, keep showing up to protests. Let’s make it clear that we’re not going anywhere.
Protesting is not a crime! We won’t leave Mahmoud behind!
