Marty Levine
March 27, 2025
Comments from A Rally In Chicago
Almost 60 years ago I was Mahmoud Khalil
I was a Columbia University Graduate student
I was a protestor
I was a negotiator
Then, the issue was the University’s racism and its complicity with a genocide that our United States Government was complicit in. Today, the issue is again a genocide, this time by the Israeli government in Palestine, and yet again, our government is complicit.
Mahmoud Kalil did exactly what I did. He joined a peaceful protest that included acts of civil disobedience and demanded our University step back from its part in the horror of destroying families and homes, arbitrarily bombing entire towns and exterminating entire bloodlines, and join us in demanding it must end.
Mahmoud Khalil is acting in a noble tradition of peaceful and forceful protest for what is right.
He followed in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King. He was following in the footsteps of our founding fathers.
Now, as then, our Government and others in the powerful elected offices that control our nation were threatened. They feared that the message carried by the protestors fighting for Palestinian liberation and freedom was right, and it was resonating far beyond the encampments and the campuses. Now, as then, they have tried to discredit the protestors by accusing them of being hated enemies of our country and of the Jewish community. In the 1960’s we were communists and Viet Cong supporters. Today, we are Hamas supporters. Lies then and lies today.
And Mahmoud Khalil, and all of us who have stood up for Palestinian freedom and the desperate need to stop the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide are accused of being antisemitic when we are just speaking truth to power. As one who spent his entire Professional career building this city’s Jewish community, as one who sees my Judaism as a guide star for my life, I have been proud to stand in this very plaza alongside my Palestinian brothers demanding an end to Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian men, women, and children and proclaiming that Palestine must be free. That is not antisemitic. Not when I said it and not when Mahmoud Khalil said it.
I stand here on Federal Plaza demanding that our elected leaders at all levels tell the world that what has happened to Mahmoud Khalil is un-American and is not protecting anyone. That is what has happened to
Rumeysa Ozturk
Alireza Dorudi
Yunseo Chung
Bada Khan Suri
Momodou Taal
Ranjani Srinivasan
And those whose names we do not yet know.
Palestinians deserve to live a life of freedom and safety as do we all. To demand one is not to put others in danger. It is to ensure that we all can live safely and freely. It is time to Free Mahmoud Khalil, Free Palestine, and when we do, we will all be free.
Comments from A Rally In Chicago
