The New York Times is facing sharp criticism for publishing an interview with anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, in which he defended the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre of Israelis, saying, “We couldn't avoid such a moment.”
Khalil, a Syrian-born protest leader at Columbia University who was arrested in New York in March by immigration authorities and later released, spoke with Times columnist Ezra Klein in a podcast that aired alongside an article titled, “The Trump Administration Tried to Silence Mahmoud Khalil, So I Asked Him to Talk.”
In the interview, Khalil said the Hamas assault, in which some 1,200 people were killed, was driven in part by warming ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia ahead of a possible Abraham Accords deal that he claimed “circumvented the Palestinian question.”
Klein wrote that Khalil’s detention violated President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to “restore free speech,” arguing the activist was jailed “because the U.S. government feared him” and wanted to silence voices like his.
The interview drew backlash from journalists, Jewish community leaders and former Times staffers, who accused Klein of failing to challenge Khalil when he justified the killings or claimed Palestinian uprisings were “overwhelmingly peaceful” despite dozens of deadly terror attacks.
“Are the massacres of any other group (besides Jews) justified on podcasts published by the NYT?” former Times journalist Adam Rubenstein wrote on X. Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press and also a former Times writer, called the episode “absolutely insane.” “Listen and think about what he's saying here. We couldn't avoid the slaughter of the Bibas children. Really?” she wrote.
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Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil (center) pictured with NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shortly after his release from jail in June
(Photo: Seth Wenig, AP)
Melissa Weiss, acting editor of Jewish Insider, pointed out that Khalil was raised in Syria, Lebanon and Algeria, countries with few remaining Jews. “What Jew ‘who's trying to kill you’ is he even talking about?” she said, criticizing Klein for not probing the claim, which she said reflects how those countries educate youth to hate Jews.
Journalist Haviv Rettig Gur echoed her, saying Klein missed “a real window into Arab discourse about a minority that was systematically cleansed from the entire Arab world, and the subsequent generations of demonization and war then launched against that minority.”
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Khalil also dismissed accusations of antisemitism at Columbia and defended violent protest slogans such as “Globalize the intifada,” calling them an attempt at “policing Palestinian thought and speech.” While conceding the second intifada saw more than 100 suicide bombings, he insisted it was largely nonviolent resistance.
During his 104 days in detention at a Louisiana facility, Khalil’s wife and supporters claimed he was unjustly separated from his family. Khalil called his arrest a “kidnapping.” Hours after his release in June, he rejoined anti-Israel protests in New York, marching alongside demonstrators wearing keffiyehs and Hamas symbols.
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Activist Mahmoud Khalil rejoins anti-Israel protests in New York hours after his release from jail in June
(Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty)
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., told the New York Post that Khalil should be deported, calling him “chief pro-Hamas terrorist agitator” and blaming him for antisemitic unrest at Columbia and harassment of Jewish students.
Brooklyn Assemblyman Kalman Yeger said, “Naturalized citizenship is an earned privilege of our nation, and he has not earned it. The government should continue taking every lawful step necessary to remove this enemy from the United States.”