| THE LIE Giving Mahmoud Khalil a platform at a Yom Kippur gathering was simply an expression of Jewish conscience and a call for justice. |
| THE TRUTH Khalil is a foreign national under active deportation order, found by a federal immigration judge to have committed willful fraud on his green card application by concealing his ties to Hamas-linked UNRWA. He publicly refused on national television to condemn Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for murdering over 1200 people alone on October 7th. He is not a peace advocate. |
| BACKGROUND Yizkor is one of Judaism’s most solemn memorial prayers for the dead. It is recited on Yom Kippur to remember those who have died. On September 21, 2026, Rabbis for Ceasefire and Jewish Voice for Peace held a Yizkor event in New York and put Mahmoud Khalil on the pulpit as a performative “act of Jewish conscience”. Jerusalem Post Khalil is a Syrian-born Algerian national and former Columbia graduate student who served as lead organizer and spokesperson for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) – the group at the center of the 2024 pro-Hamas campus encampments that created a documented hostile environment for Jewish students. On September 17-18, 2025 – a year before appearing at the 2026 Yom Kippur Yizkor service – Immigration Judge Jamee Comans formally ordered Khalil deported to Syria or Algeria, finding he had ‘willfully misrepresented’ his work for UNRWA and his campus activism on his U.S. green card application. Washington Free Beacon |
| TRUTH EXPLAINED A federal immigration judge found Khalil committed willful fraud – not an oversight – on his green card application by concealing his work for UNRWA and his role in anti-Israel campus organizing. The court’s ruling stated his ‘lack of candor on his I-485 was not an oversight by an uninformed applicant.’ Daily Wire UNRWA – the agency Khalil concealed on his immigration forms – had at least 101 staff members referred for suspension or permanent banning for direct involvement in the October 7 massacre. Khalil’s concealment of his UNRWA employment was central to the judge’s fraud finding. Fox News In a July 2025 CNN interview, Khalil was asked directly whether he condemned Hamas as a designated terrorist organization. He refused multiple times, calling such questions ‘disingenuous and absurd,’ and instead criticized ‘selective outrage.’ The Trump administration formally labeled him ‘a terrorist sympathizer’ in an official DHS statement following the interview. Daily Wire, Breitbart At CUAD-sponsored encampment events, Hamas propaganda was distributed – including a document titled ‘Our Narrative.Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ bearing the official ‘Hamas Media Office’ stamp. CUAD also hosted Samidoun, a U.S. Treasury-designated terrorist organization, and Khaled Barakat, a senior terrorist leader. Video footage captured a CUAD protester explicitly calling on Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades to kill Jewish students. Fox News Families of Israeli hostages and Hamas terror victims filed a federal lawsuit in March 2025 stating that Khalil and CUAD serve as ‘Hamas’s propaganda arm in New York City’ and should be held liable for ‘aiding and abetting Hamas’s continuing acts of international terrorism.’ Washington Free Beacon A judge ordered Khalil deported after finding he lied on his immigration forms – a ruling that came just four days before ‘Rabbis for Ceasefire’ gave him a platform at a Jewish memorial service. The deportation order was confirmed across multiple outlets covering the September 2025 ruling. Breitbart On September 21, 2026, Rabbis for Ceasefire and Jewish Voice for Peace put Khalil on the pulpit at a Yom Kippur Yizkor service in Brooklyn. The podium plaque read “for the sin of genocide we atone.” They presented that as Jewish conscience. Jerusalem Post Yizkor is the Yom Kippur memorial prayer for the dead – including the 1,200 Jews murdered on October 7. At that service Khalil accused Israel of genocide and said it is “tough to repent” when “our tax dollars, our votes are being used to kill, to maim, to displace Palestinians.” A man who refused on national television to condemn Hamas does not represent Jewish values from that pulpit. Jerusalem Post |
| TAKEAWAY Yizkor exists to honor the dead – including the 1,200 Jews murdered on October 7. Platforming Mahmoud Khalil at that service does not represent Jewish conscience. It represents a deliberate effort to rehabilitate a man a federal judge found committed willful immigration fraud, who leads an organization that distributed Hamas propaganda, hosted Treasury-designated terrorists, and whose members called for the killing of Jewish students. Stripping that context is not an act of peace – it is an exploitation of Jewish grief to legitimize someone who will not even say Hamas is wrong. |
