Terrorism is not an abstraction. It’s not a metaphor or a debatable concept. It is violence targeted at civilians for political ends. It is murder, brutality and fear deployed as a strategy. And yet, in academic circles, activist spaces and parts of the media, we are seeing a concerted effort to soften the word, to treat it as subjective, contextual, or even noble.
Mahmoud Khalil is the latest symbol of that effort. An Algerian Palestinian national and Columbia University graduate, Khalil now faces deportation proceedings for his leadership role in Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group that openly praised Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, all of them designated terrorist organizations under U.S. law.
Khalil claims he’s being punished for opposing Israeli policy. That’s not what this is about. CUAD didn’t just protest. It occupied buildings, destroyed property and harassed Jewish students. Khalil led negotiations with the university on CUAD’s behalf. He was the group’s public face at the height of its most aggressive, radical actions. His recent claims that he was merely an observer are not credible — and not supported by the record.
When given a national platform to clarify, Khalil refused. In a July CNN interview, he was asked repeatedly whether he condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians. He wouldn’t say yes. He called the question “absurd,” then deflected with the familiar tactic: blame Israel, minimize the atrocities and shift focus away from the terrorists themselves.
Since then, Khalil has continued his media tour, still refusing to condemn terrorism and still casting himself as the target of political repression. He has found sympathetic defenders in far-left circles, where his case is portrayed as a free-speech issue. But the core problem isn’t that Khalil spoke out. It’s that he defended, and still refuses to disavow, groups that kill civilians.
That distinction matters. It matters because a broader campaign is underway to recast terrorism as resistance, to present killers as freedom fighters and to blur the moral lines that should never be blurred. This is not a fringe trend anymore. It’s creeping into classrooms, op-eds, blogs and protest slogans, where terrorism is whitewashed in the language of justice and defenders of liberal democracy are left to justify their outrage.
There is nothing principled about refusing to denounce the deliberate murder of civilians. That is not speech. It is moral collapse.
This is not only about Khalil. It is about whether we, as a society, can still draw a line. Will we make a clear distinction between dissent and extremism? Between protected protest and the advocacy of violence? Or will we allow that line to dissolve under a fog of euphemism, legal hairsplitting and academic deflection?
There is space for protest in any democracy. But there is no space for ambiguity about terrorism. People who burn families alive, rape hostages, or behead civilians are not misunderstood revolutionaries. They are terrorists. They are murderers. And they are evil.
Those who won’t say so have forfeited any claim to speak for justice, peace, or human rights.
