It's come to my attention that *some* people don't believe this, or don't want to hear about it, so I'm putting in an effort to make sure everyone is aware of this connection.

Personally, I think this is one of the most interested wrinkles in the entire conflict, because it takes two enemies (Syria and Israel) in a position where one helped the other through an inadvertent downstream effect.

Also, as someone who is part Arab, I've been watching how the Syrian and Lebanese subs have been pushing this narrative that "Israel loved Assad" when I don't think there's strong evidence of that. Conversely, I'm seeing a lot of Pro-Hezbollah content on those subs, which is *IRONIC* considering Hezbollah LITERALLY SUPPORTED ASSAD. I don't mean they supported Assad in spirit, or with words, they TRAINED ASSAD'S FORCES.

Meanwhile, I keep seeing propaganda that Israel Supported Assad in some abstract way, or in the way that they didn't mind that Assad never attacked them.

The hypocrisy makes my head explode.

Anyway, here's my little research report. Feel free to use this post when you encounter those who think Hezbollah is a "resistance group".

Hezbollah Supported Assad

Hezbollah was involved in the Syrian Civil War, supporting Assad. Hezbollah and Al-Sharaa's government still don't get along and there are rumors they're secretly meeting in Turkiye to calm current tensions.

In fact there was reporting tha Hezbollah fought the "Rebels" (Aka Al-Sharaa's group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS).

In the Wake of Israel's Decapitation of Hezbollah, Al-Sharaa was able to Seize Control

Israel escalated their war with Hezbollah from March to July, culminating in the September pager attacks.

By October they could no longer assist Assad because their forces had been so compromised. So they re-routed to Lebanon and fighting Israel.

With the assistance of Hezbollah, the stalemate was broken and Assad fell just a couple months later.

In conclusion, Hezbollah started a war with Israel in 2023, and lost so badly that it broke the stalemate of the Syrian Civil War by giving Al Sharaa just enough of a window to take power.

I was reading the New Yorker's profile on Khalil and they largely framed the entire prosecution as a targeted attack on Khalil by the Trump administration for free speech.

However, when I see the Trump administration's case, it's centered around how Khalil lied on his greencard application, when they asked him about past employment. From what I can tell, he did. Specifically he lied about working at UNWRA and the British Embassy in Beirut.

Khalil interned at UNWRA from June to November in 2023, a time period that overlapped with the Oct 7th attacks. Israel has continuously accused UNRWA of harboring ongoing terrorist connections to Hamas. We have good evidence that 9 UNRWA employees were involved in the Oct 7th attacks. And we know for a fact that Sinwar died with a UNRWA teacher's passport on his person.

This means Khalil's co-workers were involved in Oct 7th attacks, while he was working there.

It makes sense that he'd lie about this, because greencard applications also ask about past involvement in terrorist groups.

Greencard applications don't just ask about the past, but about planned future involvement with terrorist organizations.

And we have circumstantial evidence that Khalil distributed terrorist propaganda at his rallies at Columbia. However, there's some plausible deniability here, unless someone has video of him handing them out. The Trump administration is probably going to focus on how he lied about UNRWA (and working at the British Embassy in Beirut).

TO me, this seems clear cut. Not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law.

Khalil is someone who was clearly involved or sympathised with terrorism, with 9 of his co-workers attacking civilians on October 7th and he lied about it. We know that the Hamas propaganda office produced the flyers at his events.

We also have his own words where Khalil justified Oct 7th attacks, "I was interning at UNWRA and part of my internship was focused on Palestine...."

"Israel was trying to make that deal with Saudi [Arabia]...and they circumvented the palestinian question." (Literally Yahya Sinwar's language about why he orchestrated Oct 7th).

"Palestinians HAD to do that[Oct 7th]" (did it?)

On how Columbia's narrative was too Pro-Israeli on Oct 10, 2023 "By October 8th, there were hundreds of Palestinians killed by israel" (let the record show these deaths were the terrorists who invaded Israel to kill and kidnap civilians).

From his interview with Ezra Klein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2BLU3Gy3YE&t=6s

But whenever I see this covered, the angle is always focused on how the Trump Administration is unfairly targeting him. I don't think so.

It's easy to contrast this case with Ozturk who had no involvement with Hamas, even tangentially, didn't lie on her visa application and literally just wrote an Op Ed. She was unfairly targeted for expressing free speech and our courts managed to rule in her favor fairly quickly.

Khalil is NOT being unfairly targeted. He is exactly the type of person we should deport.

Unless I'm missing something here? Everytime I listen to popular press on the subject I have these burning questions that don't seem to be addressed. I'm opening this up to this subreddit to test my understanding of this case.

EDIT: Because everyone wants to split hairs and try to argue that an internship is not employment.

What is this argument? The WHOLE POINT of an internship is to gain work experience. Literally.

And LEGALLY interns are a special type of temporary employees. There is still an employer / employee relationship. If Khalil - and an intern at UNRWA - was sexually harassed, or injured, he would go to employer to rectify that. If Khalil went drinking with his boss and used a a slur, he would be in trouble with HR at UNRWA. Is Khalil did something that didn’t align with his company values, he would get fired from his internship and that decision would come from his employer, UNRREA.

He will list it on his resume for the rest of his life, or until he has enough experience that it doesn’t fit on a single page.

In every conceivable way he is employed there.

And it’s not like the visa application was so narrow asked “tell us only about your work history where money changed hands and nothing else.”

He would also list his education and any other activities that would be relevant.

If Khalil was being educated by Columbia, that would be relevant, along with any major activities at Columbia. So if you want to pretend like internships are somehow an extension of school, then he would still have to list it.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

I went back and analyzed 71 posts of Palestinians displaying their ancestry results. Of those, 41 were analyzable (ie: not deleted) by the time I went back and plugged the data into a spreadsheet. I know, it’s a controversial topic, but a lot of the accounts who originally posted were totally deleted.

I noticed we discussed this phenomenon in the comments, but I was curious to what extent the data backed it up.